Turn on any Iranian state channel right now and you'll see the same thing: missiles rising into the night, orange flames against black sky, the arc of trajectory frozen in night-vision green.

It's cinematic. It's dramatic. It's designed to make you feel something—pride, perhaps, or power, or inevitability.

What you won't see is what happened after those missiles landed.

You won't see the families in Haifa who spent the night in bomb shelters.

You won't see the damage assessments, the casualties, the aftermath.

You won't see the Israeli government calculating its response.

And you definitely won't see what's happening here, inside Iran, in the wake of this "defensive operation."

This morning, the dollar-to-rial exchange rate jumped again. Bread prices will follow—they always do. My friend who works at a pharmaceutical import company says shipments are already being delayed. "Sanctions," she texted me. "More sanctions coming."

The missiles flew for minutes. We'll live with the consequences for years.

There's a moment in the footage—I've seen it replayed a dozen times now—where the camera catches a missile just after launch, when it's still close to the ground. You can see the power of it, the raw force, the engineering that went into building something designed to travel hundreds of kilometers and explode on impact.

What you can't see in that footage is the hungry child whose family can't afford meat anymore because the government spent billions on this.

What you can't see is the university graduate who can't find work because the economy is in ruins.

What you can't see is the mother rationing her medication because imports have stopped.

State media wants us to watch missiles launching and feel strong.

I watch them and feel exhausted.

Because I know who pays for this spectacle. And it's never the people giving the orders to fire.