The world is playing its favorite game again. It's the child's game of "Pretend," played on a planet-wide scale, with participants gleefully taking part despite knowing that nothing they're saying is true.
The game is simple. No one is a bad actor in the world except the United States and Israel. So when either the U.S. or Israel (or both) carry out attacks on legitimate military targets and civilians are killed, they are accused of horrific "war crimes." The civilian deaths were deliberate and calculated, and wasn't that a Snidely Whiplash-like cackle we heard from Washington after the strike?
It's a game of "Pretend," remember?
On Tuesday, the United States targeted a wedding, according to the Iranians. The Iranian Health Minister (a paragon of truth, fer sure) claims that "18 people were killed and 108 wounded in Tuesday night’s U.S. strikes across Iran," according to a Reuters report. The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS), another "credible" source, says that "four people were killed and 67 wounded at a wedding ceremony near the coast of the Strait of Hormuz," Reuters says.
As an aside, the IRCS is not a neutral observer. Declassified U.S. intelligence reports and diplomatic leaks have repeatedly alleged that elements within the Iranian government, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have historically leveraged IRCS infrastructure, vehicles, or personnel overseas to covertly transport weapons or personnel into conflict zones like Lebanon and Iraq. The IRCS leadership is also appointed by the president of Iran.
But this is "Pretend," so both the Iranian health minister and the IRCS are absolutely reliable, stone-cold truth-tellers who would turn to stone if they told a lie.
A U.S. Central Command Spokesman, knowing he was fighting an uphill battle in trying to stop the "Pretend" game from escalating, issued a simple statement:
“We are aware of reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” U.S. Navy Captain Tim Hawkins said in an email.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply alarmed by reports of civilian casualties, including a strike that reportedly hit a wedding ceremony in Iran,” according to a statement.
Iran called the "attack" on the "wedding" a war crime. Iran’s ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Gholamhossein Darzi, "strongly condemned" the attack in a letter to the UN Security Council.
I wish to bring to your urgent attention yet another appalling and egregious crime committed by the United States in the course of its unlawful aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in flagrant violation of international law and, in particular, Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations. On the evening of 1 September 2026, the United States launched a further wave of military attacks against several cities in southern Iran, including deliberate attacks that struck civilians and civilian objects. In these criminal attacks, the United States struck a residential house in the city of Kuhestak in Sirik, Hormozgan Province, while a wedding ceremony was being held there. As a result of this heinous attack, four civilians, including a four-year-old child, were killed and more than 70 civilians were injured.
For 50 years, when Iranian retaliatory strikes or attacks by state-backed regional proxy groups cause unintended civilian deaths or impact neighboring countries, top officials, including Iran's Foreign Ministry, have publicly framed these incidents as unavoidable "collateral damage" resulting from strikes aimed at U.S. or allied military targets.
"For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — has killed and maimed American citizens and service members through its own forces and proxy militias. More Americans have been killed by Iran than any other terrorist regime on Earth," says a State Department statement earlier this year.
I am sick to death of Iran's caterwauling about their civilian casualties while they and their proxies have systematically targeted civilians as a psychological weapon to damage the morale of the enemy for almost 50 years. It is cruel, unjust, illegal, and inhuman.
According to the independent Iranian human rights group Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), more than 3,600 Iranian civilians have been killed in the war.
Considering the hundreds of thousands of tons of ordnance that have been dropped on Iran since the beginning of the war, a pie-eyed prostitute could have killed more civilians if we were really targeting them.
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Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are once again respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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