April 7, 2026

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The Human Dimension of the Iran War: The Intolerable Plight of Civilians

(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The daily coverage of the war in Iran, now in its sixth week, has at times been reduced to an unjustly sterilized portrayal of the regional crisis, characterized by tallies of drone interceptions, strikes, down-trending stock tickers, and diplomatic maneuvering, while erasing any sense of the immense humanitarian catastrophe that continues to unfold. Across the conflict zones, thousands of civilians have been killed, millions have been displaced, critical infrastructure has been leveled, and pollutants have been unleashed onto densely populated cities.

While immediate loss of life and destruction of infrastructure are often consequences of war, in the longer term, this human toll will also consist of cascading impacts that affect health, education, and economic participation. War has long been understood as ‘development in reverse,’ with empirical evidence demonstrating that conflict shatters health outcomes, longevity, and the environment in the longer term. Given the scale of the conflict — which has shown no signs of abating as all fronts are active — the world will have to reckon with these catastrophic consequences long after the fighting stops.

Piecing together the total number of civilian casualties in the Iran War so far is no easy feat. Fragmented data, political considerations, and obstacles to obtaining data from remote areas have so far obscured a full view of the war’s lethality. However, at least thousands of civilians appear to have been killed across the region in this conflict. The U.S.-based Iranian Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) assesses that more than 1,600 civilians in Iran have been killed since Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion (the name for Israel’s military mission) were unleashed on February 28. The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health has reported that at least 1,422 people have been killed since March 2, including 125 children, in the country. Reuters has reported that roughly a hundred people have also been killed in Iraq, a mix of civilians and combatants, according to Iraqi health authorities, while Israel’s ambulance service states that 23 Israeli civilians have also been killed. Times of Israel estimates that more than 5,000 Israelis are injured, though the exact number remains unclear.

Millions of people have been displaced from their homes, fleeing desperately in a bid to survive the war. After Israel invaded southern Lebanon in response to Hezbollah joining the war, over one million Lebanese civilians have fled their homes and roam their country as Internally Displaced People (IDPs), according to the UN. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has since announced plans to establish the territory up until the Litani River as a permanent security buffer zone, leaving the future of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) — specifically surrounding their return to their homes — uncertain. At this moment, forced displacement orders by Israel in Lebanon cover nearly 15 percent of Lebanon’s territory.

In Iran, the number of IDPs is close to 3.2 million according to the UN Refugee Agency. Many Iranians have sought to flee major urban centers and find shelter in the rural areas of the country for safety. While some Iranians have been able to escape through Türkiye, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, border controls appear to be tightening. Türkiye, which has already seen over 68,000 Iranians arrive in recent weeks, is expecting an additional influx of refugees and is currently developing holding zones. Afghanistan has seen roughly 30,000 people cross the border from Iran in recent weeks, many refugees who are now returning home, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

These displacements, a sign of millions of upended lives, also risk further aggravating conflict as it spills across borders and destabilizes entire regions. In the past, massive migration waves and IDP movement have stretched resources thin in host communities, creating conflict between locals and those displaced. Additional sectarian or political tensions can spawn from such dynamics. Displaced Shiite Lebanese have, according to some reporting, been accused of harboring sympathy for Hezbollah or being Hezbollah members by some local communities.

All warring parties — Iran, Israel, and the U.S. — have targeted civilian infrastructure in strikes. Schools, hospitals, oil depots, hotels, and airports have regularly been struck. The strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, has come to epitomize how civilian infrastructure has been deemed collateral damage or intelligence errors in this war. However, the destruction of civilian infrastructure has not just been a byproduct of strikes on legitimate targets of military import. Instead, all parties to the conflict have come to use civilian infrastructure, including economic assets, as leverage to impose conditions that make continuing the war increasingly intolerable. In this strategy, civilians suffer foremost.

Iranian strikes on desalination plants in the Gulf, for example, seek to directly put pressure on civilians by targeting water supplies in a region where most countries depend on these facilities for about 90 percent of their potable water. It also signals to Gulf countries that escalation with Iran would prove existential. Similarly, strikes on Iran’s economic arteries, including steel plants and transportation routes, by Israel and the U.S. have likely sought to make civilian life even harder and prompt anti-regime mobilization. In a similar fashion, Israel’s strikes near tents of displaced people and on residential areas in Beirut, which may amount to war crimes according to Human Rights Watch, likely do not just serve to root out Hezbollah operatives but to compel the Lebanese government to take a more robust approach in disarming the group.

The environmental catastrophe unleashed by this war is further compounding civilian suffering. The deliberate strikes on oil facilities in Tehran have proven especially disastrous. In a city of nine million people surrounded by mountains that serve as a natural trap for pollutants, the effects are concentrated and long-lasting. For instance, after Israel and the U.S. struck oil depots on the outskirts of Tehran, a thick black rain of oil and precipitation fell on the city, which led to thousands of people experiencing breathing issues as well as skin and eye irritation. Pollutants from large-scale fires similarly have led to a range of human health issues. According to the UN Environmental Programme, pollution from fires can enter soil and water and be absorbed by crops, contaminating food supplies.

The cumulative cost of this war is staggering, yet it likely represents only a fraction of its true long-term impact. As researchers from the Peace Research Institute Oslo have found in their study of the impact of armed conflict on meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, “[w]hile the direct consequences of conflict are bad, the indirect consequences are much worse.” For example, a medium-sized conflict with 2,500 battle deaths is estimated to reduce life expectancy of those within conflict zones by about one year and increase infant mortality by 10 percent.

The current humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Middle East comes as aid budgets are reaching record lows. The United Nations reduced its 2026 fundraising target by half, facing drastic cuts by the United States and European governments. Last year, the Trump administration moved to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), formerly the largest foreign aid agency.