As the world waits for rational outcomes from irrational players, the people being bombed will adjust to the fact that terror is now part of daily life“Humans take a lot of killing,” wrote Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes. As bleak a phrase as it is, McCourt was talking about resilience, how mu ch poverty and abuse a person can withstand and still survive. But the other side of human capacity for pain is how much can be forced upon us and normalised. It is bewildering how war – shocking and intolerable at first – quickly becomes a matter of fact. Few conflicts have demonstrated that more vividly than the war on Iran. Now a matter of low-grade strikes, hot and cold rhetoric, and near conclusions to the hostilities that never come. Meanwhile, sharp crisis turns into grinding hardship and upheaval.Over the past week alone, Donald Trump has announced strikes on Iran, and his desire to take Kharg Island, which handles 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. He then declared that the US had ended the war on Iran in a “great settlement”. The markets did their customary flicker in response to the announcement of a deal, but the rest of us, not invested in oil futures, would be forgiven for not registering a reaction to imminent peace – he has made the same promise almost 40 times. In press conferences, social media posts and interviews over the past few months, Trump has said relax, it’s almost over. Just how not over it was can be traced by the strikes and counter-strikes across the region, the closure of the strait of Hormuz, general global economic upheaval, and specific Middle East destabilisation. Continue reading... ...read more read less