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marielle franco
How Many People Have the US and Israel Killed in Iran?
The massacre at a school in the city of Minab is not an isolated case, but rather an example of broader brutality and also a window into how the US systematically downplays civilian death and suffering.
Apr 13, 2026
After the breakdown of talks in Pakistan, the ceasefire between the US and Iran is more fragile than ever, and now seems likely to give way to a new phase of the war. The ceasefire and talks have failed to end Israel’s devastating attacks on Lebanon or to negotiate international access to the Strait of Hormuz, now under Iran’s control.
The world must use this pause in the war to push for a permanent ceasefire and peace agreement, but we must also start to assess the true human cost of the war–something the US is always reluctant to do in its wars, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. While we always know the exact number of Americans killed in these wars, we never have an accurate tally of how many people we have killed–not only because it is often hard to get the data, but also because the US systematically downplays civilian casualties and treats their lives as less valuable.
We saw this from the very first day of this war. The US carried out a double-tap strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, killing 175, mostly young girls. Trump’s response was to blame Iran: “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” he said, and later suggested that Iran might have gotten hold of a Tomahawk missile and used it to kill its own people.
Minab is not an isolated case—it is a window into a much broader failure by the US government and media, as well as the Iranian government and international media, to honestly reveal the human toll of this 40-day war.
The Iran Health Ministry’s casualty figures have not been updated in any detail since March 29, when it put Iranian casualties at 2,076 killed and 26,500 wounded, and there is an obvious mismatch between these two numbers. The ratio between them is much higher than in other wars, or even when compared with the Israeli assault on Lebanon in this war, where Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported 1,830 people killed and 4.927 wounded by April 10, a ratio of 2.7 to 1 between the wounded and the dead.
For further comparison, UN figures for civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine are 15,172 and 41,378 wounded, which is also a ratio of 2.7 to 1. These are certainly under-estimates, like civilian casualty counts in every war, but the ratio between deaths and injuries is realistic, unlike that in Tehran’s casualty figures.
If the Iran Health Ministry’s casualty figures were accurate, it would mean that only one person is being killed for every 13 people wounded. But if the figure of 26,500 people wounded was accurate, and the ratio between dead and wounded was similar to what is found in other wars, we would expect that around 10,000 people have probably been killed.
Looking at other sources, the UK-based Iran International website, on March 31, reported Iranian military, militia and police casualties of 4,770 killed and 20,880 wounded, but did not divulge its sources.
Two human rights groups, HRANA and Hengaw, have also published mortality estimates. HRANA, based in Fairfax, Virginia, in the US, is partly funded by the US government, the aggressor in this war. So its data on war casualties are as suspect as its data for casualties during protests in Iran in December and January that the US used as a pretext for the war.
The other human rights group, Hengaw, is based in Norway and Iranian Kurdistan. It reports a total of at least 7,650 people killed by the time of the ceasefire on April 8, of whom 6,620 were military personnel and 1,030 were civilians.
If the Iranian government’s figure of 26,500 people wounded is correct, Hengaw’s count of 7,650 war deaths would amount to a ratio of 3.5 people wounded for each person killed, which would be closer to what one would expect by comparison with other wars.
But the Health Ministry’s figure of 26,500 wounded is also suspect. The Pentagon claims that US and Israeli airstrikes have hit more than 13,000 “targets,” so 26,500 injuries would amount to only two people wounded for each target attacked. This suggests that the count of 26,500 people wounded is itself an undercount, and that the true numbers of casualties in Iran, killed and wounded, military and civilian, are therefore likely to be much higher than any of the numbers reported so far.
While it is easy to understand why the US government doesn’t want to talk about casualties, it seems that the Iranian government doesn’t want to either. If, as we suspect, the true casualty figures are much higher than the health ministry has reported, it may be hiding and downplaying them to prevent panic among the population and keep up the country’s morale, especially in light of the recent large protests in the country. That could also explain why it has not updated its casualty report since March 29.
The fact that our government and institutional media downplay the importance of accurate casualty figures and make no effort to discover them only makes it more urgent to find them, as we and others have tried to do during previous US wars.
We would encourage all sides, and independent groups, to cooperate in efforts to accurately count the dead and wounded. Why does this matter? In an illegal war, every death is a crime, while every person killed or maimed is somebody’s husband, wife, father, mother, son or daughter. They should all still be alive and whole. The US armed forces should not be killing or wounding any of them. So some might ask what difference it makes whether they’ve killed 2,000 people, 7,000 or even 70,000.
We would say that it is precisely because each life is precious, and because the pain and horror each person suffers in these violent deaths and injuries is so unacceptable, that each one deserves to be counted and considered. Americans, and our neighbors around the world, need to fully grasp the scale of the mass murder that the US government is committing, so that we can all respond appropriately.
The fact that our government and institutional media downplay the importance of accurate casualty figures and make no effort to discover them only makes it more urgent to find them, as we and others have tried to do during previous US wars.
In 2006, three years into the extraordinarily violent US military occupation of Iraq, public health experts from Johns Hopkins University in the US and Mustansiriya University in Baghdad conducted the second of two epidemiological studies of mortality in Iraq since the US invasion.
The study was published in the Lancet medical journal, and it estimated that, during just the first three years of war and occupation in Iraq, they had caused about 650,000 deaths, including 600,000 violent killings. That was more than ten times higher than previously published figures, which were based on compilations of western news reports and reports from the occupation government’s health ministry.
The study’s results were disputed by those responsible for the war and the mass casualties it caused, including US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
But leaked emails revealed that the British government’s chief scientific adviser described the study’s methodology as “close to best practice,” and its design as “robust.” Emails from panicking British officials asked, “Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies,” and “…the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished. It is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”
In 2015, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning groups Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) published a report titled Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the War on Terror. In discussing the widely varying mortality estimates for the war in Iraq, the report noted, “Despite the furious criticism it attracted, most experts see the second Lancet study of October 2006 as the most solid estimate of the number of casualties, up to the period of its publication.”
No such comprehensive studies were ever conducted in Afghanistan. The UN published annual civilian casualty figures, but these were only compilations of civilian casualties confirmed by the UN Human Rights Office as it followed up on reports of war crimes and human rights violations reported to its office in Kabul, which excluded any deaths not reported to its office, or that it did not have time to fully investigate.
As is happening with the Iran Health Ministry reports today, the UN’s fragmentary reports were uncritically repeated by the world’s media as if they were realistic estimates of total war deaths in Afghanistan.
Finally, in 2019, after 18 years of war and military occupation, Fiona Frazer, the head of the UN Human Rights office in Kabul, admitted to the BBC that the UN’s reports were not providing a full picture of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
“United Nations data strongly indicates that more civilians are killed or injured in Afghanistan due to armed conflict than anywhere else on Earth,” Frazer said, but then added, “Although the number of recorded civilian casualties are disturbingly high, due to rigorous methods of verification, the published figures almost certainly do not reflect the true scale of harm."
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were also killed fighting as combatants on both sides in that war. The world’s media were surprised when President Ghani revealed in January 2019 that 45,000 Afghan government troops had been killed since he took office in September 2014. But the US relied on Afghans to fight other Afghans throughout its failed 20-year war in their country.
Whatever the result of the current ceasefire and negotiations, and for however long the US and Israel keep waging war on Iran, the people of the United States and the world must demand a complete and truthful accounting for the human costs of this war, for which Americans and their government bear the prime moral and legal responsibility. At best, that should include the same kind of independent, scientifically-based epidemiological study conducted in Iraq in 2006.
But the demand for accountability starts with a skeptical public and media who can tell the difference between partial, fragmentary casualty reports and serious estimates of total deaths in a violent war zone, and who care enough to want to know how many people their armed forces are really killing and maiming in this illegal war.
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Madman Trump Must Be Removed
The cost of inaction is simply too high.
Apr 13, 2026
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall…
―Bob Dylan
A shaky two-week truce; we’ve temporarily slipped from the hangman’s noose. There’s still a madman president on the loose.
We are living in an Upside Down moment, and the danger is no longer metaphorical. You don’t need to have watched Stranger Things to recognize that the threat is real, not lurking in another dimension. It’s prowling in the White House, and no blinking lights are spelling out SOS.
This is what an Upside Down world looks like: a president openly threatening catastrophic violence against another nation’s civilian infrastructure, while those with the constitutional authority to stop him hesitate, equivocate, or remain silent.
No matter what happens next, history will remember: On Easter Sunday 2026, Donald Trump posted a message so reckless, so unhinged, that it would be disqualifying in any functioning democracy. Threatening the destruction of Iran’s power plants and bridges, invoking apocalyptic language, and wrapping it all in bravado, he revealed not just poor judgment but a fundamental disregard for human life and the rule of law. Two days later, this warning: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
The response was immediate—but not where it matters most.
Sen. Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut, spoke out about the Easter threat. If he were in Trump’s Cabinet, Murphy said he would be calling constitutional lawyers about invoking the 25th Amendment. Others echoed the alarm. Even some of Trump’s most reliable allies on the far right voiced scathing criticism.
For a brief moment, it seemed possible that outrage might translate into action. But it hasn’t...yet.
There is no credible evidence that the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet are engaged in serious discussions about removing Trump under the 25th Amendment. Vice President JD Vance has shown no sign of breaking ranks. How is it possible that loyalty—political, ideological, or personal—continues to outweigh constitutional responsibility?
And Congress? Missing in action. Despite clear authority under the War Powers Resolution, a Republican-controlled Congress has done nothing to rein Trump in—and has shown no signs of changing direction.
Why is it falling to the American people to do what elected officials are failing to do: unseat a president unfit to serve?
Activists in organizations like CodePink mobilized emergency protests in Washington and across the country, integrating opposition to the Iran war into the broader pro-democracy resistance.
Protests against the war need to be as ubiquitous as daffodils in Spring—visible, sustained, and impossible to ignore. The anti-Vietnam War movement did not stop the war overnight, but it changed the political calculus until continuing it became untenable.
What about the military? Senior officers and military lawyers understand what’s at stake. Orders to deliberately target civilian infrastructure—power grids, bridges, and population centers are war crimes.
The law of armed conflict is not optional. It applies to those who carry out orders, not just those who give them, creating a tension within the chain of command. Last year, six members of Congress posted a video reminding service members, “you can refuse to carry out illegal orders.”
Meanwhile, the judiciary, often imagined as a final safeguard, has—for now—remained largely silent. Courts do not move at the speed of crisis. They require time. And time is an enemy of this moment.
So where does that leave us? With a reality both sobering and clarifying. The formal mechanisms of restraint—Congress, the Cabinet, and the judiciary branch—are stalled, reactive, or unwilling. The most immediate pressure is coming from two places: people in the streets, and professionals inside the system trying to hold the line. Neither is sufficient on its own.
The millions at No Kings rallies have been doing their part, but only to a degree. Now, perhaps, they’ll take a new tack. Imagine citizens moving from street protests into the halls of Congress, confronting their representatives in their Washington offices and home districts. Asking, insisting, refusing to leave without an answer to a simple question: What are you doing—right now—to stop him? To stop the madness?
We know this Congress can’t be counted on to act on its own. Apparently, it will only act when the cost of inaction becomes too high—politically, publicly, unmistakably.
The people have begun doing their part. Congress must now do its. Much more must be done—and with great urgency—to bring this madness to an end.
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Iran's Top Diplomat Says Trump Team Sabotaged Talks With Deal 'Inches Away'
"Zero lessons earned," said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Apr 13, 2026
Iran's foreign minister said Sunday that the Trump administration's representatives derailed marathon talks in Pakistan's capital with maximalist demands, just as the two sides were "inches away" from a preliminary agreement to end the six-week conflict.
"In intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with US in good faith to end war," Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media. "But when just inches away from 'Islamabad [Memorandum of Understanding],' we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade. Zero lessons earned. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity."
The failed weekend talks marked the second time since February that US negotiators have been accused of sabotaging formal negotiations despite participants believing a deal was within reach. Oman's foreign minister, who mediated previous talks, said hours before the US and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28 that "we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal."
The Trump administration's negotiating team, which consisted principally of Vice President JD Vance and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly set down numerous "red lines" during the Islamabad talks this past weekend, including demanding that Iran end all uranium enrichment—which Iran has a right to conduct under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—and dismantle its major nuclear energy facilities.
"We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms," Vance told reporters on Sunday. "I think that we were quite flexible."
US President Donald Trump claimed on social media that "the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not."
Iran's top negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote following the talks that "due to the experiences of the two previous wars, we have no trust in the opposing side."
After the single day of talks faltered, Trump announced a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, an illegal act of war that critics warned could plunge the two sides into a deeper conflict.
"It is concerning that Vance already suggests that the US has put forward a final and best offer, suggesting that the US is still trying to dictate terms rather than negotiate a better future," said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council. "We urge President Trump to walk back his blockade threat and for the US and Iran to reengage and consider implementing practical steps where there is agreement to lower tensions and build on this fragile pause to the war."
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Trump and his advisers "are looking at resuming limited military strikes in Iran" on top of the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which the president said is set to begin at 10 am ET.
"Trump could also resume a full-fledged bombing campaign," the Journal noted—though unnamed officials said that option was "less likely."
US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in an interview on Sunday that American lawmakers "need to do whatever we can to get [Trump] out" of office, calling the president's war on Iran "illegal," "a war crime," "immoral," and disastrous for the American public.
"Impeachment, invoke the 25th Amendment, push for him to resign, whatever it is," Jayapal told MS NOW. "This is so grave of a situation."
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Sanders Leads Launch of 'Worker Power' Movement to Fight 'Status Quo Economics'
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” Sen. Bernie Sanders warned.
Apr 13, 2026
As Republican policies, union-busting corporations, and the imminent threat of artificial intelligence put unprecedented pressure on the US workforce, Sen. Bernie Sanders headlined Sunday's launch of a movement "to strengthen the labor movement and expand worker power across the country."
Sanders (I-VT) spoke at the “Union Now: Building the Labor Movement” rally at Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA international president Sara Nelson, and other labor and social movement leaders.
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” Sanders warned. “If the middle class of this country is going to survive, we must understand that status quo politics and status quo economics is no longer good enough."
LIVE Bernie Sanders Zohran Mamdani UNION NOW Rally in NYC https://t.co/uC6atxCK7N
— Status Coup News (@StatusCoup) April 12, 2026
“It’s absolutely important that all of us here and every American understand that in the ruling class of this country today, there is an extraordinary level of arrogance and cruelty,” the senator said.
"The truth is that the 1% the people on top, people running this country have never, ever had it so good,” Sanders told the crowd. “But the sad reality is that for these people, all that they have is not good enough. They want more and more and more, and they don’t care who they step on to get what they want."
“These guys are extremely, extremely greedy people, and they could care less in terms of what happens to our children, what happens to our parents and our grandparents, and what happens to our environment today," the senator argued.
“One of the goals of the oligarchs and the media that they own is to make ordinary people feel that there is nothing that they can do to shape the future,” he added. “And what we are here today to say to [Elon] Musk and his friends: Go to hell.”
Mamdani, who marked 100 days in office, said: "When we talk about the importance of taking on the crisis of income inequality, we know that the most effective tool to do so is increasing union density. Organizing drives and strikes can, frankly, be lonely work. So Union Now is going to support workers and provide them with more resources, and my administration will stand right alongside them. This moment demands nothing less."
“AI and robots are coming for human jobs," the mayor warned. "Worker protections are being eroded. There are companies that think that exploitation is a viable business model. They are wrong.”
Nelson asserted that “growing union membership and bargaining power is crucial for workers' rights and economic justice.”
“Too often, the boss has all the power to starve workers during a fight," she said. "Union Now will work with unions directly to ensure workers have the means to win."
Brittany Norris, a Delta AFA Organizing Committee member and flight attendant, told the crowd that "when it comes to striking, when it comes to public actions, a lot of those things cost money and it’s a lot of time, dedication, and efforts coming from the workers."
“We continuously hear about the profits... that our industry is making, but then we’re begging for a raise that comes up close to what the cost of living increase is every year,” she added.
Sunday's Union Now launch comes amid Sanders' ongoing "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, which has drawn large crowds across the country, including in so-called "red" states. The rally also follows last year's "Workers Over Billionaires" Labor Day rallies and marches in over 1,000 locations.
The Union Now launch also coincides with growing wealth inequality not only in the United States but around a world in which the richest 10% of the global population own three-quarters of planetary wealth and account for nearly half of all consumer spending.
“If [President Donald] Trump and his fellow oligarchs get their way, we will be living in a society where fewer and fewer people have more and more wealth and more and more power, where democracy will be undermined, where workers will be thrown out on the street with no recourse," Sanders said Sunday. “That is not the America we want for ourselves or for our kids."
“The good news is," he added, "if we stand together and we not let Trump and his friends divide us up, when we stand together and fight for a government that works for all of us, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish."
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