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Thousands of people died in the bombings in the Middle East.
Image: Keystone/AP/Vahid Salemi
After three and a half months of war, a peace agreement was signed. But the humanitarian consequences of the conflict are enormous: several thousand people lost their lives. Why the exact casualty figures are disputed and which estimates are considered credible.
It took about three and a half months from the first attack by the U.S. and Israel on Iran on February 28 until the signing of the framework agreement between Washington and Tehran, which is intended to end the war.
The attack on Iran sparked a conflagration across the region. In response to the bombardment, Iran struck back in the Gulf region. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait were affected. Following rocket attacks by Hezbollah, Israel also launched another attack on Lebanon.
But how many lives has this war claimed? In the case of particularly horrific attacks, such as the U.S. bombing of a girls’ school in February, the casualty figures were widely reported in the media. At least 165 people were killed in that attack, almost all of them children.
The exact death toll from this war, however, is rarely reported—at least in German-speaking countries. “One important reason for this is certainly that the Middle East is so far away from Europe,” says Cyrus Schayegh, professor of international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Developmental Studies in Geneva. The Middle East is his primary area of research.
He also points to differing perceptions of conflicts: While Ukraine, for example, is often viewed in Europe as an ally and a victim, this is far less true for Iran or Lebanon. Consequently, the death tolls there receive less attention.
“The war affects us here politically and economically, but less so from a humanitarian perspective. The farther away a conflict is—both geographically and mentally—the more drastic it must be for people to take an interest in the exact casualty figures.”
As an example of such a drastic case, he cites the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel, where casualty figures were regularly updated and reported even in Europe.
The duration of a conflict also plays a role: the longer a war lasts, the less people who are not directly affected care about the number of casualties. “In February and March, when the war in the Middle East began, the death tolls were updated even more regularly,” says Schayegh.
The situation is different in media outlets in the war zone. For example, the English-language edition of the Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera has been maintaining a casualty tracker since the start of the Iran war. It was last updated on June 10 and records the following figures:
According to this compilation, the war in the Middle East claimed a total of 7,377 lives. Al Jazeera cites the Iranian Ministry of Health, among others, as a source.
However, the casualty figures in Iran, in particular, are controversial. Different sources arrive at different results. It is therefore difficult to assess which figures can be trusted, says historian and Middle East expert Cyrus Schayegh.
For comparison, he points to the casualty figures from the U.S., which he considers more credible. “There are relatively few U.S. fatalities. It would be difficult for the U.S. to conceal individual casualties,” he says.
In his view, however, the U.S. has tried to downplay the damage to its own military facilities. “Iran didn’t achieve massive successes, but it had a better strategy and was more successful than the U.S. has acknowledged,” says Schayegh. “This shows that there is a political and military interest in obscuring certain aspects of this war.”
The casualty figures are also being distorted by the warring parties to serve their own purposes. For example, as early as March, the Israeli military announced that it had killed over 6,000 Iranians —all of whom, according to the military, were members of the Revolutionary Guard
The Iranian government, on the other hand, reports 3,468 deaths, while the U.S.-based Iranian human rights organization Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) estimates the death toll at around 3,636. At the moment, no one seems to have a complete picture of the number of people killed and wounded.
“We don’t know exactly how many Iranians were killed,” says Schayegh. “But all sources agree: there are thousands. It’s not a case of one source saying 20 and another saying 2,000.” According to HRANA, at least half of those killed are civilians.
