US–Israel have just attacked Esfahan and Khuzestan Mobarakeh Steel plants; the largest steel production plants in the entire West Asia and North Africa region.
Our infrastructure, industries, and systems are not just metal and cement. They are the means by which we produce, fe under sanctions, built over decades by a nation under constant pressure, constraint, and economic strangulation.
To destroy them is not only to wound the present; it is to reach forward and diminish the future. What is being dismantled is not only what exists, but what could exist: capacity, stability, and the possibility of growth.
I have no doubt in our nation’s ability to rebuild, to recover, and to emerge stronger than before. History has already proven that resilience.
But our resilience does not absolve the crime. The scale of destruction does not shrink simply because we will endure it. What has been done here is not diminished by our capacity to rise again—it is defined by the deliberate attempt to break what sustains life, industry, and possibility.
And that must be named for what it is: crimes against humanity.