On July 2, 2026, an Iranian propaganda account on X calling itself “Persian Girl” claimed that Iran has never struck a civilian target, not even by accident, while Israel and the United States — despite possessing the world’s most precise weapons — supposedly attack civilians as a matter of course.

Iran’s Record Says Otherwise

Iran has hit civilian infrastructure in Israel repeatedly — schools, hospitals, homes, houses of worship. That damage comes from deliberate indiscriminate barrages.

In October 2024, Iran launched roughly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in a single barrage, and the impacts landed all over populated areas. A missile struck a school in Gedera, leaving a crater near classrooms that had been full of children only hours earlier. Around 100 homes were damaged in Hod HaSharon. A restaurant in the Tel Aviv area took a hit. A Palestinian was killed by falling debris. 

In 2025 and 2026, Iranian missiles struck Soroka Medical Center, a major hospital in Beersheba, injuring approximately 80 people. Other strikes hit civilian residences in Bat Yam, Tamra, and Petah Tikva. In Beit Shemesh, a missile hit a synagogue and a shelter, killing nine civilians who had gone there seeking safety. Human Rights Watch reviewed strikes that landed 1.5 to 9 kilometers from the nearest military site and concluded they likely constituted war crimes because of their indiscriminate effects on civilian areas.

The underlying problem is technical as much as it is intentional: Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal — from older models like the Emad and Ghadr to newer variants — lacks the accuracy for surgical strikes. Tehran exacerbates this with volume, firing barrages that saturate broad areas, sometimes with cluster munitions in populated zones, a weapon type banned in much of the world precisely because of how indiscriminately it kills. Israeli interception rates ran as high as 80-90% in some of these barrages, but the missiles that got through still landed on civilians.

Iran’s approach to this war is to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible.

Why Israel and the U.S. Are Not the Same Story

Having precision weapons doesn’t erase the fog of war, and it doesn’t guarantee zero civilian harm. 

Israel and the United States operate with guided munitions, real-time intelligence, and procedures built to reduce civilian casualties. 

Israel conducts roof-knocking warnings, advance phone calls, leaflet drops, and proportionality reviews required under international humanitarian law. Civilians still die in these operations, particularly in dense urban combat. But the pattern reflects an effort to limit harm, not a policy of targeting civilians.

Gaza is the clearest example of why context matters. Hospitals and schools have absolutely been damaged or struck in this conflict. But Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have systematically embedded military infrastructure — tunnels, command centers, rocket launchers, weapons caches — in, under, and beside those same buildings. 

Under international humanitarian law, a protected site loses protection when it’s used for military purposes and the defending party fails to separate military functions from civilians. That’s on Hamas, not Israel.

Israel targets specific military objectives — commanders, launch sites, weapons infrastructure. When collateral damage results, it reflects Hamas’s deliberate strategy of operating from among civilians, not an Israeli intent to destroy civilian life. 

Independent reviews of specific strikes have repeatedly found misreported locations or confirmed military use at the site in question. The narrative of “systematic” civilian targeting by Israel conveniently ignores the party that put the civilians in the blast radius in the first place.

The same logic applies to the U.S. and Israeli campaign against Iran. Strikes on Iranian military, nuclear, and missile-production sites have caused collateral damage, as any air campaign does. But Iran’s missiles are area-effect weapons fired from a distance with intent to kill civilians. Western forces bring vastly superior guidance systems, intelligence and surveillance capability, and rules of engagement designed to minimize civilian harm. 

When American forces make mistakes, it triggers investigations and accountability. For Iran, hitting civilian infrastructure isn’t a mistake that gets investigated. It’s the goal.

Furthermore, Iran-backed proxies target civilians on purpose. Hamas’s October 7 massacre was a deliberate attack on Israeli families, festival-goers, and children, not a strike on a military target that went wrong. Hezbollah rockets and Houthi missiles fired at Israeli cities follow the same logic: hit population centers, call it resistance. Iran arms, funds, and directs all three. 

The Asymmetries the Propaganda Ignores

Four things separate these situations, and none of them are minor:

Intent and doctrine. Israel and the U.S. investigate civilian harm, issue warnings before strikes, and aim at military targets. Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah — openly glorify indiscriminate rocket and missile fire at cities as an act of “resistance,” and they embed among civilians deliberately, knowing it generates propaganda value regardless of the outcome.

Capability. Advanced Western weapons systems and training produce lower civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in comparable fights — not zero, but meaningfully lower. Ballistic missile barrages are, by their nature, a far riskier way to wage war.

Urban density and enemy tactics. Fighting in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran all involve adversaries who hide among civilian populations. No military on earth achieves zero collateral damage against an enemy using that strategy.

Reciprocity. Iran-backed groups initiated much of this escalation — October 7 and the rocket barrages that followed it chief among them. Israel’s operations have been responses to that aggression, not the opening act.

The Bottom Line

This is a textbook false equivalence: Iran’s “we never hit anyone” myth set against selective outrage at Israel’s defensive operations. Civilian deaths are always a tragedy, on every side of this conflict. But pinning them solely on “Israeli and American barbarism” while excusing Iran’s indiscriminate missile barrages and its proxies’ human-shield tactics is shameless propaganda.

Sources

X, Grokipedia, i24 News, Grokipedia, Washington Post, HRW, West Point, CSIS, Jerusalem Post