While the White House has spent months repeating that Iran's military is "nearly destroyed," satellite images tell a different story. An analysis by the BBC's fact-checking service shows that since the start of the US-Israeli war, Iran has damaged 20 American military facilities across the Middle East - with damage far greater than Washington has admitted.

The numbers are the kind that don't fit the official statements. According to the analysis, since late February Tehran has struck key military facilities in eight countries - Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman. Among the damaged: three of the most advanced anti-missile battery systems and aerial refuelling aircraft. Some analysts estimate the number of hit bases runs as high as 28.

And here's the detail that says the most about the true scale: the high-altitude THAAD defence system costs around a billion dollars per battery, and the US operates only eight of them worldwide. Each interceptor it fires costs about 12.7 million dollars. A former commander said these networks are "very complex" and can't be "replaced quickly or easily." When something this expensive is damaged, that's no footnote.

Iran, for its part, used exactly the opposite logic - cheap, easily replaceable drones to strike expensive targets. According to the report, since February at least 42 aircraft have been damaged or destroyed, including F-15 and F-35 fighters, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and one A-10 attack plane. A classic asymmetry: one side spends billions, the other hundreds of thousands - and on a satellite image the result looks surprisingly similar.

There's also a move that deserves attention in its own right. According to the BBC, the US asked the company Planet to impose an "indefinite" restriction on new satellite images of Iran and much of the Middle East. The justification - to keep them from being used by "adversarial actors." But when one side restricts imaging of its very own damaged bases, the question asks itself: what exactly is in those images that they don't want seen?

For the Balkan reader, who learned to read between the lines of every military statement, this is a familiar lesson. The official narrative and the satellite image rarely tell the same story - and the truth is usually where someone is trying hardest to obscure it. The total bill for the American operation, according to the Pentagon, has already reached 29 billion dollars, much of it for repairs and replacement of destroyed equipment. A figure that speaks louder than any statement.