The Washington Post implies that Israel killed too many civilians in Iran - and then offhandedly mentions the truth ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, December 18, 2025

The Washington Post implies that Israel killed too many civilians in Iran - and then offhandedly mentions the truth

The Washington Post has an investigation of Israel's attacks on Iran in June, Operation Rising Lion, and the operation to assassinate leading nuclear scientists, Operation Narnia.

There are some new details revealed; it is better than most stories about Israel in the media. But even so, it still tries to pain Israel as being heedless of human life:

For Operation Narnia, Israeli intelligence analysts assembled a list of the 100 most important nuclear scientists in Iran, then whittled the target roster down to roughly a dozen. They built dossiers on each man’s work, their movements, their homes — drawing on decades of espionage.

The operation wasn’t flawless. The Post and open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat were able to independently verify 71 civilian casualties in five strikes where nuclear scientists were targeted, using satellite imagery, video geolocation, death notices, cemetery records and coverage of funerals in Iranian media.

The Post and Bellingcat confirmed that 10 civilians, including a 2-month-old infant, were killed in the strike on the Professors Complex in Tehran’s Saadat Abad neighborhood. Witness accounts, combined with videos and images of the blast and resulting structural damage, indicate that the strike was similar to the force of a roughly 500-pound bomb.

Israel targeted another scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, at his Tehran home during the opening wave of strikes. Sedighi Saber wasn’t there, but his 17-year-old son was killed.

On the conflict’s last day, June 24, the elder Saber was killed at his relative’s home about 200 miles from the capital, in Astaneh-ye Ashrafiyeh in Gilan province. A resident there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals, told The Post that Saber had returned to his family home for his son’s mourning ceremony and was killed alongside other relatives. The Post verified 15 civilian deaths in this strike, including four minors. Two residences were leveled, leaving behind two craters where the homes once stood.

The newspaper then gave a couple of words to an Israeli official so it could pretend to be even-hansded, but the writers of the article clearly do not believe this:

Israeli security officials said they did everything possible to limit civilian casualties. “One of the major considerations for the planning of Operation Narnia was to try to minimize as much as possible the collateral damage,” a senior Israeli military intelligence officer said.

And then, two sentences later, without comment, we learn the truth:

A spokesperson for the Iranian government said in July that 1,062 people were killed in the Israeli strikes, including 276 civilians.

That is a military to civilian ratio of 3-1; absolutely unheard of in bombings that were largely done in urban areas.

And almost certainly Iran considers the nuclear scientists themselves to be civilian in this count.

That statistic proves that Israel really did try to minimize collateral damage and civilian deaths. The military value of the nuclear researchers was high enough to justify - under the laws of armed conflict - even 15 or 20 unwanted civilian deaths. This is not disproportionate under international law.

A decent newspaper would highlight that statistic to put everything else in context. A biased newspaper would bury it, without context, and give the overall impression that the truth is the opposite.