New Delhi, July 3 -- Fatemeh Mohajerani, the Iranian government spokeswoman, told Russia's RIA Novosti in mid-April what everyone at the negotiating table already knew but no one had put on record: the bill was $270 billion. Oil storage depots in Tehran and the province of Alborz, bombed in March. The Tehran refinery in the south of the capital. The Shahran fuel depot. Sixty civilian aircraft, twenty of them completely destroyed. Steel plants, aluminum factories, bridges, railway networks, power stations, water desalination facilities, hospitals, schools, research centers. The war lasted four months. The accounting is going to last much longer.

a $300 billion "international investment fund." Not reparations. Not compensation. An investme...