A Comparison of Iran and the US
Let's get to know who we're dropping billions of dollars of bombs on
The US is waging yet another relentless campaign of “bringing Freedom and Democracy” by dropping 2000 pound bombs on a distant land that most Americans know nothing about and couldn’t find on a map. The salivating politicians and the lapdog media has convinced us that this is necessary and these backward savages need to be destroyed for the good of humanity. However, no matter how far away from America’s shores they are, no matter what their skin color or religion is, these are human being…. people just like us. They have families and traditions and dreams and jobs and their kids play sports on weekends and go to school just like yours do.
There’s so much to teach you about Iran, a country steeped in history and culture and art which is has been around for 25 times as long as the US. Let’s start by learning a little bit about it’s cities and comparing them to cities you do know something about.
This is the map of a mirror world. To understand the geography of this war is to realize that we aren’t striking a distant, empty territory—we are engaging a landmass containing over 93 million people more similar to us than you know.
The Sister Cities of the Crosshairs
If you live in Houston, Chicago, or Philadelphia, you aren’t just looking at coordinates on a screen. You are looking at your own reflection in a glass that is currently being shattered.
Tehran is New York City
Imagine the density of Manhattan and the boroughs—9 million souls—now tucked into a mountain basin like Denver. Every night, in neighborhoods as crowded as Brooklyn, mothers are covering their children’s ears to drown out the “thud” of million-dollar explosions. Tehran is a city of high-rises and 6,000-year-old history. When a “strategic center” is hit, it vibrates through the Golestan Palace, where kings once walked, and through the Tajrish Square markets where families buy fresh saffron. To strike Tehran is to strike a city that shares the vertical dreams and gridlocked energy of the Big Apple.
Mashhad is Chicago
Meet your sister in the East. Mashhad is a city of “big shoulders” and even bigger hearts. With 3.5 million people, it is a bustling, snowy metropolis that feels like the center of the world. Just as Chicagoans are defined by their grit, the people of Mashhad are defined by their resilience and their sprawling city center that never sleeps. It is a city of sanctuary, where millions gather under golden domes that stay lit 24 hours a day. When the sirens wail there, they wail over a population larger than the city of Chicago—people who wake up to the smell of fresh sangak bread, much like the smell of a Chicago bakery at dawn.
Isfahan is Houston
If you know the energy of Houston, you know the pulse of Isfahan. With 2.2 million people, it is almost exactly your size. But while Houston is built on the future, Isfahan is built on a “river of life.” Imagine the stone bridges of Isfahan—ancient, arched, and filled with the sound of teenagers singing traditional love songs—as the spiritual equivalent of the Houston Bayou. In the Isfahan Music Museum, masters play the kamancheh, the ancestor of the violin. To strike near Isfahan is to rattle the windows of a city where “hospitality” isn’t just a word; it’s a law where guests are called “a gift from God.”
Tabriz is Philadelphia
In the cold, snowy mountains of the northwest, the 1.7 million people of Tabriz are the keepers of history. Like Philly, this is a city of bricks and a fiercely independent spirit. It houses the largest covered bazaar in the world—a UNESCO site where the air smells of cumin and ancient dust. These are people who have survived earthquakes and invasions for centuries, remaining as stubborn and proud as a North Philly native. They live in a climate that looks like a Salt Lake City postcard, but with the intellectual soul of the Liberty Bell.
Bandar Abbas is Miami
Down on the Persian Gulf, the air is thick with the same salt and humidity you’ll find in Miami. The 700,000 people of Bandar Abbas are defined by the sea. Their culture is a colorful “Bandari” mix of Persian, Indian, and Arab influences. Here, the women wear intricate, colorful masks called boregheh, and the music is fast-paced and rhythmic, played on goatskin drums. They are the gateway to the sea, now watching that sea fill with the machinery of war instead of the shrimp boats that gave the city its original name.
The Arithmetic of an Empty Chair
We are told this is a “surgical” war, but there is no surgery that doesn’t bleed. Your tax dollars—roughly $2 million per Tomahawk missile—are purchasing the silence of a playground in a neighborhood that looks just like yours.
The Arithmetic of Loss: For the price of a single night’s bombing run over these “American-sized” cities, we could have rebuilt a failing bridge in Pennsylvania, cleared the medical debt of a county in Texas, or ensured no child in Illinois goes to bed hungry.
The Shared Landscape: The lush, rainy north of Iran is our Pacific Northwest. The high, arid plateaus of the center are our Arizona and New Mexico. The humid south is our Gulf Coast.
When we look at the smoke on the news, we aren’t looking at a different world. We are looking at what happens when we decide that the lives in a city the size of Chicago aren’t worth the same as the ones in our own backyard. We are spending our wealth to destroy theirs, forgetting that when you strike a mirror, the shards fly in both directions.
This is such a compelling and thoughtful piece—the way you connect those cities makes everything feel real and human instead of distant and abstract.
What a beautiful piece to make the human connection beyond the abstract names and labels … we are all humans and we are all connected more than we think !