COLUMN: A Bridge Collapses Near Tehran — and Trump Promises This Is Just the Beginning

Iranian Diplomacy Faces a Wall of Indifference

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the strike as a “direct attack on civilian infrastructure.” The wording is precise. It is legal. It refers directly to the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I of 1977, which explicitly prohibits attacks on property essential to the survival of the civilian population.

And yet, this statement was treated as mere diplomatic background noise—just another protest in a world saturated with protests. No emergency resolution in the Security Council. No ambassadors summoned in Western capitals. No unanimous condemnation.

When a civilian bridge collapses under American bombs and silence is the prevailing response, that is not diplomacy—it is complicity by omission.

The precedent no one wants to see

If Russia had bombed a newly inaugurated civilian bridge in Georgia or Moldova, and Vladimir Putin had released videos of the destruction while promising to target power plants next, the international reaction would have been cataclysmic. Immediate sanctions. A cascade of resolutions. Nonstop media coverage for weeks on end.

But when it’s Washington doing the destroying, the vocabulary changes. “Strike” instead of “bombing.” “Target” instead of “victim.” “Collateral damage” instead of “civilians killed.” Words are the first battlefield, and in that war, the United States wins even before the first bomb falls.

A Vital Corridor Cut Off

The Tehran-Karaj corridor is not a secondary road. It is the main artery connecting the Iranian capital to its largest satellite city. Millions of trips are made daily—freight trucks, ambulances, school buses, and workers commuting back and forth every day. Iranian officials estimate that the damage could disrupt traffic for months.

Months. Not days. Not weeks. Months of gridlock on one of the country’s busiest routes. That means months of delays for medical supplies. Months of detours for ambulances. Months of congestion on already overloaded alternative routes.

The Strategy of Strangulation

There is a word to describe what an army does when it systematically destroys a country’s bridges, roads, and power plants: a siege. Not a medieval siege with catapults and moats, but a modern siege, waged from aircraft carriers and stealth bombers, designed to slowly strangle a population without ever putting a single soldier on the ground.

And yet, no one uses that word. Siege. Because that word forces us to face what is really happening: a deliberate campaign to render a country uninhabitable.

A destroyed bridge is not collateral damage. It is an amputation. And when they promise to cut off the power plants next, it is no longer war—it is surgery of mass destruction.

Hospitals Already on Their Knees

Even before this strike, Iran’s healthcare system was already operating in survival mode. Years of U.S. sanctions have dried up imports of medicines and medical equipment. Iranian doctors are working with aging equipment, medicine supplies that are counted on a day-to-day basis, and a hospital infrastructure that hasn’t been modernized in decades.

The sudden influx of casualties following the strike on the B1 Bridge pushed the system beyond its limits. Emergency rooms in Tehran and Karaj were overwhelmed. The wounded waited for hours before receiving treatment. Surgeons were forced to make triage decisions that no one should ever have to make in peacetime.

The Double Burden of Sanctions and Bombs

This is the most invisible cruelty of this war. U.S. sanctions weaken the healthcare system. Then U.S. bombs create a massive influx of patients. The same country that has rendered Iranian hospitals unable to function normally is the one now sending them hundreds of additional wounded.

And yet, in Washington’s official rhetoric, sanctions and airstrikes are presented as two separate tools, unrelated to one another. This is false. They are the two jaws of the same vise, and it is the Iranian civilian population that is being crushed between them.

The Language of Unabashed Terror

“Open the strait, or you will live in Hell.” These are not the words of an isolated autocrat. These are not the words of a militia leader. These are the words of the President of the United States of America, spoken a few days after the destruction of Bridge B1, in reference to the Strait of Hormuz.

We must pause to consider this word: Hell. With a capital H. Not a vague metaphor. Not a rhetorical exaggeration. An explicit promise of total suffering for a population of 88 million people if their government does not submit to American demands.

The last Western leader to have publicly promised hell to an entire country was speaking from a bunker in Berlin in 1945. The comparison is excessive, to be sure. But the vocabulary itself is identical.

The Normalization of the Unacceptable

What is most striking is not the harshness of Trump’s words. It is the total lack of outrage they provoke. No fiery editorials in major Western newspapers. No resignations of principle at the State Department. No calls for restraint from European allies—at least nothing beyond the usual diplomatic murmurs.

We live in a world where a president can announce on social media that he is going to destroy the power plants of a country with a population of 88 million, and where that announcement is treated as just another tweet in the news feed. The trivialization is complete.

What the Texts Say—and What No One Enforces

Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacking, destroying, or rendering inoperable property essential to the survival of the civilian population. Major road bridges, power plants, water systems—everything Trump threatens to destroy—fall into this category.

Article 51 prohibits indiscriminate attacks and those that can be foreseen to cause excessive civilian damage in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected. A civilian bridge with no military presence, in a residential neighborhood, connecting a suburb to its capital—what concrete military advantage justifies its destruction?

The Court That Does Not Exist

And yet, no one will bring this case before the International Criminal Court. Not because the facts are ambiguous. Not because the law is unclear. But because the United States does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and even adopted, in 2002, the American Service-Members’ Protection Act—nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act”—which authorizes the president to use force to free any U.S. citizen detained by the Court.

The message is crystal clear: international law applies to others. The powers that violate it place themselves above it. And as long as this architecture of impunity persists, bridges will continue to collapse and power plants will continue to be threatened—without any court ever having the final say.

International law is not dead. It is more precise than ever. It is the political will to enforce it that has given out.

Oil as a Driver of Destruction

Behind the rhetoric about national security and the Iranian nuclear threat lies a reality that everyone knows but no one clearly articulates: the Strait of Hormuz. This 33-kilometer-wide maritime corridor through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil passes. Every day, supertankers carrying millions of barrels pass under the watchful eye of the Iranian navy.

Trump said it himself: “Open the Strait.” Not “dismantle your nuclear program.” Not “stop supporting Hezbollah.” Open the Strait. The demand is commercial. The tool is military. And the victims are civilians.

The Strategic Trap of Escalation

Iran controls the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz. Its anti-ship missile batteries, sea mines, fast attack craft, and naval drones can, in theory, close this passage within a few hours. This is Iran’s trump card—the ability to paralyze the global economy in retaliation for any aggression.

And yet, this card is also a trap. If Iran closes the strait, oil prices skyrocket, the global economy falters, and Washington gains the perfect casus belli for a full-scale escalation. If Iran does not close the strait, it absorbs the strikes without a significant response and loses all credibility as a deterrent.

This is the logic of asymmetric escalation: every option is a dead end, and every dead end brings the world a little closer to the brink of the abyss.

The Houthis Enter the Picture

The war in Iran is not confined to Iran. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, at the other end of the Arabian Peninsula, has become a new flashpoint. Yemen’s Houthis, allies of Tehran, have the capacity to disrupt maritime traffic in this strategic passage through which a significant portion of global trade between Asia and Europe passes.

What Trump presents as a localized operation against Iran is in reality a regional conflagration that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East. Every strike on Iranian territory strengthens the resolve of Tehran’s proxies. Every U.S. escalation triggers a counter-escalation in a different theater of operations.

Europe and Africa Held Hostage

If both straits—the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—were to simultaneously become zones of active combat, the consequences for the global economy would be of unprecedented severity. Supply chains, already weakened by years of disruptions, would not survive a double closure. Energy prices in Europe and Africa would skyrocket. The most vulnerable countries on the African continent—those that import 100% of their oil—would be the first to suffer.

A destroyed bridge in Karaj. Threats against Iranian power plants. Tensions in Bab el-Mandeb. And at the end of this chain of events, a family in Dakar or Kinshasa that can no longer afford a liter of gasoline. That is what “localized war” means in 2026.

Europe whispers when it should be shouting

Where is the European Union? Where is the voice that, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, found the courage to impose sanctions, provide arms, and condemn the aggression? Faced with the United States’ destruction of Iranian civilian infrastructure, that same voice is reduced to calls for restraint—a diplomatic phrase that means nothing and costs nothing to the one who utters it.

The reason is simple and ugly: Europe depends on the United States for its own security, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine. To criticize Washington over Iran is to risk losing the American security umbrella in Europe. So we whisper. We “call for de-escalation.” And we watch the bridges come crashing down.

China and Russia are calculating

Beijing and Moscow are watching with a mix of concern and opportunism. China, the leading importer of Iranian oil, has every interest in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open—but it also has an interest in seeing the United States bogged down in a new conflict in the Middle East, far from the Pacific. Russia, for its part, benefits from every spike in oil prices caused by regional instability.

Neither will intervene to protect Iran. But both will profit from the chaos. This is the geopolitics of 2026: a global architecture where no one protects anyone, where everyone calculates, and where the civilians of Karaj pay the price for those calculations.

Baghdad 2003, Tehran 2026 — the same methods

In 1991, during the first Gulf War, U.S. forces systematically destroyed Iraq’s bridges, power plants, and water treatment facilities. The result: a humanitarian crisis that killed tens of thousands of civilians, mainly children, in the months and years that followed. In 2003, the “Shock and Awe” strategy followed the same pattern with the same consequences.

And yet, Trump is now announcing exactly the same sequence for Iran—bridges, then power plants—as if the two wars in Iraq had never happened. As if the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths had left no trace in the American collective memory.

Amnesia as a Weapon

Amnesia is no accident. It is strategic. If the American public remembered what the destruction of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure produced—epidemics, famine, the collapse of the social fabric, the rise of the Islamic State—it would be much harder to sell the same strategy for Iran. So we forget. We start from scratch. And we do it all over again.

Iraq taught us that destroying a country’s infrastructure does not subdue its people—it radicalizes them. Twenty-three years later, we are following the same path, toward the same destination, with the same blind certainty that “this time will be different.”

Anonymity as the Ultimate Form of Violence

Eight people died in the strike on Bridge B1. Eight. We don’t know their names. We don’t know their ages. We don’t know if among them was a father returning from work, a college student on her way to class, or a taxi driver making his last run of the day.

We don’t know because no one asked. In international media coverage, these eight deaths are just a number. A statistic in a paragraph. Given less space than Trump’s tweets. Given less attention than fluctuations in the price of oil.

The Slovic Effect in Real Time

Psychologist Paul Slovic has shown that our empathy diminishes as the number of victims increases. One identified victim evokes more emotion than a thousand anonymous victims. This is what he calls “psychic numbing”—the psychological numbness we experience when faced with numbers.

Eight dead in Karaj. How many will die if the power plants are struck? How many if the water system collapses? How many if hospitals lose their power in the middle of summer, when temperatures in Tehran exceed 40 degrees? The numbers become abstract. The suffering, however, remains terribly real for every person experiencing it.

Somewhere in Karaj, a family is preparing for a funeral. Somewhere in Washington, a president is planning the next strike. Both events are taking place at the same time, in the same world, and have no chance of ever intersecting.

Iran’s arsenal is not merely symbolic

Iran is not the Iraq of 2003. It is not a country weakened by a decade of sanctions and no-fly zones, whose military would collapse in three weeks. Iran possesses the largest arsenal of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. Its Fattah hypersonic missiles, its Shahed drones, and its strategic reach in the region through Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis—all of this constitutes a retaliatory capability that Washington cannot ignore.

And yet, in American public discourse, Iran is portrayed as a passive adversary that will take the blows without responding. This is the same analytical error that led to the underestimation of Iraqi resistance, Afghan resilience, and Vietnamese determination. American military hubris has no memory.

Regional Allies in the Line of Fire

If Iran strikes back, it will not necessarily be against U.S. territory. It will be against U.S. bases in Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. It will be against Saudi oil facilities. It will be against Israel, via Hezbollah and Iraqi militias. It will be against maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

Every U.S. ally in the region is a potential hostage to this escalation. And none of them were consulted before Trump posted his threats on Truth Social. War is being decided by one man, on a social media platform, without debate in Congress, without consulting allies, and without an exit strategy.

The Mirror We Refuse to Look Into

This war is not just a war against Iran. It is a test of civilization. A test that poses a simple question: Do we accept that a democracy can destroy a country’s civilian infrastructure and publicly declare that it will continue to do so?

If the answer is yes—if we accept this through our silence, our indifference, our passive consumption of images of collapsed bridges between two TikTok videos—then we have renounced everything we claim to defend. The rules-based order to which the West claims to adhere is nothing more than an empty slogan, a privilege we grant ourselves but deny to others.

Compassion Fatigue as an Excuse

We’ll be told that the public is tired. Tired of Ukraine. Tired of Gaza. Tired of Iran. That empathy has its limits. That human attention isn’t infinitely expandable. That’s true. But this fatigue isn’t natural—it’s manufactured. Manufactured by a flood of information that drowns each tragedy in the next. Manufactured by algorithms that optimize engagement, not understanding. Manufactured by leaders who rely on our exhaustion to act with impunity.

Compassion fatigue is not an excuse. It is the result of a system designed to wear us down. And as long as we accept this fatigue as inevitable, bridges will continue to collapse.

What Remains When the Dust Settles

The B1 Bridge will be rebuilt. Maybe in six months. Maybe in a year. Iranian engineers will clear away the rubble, pour new concrete, and install new steel beams. Traffic will resume on the Tehran-Karaj route. Normalcy will return—or something resembling it.

But the eight who died will not return. The injured who will be disabled for life will not recover. The children who watched the bridge collapse from their windows will not sleep peacefully for years to come. And Trump’s promise—“more will follow”—hangs over 88 million Iranians like a permanent sword of Damocles.

The only question that matters

It is not: Does Iran deserve these strikes? It is not: Is the Iranian regime justifiable? It is not: Does Trump have the right to protect American interests?

The only question that matters is this: What kind of world do we want to live in? A world where a president can publicly announce the destruction of the vital infrastructure of a country with 88 million people—and where no one says no? Or a world where international law, imperfect and often flouted, nevertheless remains the last bulwark between civilization and barbarism?

The B1 bridge has fallen. The question is how many more will have to fall before this bulwark, too, gives way.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost