Dr. Stephen R. Parsons writes this

[An Iranian woman in Denmark in her early thirties] told me that 40,000 people had been killed in the two-day protest in January, and although her parents still lived in the country, she put her faith in the coming military attack by the US (´the only hope`). Again, a case of my enemy`s enemy is my friend.

First, of all I told her that a figure of 40,000 was absurd and I asked her how she as a scientist could believe in such a number? I said I`m not in doubt that the authorities in Iran are ruthless when it comes to repressing opposition but any serious person knows that such a high number of fatalities would require bombs, tanks, and machineguns and for people not to run away. The Israelis have needed 2 years and an estimated 200,000 tonnes of explosives on a population confined to an area 141 sq. miles to kill about 100,000. Moreover, if really tens of thousands had been killed, mass burials would be necessary, given that every inch of Iran is under satellite observation – the Americans would have released pictures of such a thing. I`m afraid I`m getting crotchety in my old age – it makes me angry when educated people don`t use their common sense and just swallow such obvious propaganda. One believes something because one wants to believe it (on one occasion, another colleague told me she believed the report in her newspaper that the Russians had blown up the Nord Stream pipeline).

If 40,000 had been killed, then an attack using 500 missiles or even a tactical nuclear weapon seems less outrageous. Since when have unprovoked (Iran has not attacked another country – it has been the victim of attacks by Iraq, Israel, and America) aerial attacks not led people in the said countries to back up their government/state? Even if such a military action collapses the existing power structure (which I doubt – recently, an estimated 30% of the population were out on the streets to mark the founding of the Islamic Republic), what would come in its place? As I said to the woman in question, ´don`t think something cannot be worse than it already is`(there needs to be some coherent political strategy that doesn`t mean you end up as a fifth column for foreign powers that are not motivated by the interests of the Iranian people). Ethnic division and bitter civil war, and a splitting up of the country as has happened in Libya and Syria? In Syria, the Kurds (who put their faith in the Americans) are now being militarily suppressed, and the country has a former ISIS/al-Qaeda leader as its president, with areas under Israeli and Turkish occupation. As with Iraq, the historic presence of Christians has now ended.