Every morning, I see images that I have spent my 47 years of exile from Iran dreading; smoke rising above Tehran’s densely populated, tower-filled skyscape and explosions damaging important cultural sites like the UNESCO World Heritage Golestan Palace in Tehran and Chehel Sotoun in Esfahan.

A city of 10 million people, Tehran is a dense urban expanse packed with buildings and ringed by mountains where a growing population has steadily expanded onto the slopes. Despite the latest exodus, it is still crowded with millions who cannot, or will not, leave. At the time of writing, at least 1,300 people have been killed in Iran and 17,000 injured, according to Iranian officials.

But when I spoke on a popular BBC radio show last week, I was not allowed to talk about the reality of the war and instead was asked repeatedly about my feelings as a British Iranian. I felt seen, yes, but I also felt that the topic was being empathy-washed to focus on emotions over substance, garner listeners rather than understanding, and stop me or any of the other guests from talking about the factual reality of this illegal war and those waging it.

The English-language mainstream media continuously refers to the war as the “conflict in the Middle East,” as if the region just got up one morning and decided to set itself on fire. That is, as if there were no perpetrators, as if Israel didn’t start bombing Iran in the middle of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Similarly, the media has centered economics and the Global North and its citizens, with CNN for example, headlining, “Gas is just the start: What else the Iran war could soon cost you,” and the BBC, “Honeymooners’ relief to be home after Dubai hotel hit.” But the BBC did not cover the damage to Chehel Sotoun, and only briefly mentioned the damage to the Golestan Palace.

Reports came in of a school being bombed in Minab — a tiny town down near the Persian Gulf — and that at least 170 people, mostly school girls, were killed. And yet some diaspora Iranians still maintain that it was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that did it, that they killed every child and moved their bodies into place. Media outlets reported Wednesday that a preliminary U.S. military investigation determined that Washington was responsible for the school bombing.