TEHRAN- In global military terminology, there is a phrase called “shell shock”—a trauma not just caused by the physical impact of a bullet, but by the sound of gunfire and the terror before the strike. It’s a shock that targets the brain before the body, scrapes the ears from the inside, and its echo doesn’t fade for years. In Iran, we refer to victims of this trauma as “wave-affected”—people who were never physically struck by bullets but whose mental peace was shattered by the blast wave. Like the 45,000 veterans of the Iran-Iraq war who, without visible wounds, became silent casualties of war’s most elusive virus. Read more