The death toll at Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab has risen to 85.We need to say that again, slowly, because the number keeps climbing and the world keeps moving and we refuse to let that happen without stopping and making you feel the weight of it. Eighty-five people. Almost all of them young girls, between the ages of seven and twelve, according to Iranian state media, sitting in their classrooms on a Saturday morning — Saturday is the first day of the school week in Iran — when the bombs fell. Sixty-three more were injured. Workers are still clearing the rubble. The school had a name. Shajareh Tayyebeh. The girls had names. We don’t have all of them yet. We will not stop asking.

Let’s get something straight before we go any further. Donald Trump — the man who ran on ending wars, who called every previous military adventure “stupid” and “endless,” who accepted a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for conflicts he claimed to have ended, who built an entire political identity out of being the guy who doesn’t start fights — just launched “major combat operations” in Iran. He called it Operation Epic Fury. Naming their war mongering operations is the deepest thought they put into anything. He announced it on Truth Social. He told the Iranian people to “take over your government” and then immediately resumed bombing them. He told Iranian soldiers to surrender or face “certain death.” During Ramadan.