In decades of journalism, part of it as reporter covering a dozen or so wars in the Indian Subcontinent, Indochina, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, I have never been as puzzled by media coverage of a conflict as I am today with how the Iran-US-Israel war is depicted in much of the mainstream media.
The first curious feature of this war is the absence of clearly identifiable battlefronts.
This is partly because it is a war almost exclusively waged through the skies. Even the war in Ukraine has some battlefields on the ground. In Lebanon, which is an offshoot of the current war, the Israeli army and Hezbollah fighters seldom come face to face.
Then there is the bizarre situation in which we see Iran sending more missile and drones against its neighbors across the pond than against Israeli and American targets. For the past three weeks, Iran has made no attacks on Israel, focusing on targeting Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations. And that is not to mention Iran’s attacks on ringside spectators such as Jordan, Azerbaijan, Türkiye and even Cyprus.
Another peculiar feature of this war is the targeting of civilian and/or double-use infrastructure rather than purely military ones.
Iranian drones hit hotels in Dubai with the excuse that they may be hosting some US troops. The civilian terminal in Kuwait Airport was hit with the excuse that US military personnel on leave may pass through it.
Israel razes Beirut apartment blocks, housing hundreds of families, to the ground on suspicion that a single Hezbollah operative may be hiding there.
Then there is the fact that civilians account for the overwhelming majority of victims in Iran, Israel and the GCC countries.
Another interesting feature is the absence of non-partisan journalists covering this war.
In Iran, even local reporters are not allowed to report anything outside official handouts.
On the US side, President Donald Trump’s Social Truth account sets the agenda as a 24/7 news agency.
In Vietnam, there were times when the White House would hear the news of the war first from reporters on the ground.
In the two US wars against Iraq, lone-ranger reporters from more than 20 countries were present alongside dozens more embedded with US and British fighting units.
In Ukraine, both Kiev and Moscow arrange occasional tours for foreign reporters, at times allowing some leeway to depict a credible picture of the war.
But the most curious feature of this war rarely seen in most previous conflicts is its depiction by Mainstream Media (MSM) through a prism of ideological and/or partisan prejudices.
Because President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do not enjoy widespread popularity across the globe, MSM covers the war with a clear bias in favor of Iran.
The subtext is a desire to see Trump and Netanyahu humiliated and if possible chased out of office. The MSM doesn’t necessarily want Iran to emerge as winner but clearly hopes that Trump and Netanyahu get a bloody nose.
To achieve that goal, some depict Iran as an innocent though a bit naughty country given to boasting and bragging but certainly not deserving a thrashing.
Others depict Iran is a re-emerging “empire” to form a triangle with Russia and China as the other two angles of re-emerging empires to challenge the fading American empire.
Paris walls are plastered with posters shrieking “Trump, Netanyahu! Stop the War!” as if ran was not involved except as a victim.
Moreover, European and American MSM try to portray Iran in rosy shades that make many Iranians uneasy to say the least. We read that Iran is world number two in terms of people with the highest IQ.
I don’t know whether that is true or not. But I know that the top echelon of those ruling Iran since 1979 were certainly not luminaries. I also know no other country where the ruling elite is so different, in a negative way, than the mass of people it dominates.
In any case, a high IQ is no guarantee from having common sense, compassion, wisdom and humanity without which no city can be run in a decent manner. It is reported that Josef Mengele had one of the highest IQs in Hitler’s Reich.
The MSM beats the drums about Iran having more engineers per head of population than the US, Britain and France.
This may be true but no one asks why.
The reason is that in Iran many academic disciplines are in dicey positions. Few students are keen on going for humanities and/or literature where many philosophers, sociologists, writers and poets from more than 50 countries are blacklisted.
Even if you wish to study economics, the key texts offered are from the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on “resistance economy”, a set of speeches by “Imam” Ruhollah Khomeini and a pamphlet by the late Iraqi cleric Mohammad-Baqer al-Sadr called “Our Economics” plus old Soviet pamphlets against “capitalism” and “neoliberal economy.”
To many young Iranians the best option is to steer clear of such subjects and go for medicine or engineering in which you can get on without pseudo-theological mumbo-jumbo.
Engineering as a career is also attractive because the regime has spent huge resources on developing the military industries launched in Iran in the 1970s while expanding the nuclear project that started in 1959.
The Khomeinist leadership also needed thousands of engineers to build scores of dams and canal to boost agricultural production and make Iran self-sufficient in food. This was done by drying up many rivers, lakes and wetland while damaging the traditional qanat system dating back to 3,000 years ago. Engineers managed to boost farm production but led Iran to the edge of desertification.
All ideology-based systems of government favor subjects such as engineering. Hitler’s Germany had more engineers than the Western democracies combined. They built beautiful motorways, cars and tanks and developed the first missile systems. The first man in space was sent by the Soviet Union. Today, the whole world admires what Chinese engineers have achieved.
What the MSM chooses to ignore is the war within this war, one that the regime is waging against Iranian people.
Since the war began last February, hundreds of Iranians have been executed on spurious charges while over 2,000 have been arrested across the country.
To shed Lachrimae Amoris for such a regime and depict it as an innocent victim because of partisan prejudices is a betrayal of both the Iranian people and the tragedy of this war. More importantly it is a betrayal of the first victim of war: truth.
