It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Photograph Source: Shayan Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn – CC BY-SA 4.0
Tiresome though it may be for some of us over here on Airstrip One, it seems domestic political argument in the United Kingdom is still being regularly repackaged for an American audience. As Motihari-born Eric Blair, later celebrated as George Orwell, once observed, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
An odd patchwork of British figures—among them Liz Truss, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage, continue, in varying forms, to present the United Kingdom to US audiences as a cautionary tale. Nor is this confined to the most recognisable names. When off-shoot figures such as Rupert Lowe appear on platforms with Tucker Carlson, the framing is much the same. The UK is cast as a scuttled country in sinking decline, awash with either liberal or technocratic elites, depending on the mood of the drowning that day. It is like watching all day long the radicalised in hot pursuit of the radicalised. One day the serpent will eat its tail and we will all be able to go home.
Truss, for instance, strutted into Dallas last week for the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, warning of “deep state” forces and advancing seriously contested claims about parallel legal systems in the UK. It seemed most unusual—when not in the US, she saunters around her neighbourhood here, close to where I am writing from, and always seems happy with her lot.
Robinson, meanwhile, has long gorged on the sprats of sympathetic US media ecosystems and donors, presenting the UK as best he can as an object lesson in the supposed dangers of immigration and the perils of restrictions on speech. Even when a complaint has a modicum of truth to it, why play so feverishly to a foreign gallery? It is as though our so-called lovers of country are unified only through a lack of love for said country when abroad. In fact, many reasonable people in the UK find the prominence afforded Robinson in the United States baffling, to say the least.
Farage has cultivated perhaps the most sustained transatlantic presence, from regular appearances on US cable news to campaigning alongside Donald Trump, though Trump was reportedly too busy to entertain him last trip. Farage’s interventions have often positioned a Brexit-era UK as part of a broader populist alignment, even if these also serve to bolster his domestic political profile.
Clocked from London, the overall impression is that parts of the American political ecosystem are not only flirting with insurgent-style movements in Europe, they are rhetorically in bed with them. During and after Brexit, slices of American conservatism openly cheered it as a model. Trump-era language around nationalism and “taking back control” pounded like migraine across many European debates.
More recently, protests and unrest in European countries have been amplified by US commentators, jumped on, even, as further evidence of liberal failure—a jack-booted kind of interpretation that can be so easily segued into moral encouragement for anti-establishment mobilisation, even when no formal coordination exists. Listen to Trump decrying not just Starmer but Macron as well. Hear the views of the present US administration on the likes of Orban. You would think they were terrified of the left. Frightened kittens. In recent days, Donald Trump has used Truth Social to cast the United Kingdom in unusually stark terms, folding it into the same narrative of civilisational decline he applies to domestic opponents. Watch the flowers of freedom wilt and slowly die. See the sky about to rain.
Trump’s rhetoric towards supposed allies, including the United Kingdom, maybe especially the United Kingdom, probably reflects a broader scepticism towards joining anything other than his own private club, rather than straightforward hostility. However, his repeated insistence that NATO partners are “not paying what they should,” alongside earlier criticisms of Theresa May’s handling of Brexit, signalled an unusual willingness by an American politician to intervene in domestic British politics, though Obama had earlier told Brits not to vote Brexit.
There is still little evidence of any truly coordinated US state effort to fund insurgent-style movements in Europe. However, there is a looser ecosystem of private donors, media platforms, and overbearing think tanks. Wealthy American backers, such as Robert and Rebekah Mercer, have supported transatlantic populist politics, while well-known figures like Steve Bannon have openly sought—albeit with limited success—to forge bonds between like-minded movements. More often, influence flows through amplification, through noise, not through direct financing. The din of discord, if you prefer. US media platforms and personalities grant visibility, legitimacy, and audiences that can be just as politically valuable as greenbacks.
By contrast, whatever people may think of the credentials of Keir Starmer as a politician, the UK prime minister adopts a very different vibe. Rather than engaging in tit-for-tat provocations, he has emphasised the legitimacy of institutions, as well as alliance cohesion. Where Trump seems to get off on kicking over tables, Starmer positions himself as a defender of process, stability, and good table manners. I suspect that some of us by now would far rather fall asleep listening to someone drone on, than have to watch our backs, check our pockets, and lock our doors the whole time. As an American—Thomas Jefferson—put it, though as an argument at the time for isolationism, “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”
At least this portrayal of the United Kingdom as a society in decline is far from uncontested within the UK. Albeit disputed as a number, half a million people gathered at the weekend in London for a rejection of the far right, though one or two groups in attendance were supporting continued violence in the Middle East. Political leaders across the spectrum, at different times, have rejected depictions of systemic collapse over here, while Sadiq Khan has repeatedly pushed back against claims in US media that London has become unsafe or ungovernable. UK institutions—from the Metropolitan Police Service to parliamentary voices—have often had to correct narratives that begin abroad. Commentators such as Rory Stewart warn that the UK risks becoming a kind of political theatre, its internal debates simplified and exported to serve ideological battles elsewhere. This may be the nub of the problem. We are being used and don’t even see it.
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend,” is a quote often attributed to Henry Bergson. In short, the American response to UK politics is loud, visible, and politically useful to actors on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly within media ecosystems that reward provocation and making things simpler. The noise, to be honest, is grinding. It may not be the whole story, nor a particularly intelligible transatlantic strategy. But it is a bugbear that increasingly shapes how the UK is perceived—and often misperceived—abroad.
Peter Bach lives in London.
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Leading US Papers Defend the Indefensible in Iran Aggression
“The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon,” the Wall Street Journal (3/1/26) declared.
The United States and Israel are, for the second time in less than a year, committing “the supreme international crime” against Iran (FAIR.org, 7/3/25). Editorials in three of the United States’ most prominent newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, offered varying degrees of support for the aggression.
The Times waffled about bombing Iran, the Journal enthusiastically supported it, and the Post had fewer concerns about the war than the Times but more than the Journal. Crucially, however, all three papers rationalized the US/Israeli assault.
The Journal provided full-fledged endorsements of the unprovoked attack, writing in its first editorial (3/1/26), headlined “It’s Too Soon for Iran ‘Off-Ramps,’” that “the first two days . . . have been a striking success.”
“The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon,” it said.
The Journal (3/2/26) took the same approach in its next editorial, “Trump Enforces His Red Line on Iran,” calling the aggression a “necessary act of deterrence.” “It carries risks as all wars do,” the piece read, “but it also has the potential to reshape the Middle East for the better and lead to a safer world.” The editors reiterated that their “main concern is that Mr. Trump may stop too soon.”
Killing upward of 175 Iranians at a girls’ elementary school (FAIR.org, 3/2/26) didn’t temper the degree to which the US/Israeli aggression was a “striking success,” nor was the possibility of similar massacres a “risk” or a “concern” of the editors.
‘Seeing this through’
The Washington Post (2/28/26) warned of “the danger of lobbing some bombs without seeing this through.”
The Washington Post (2/28/26) expressed some reservations about the choice to go to war under the headline “Trump’s Iran Gamble,” but they seemed to be largely related to questions of success and procedure: whether the war would turn into a “quagmire,” “what happens to US troops throughout the region,” and that “it’s essential that the people’s elected representatives get to vote on whether these strikes are justified.”
The paper’s remaining concerns echoed the hawks at the Journal, worrying Trump might not go far enough. The editors fretted about “the danger of lobbing some bombs without seeing this through” and warned that “freedom for the people” might not be achieved “without some US boots on the ground…. Yet Trump appears to lack any appetite for doing so.”
While the Post appeared to have doubts about Trump’s leadership and strategy, at no point did the paper say that he shouldn’t have started the war, nor made mention of the prohibition under both US (The Hill, 6/23/25) and international law (Conversation, 3/20/22) on assassinating heads of state.
‘A successful outcome’
The New York Times (2/28/26) maintains that “Iran’s government presents a distinct threat because it combines…murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions”—but Trump didn’t announce he was attacking them the right way.
Meanwhile, the New York Times’ strongest criticism (2/28/26) of the US/Israeli attack was that
Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.
While the authors were correct to suggest that the war is illegal, they nevertheless implied that a “successful outcome” to this war of aggression is desirable. That ending the war as soon as possible would be a “successful outcome” was not part of the Times’ calculus.
Like the Post, the Times’ criticisms were mostly based on proceduralism. The Times (2/28/26) complained that Trump
started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. Nor has he involved Congress, to which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented ”imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government.
Thus, the Times was more concerned with how Trump explained his war aims to the American public than with those aims themselves. Indeed, as we’ll see, the paper dedicated considerable space to shoring up the rationale for the US/Israeli attack.
‘Positive consequences’
For the New York Times (2/28/26), Israel’s ability to continue its genocide in Gaza (Amnesty International, 11/27/25) without resistance from Hamas appears to be a “positive consequence” of bombing Iran.
One trait the propaganda in all three papers shared is the notion that Iranian foreign policy means that there are upsides to launching the all-out war with Iran. The New York Times‘ headline (2/28/26) called the attacks “reckless,” but the analysis bolstered the argument for the war about which they professed to be concerned:
Israel has reduced the threats from Hamas and Hezbollah (two of Iran’s terrorist proxies), attacked Iran directly and, with help from allies, mostly repelled its response. The new recognition of Iran’s limitations helped give rebels in Syria the confidence to march on Damascus and oust the horrific Assad regime, a longtime Iranian ally. Iran’s government did almost nothing to intervene. This recent history demonstrates that military action, for all its awful costs, can have positive consequences.
These “positive consequences” include a genocide in Gaza that, despite a so-called ceasefire, hasn’t ceased (Amnesty International, 11/27/25; Palestine Centre for Human Rights, 2/4/25). Sectarian massacres have followed the fall of Assad in Syria (FAIR.org, 6/2/25); similarly, in the first year of post-Assad Syria, Israel bombed the country even more than it had the previous year, and increased its theft of Syrian territory (Al Jazeera, 11/20/25). Nearly 4,000 Lebanese people were killed in the 2023–24 US-backed Israeli war on the country, Human Rights Watch noted, which included
Subsequently, Israel has violated a sham ceasefire in Lebanon more than 10,000 times, during which “positive consequences” continue to accrue, such as the killing of 12 people in late February attacks (Democracy Now!, 2/23/26).
For a generation, Iran has been the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, backing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other proxies as they wreaked havoc and killed Americans.
Linguistic choices used to rationalize war and genocide need to be rigorously scrutinized, and nowhere is this more necessary than when the word “terrorism” is being deployed to rationalize the mass murder of Muslim-majority populations. As Edward Said (New Left Review, 9–10/88) wrote:
The most striking thing about “terrorism,” as a phenomenon of the public sphere of communication and representation in the West, is its isolation from any explanation or mitigating circumstances, and its isolation as well from representations of most other dysfunctions, symptoms and maladies of the contemporary world…. [Terrorism has been] stripped of any right to be considered as other historical and social phenomena are considered, as something created by human beings in the world of human history.
Hamas’s violence against Israelis on October 7, 2023, came in the context of Israel killing more than 7,000 Palestinians over the previous 23 years, including more than 2,000 children (B’Tselem). Israel has for decades occupied, besieged and ethnically cleansed Palestinians (Electronic Intifada, 7/26/18), and is now committing genocide against them (UN, 9/16/25).
Hezbollah came into existence as a result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s (Electronic Intifada, 1/16/24), and went on to win wide popular support in the country, as demonstrated by its winning more seats than other party in elections (FAIR.org, 10/10/24).
Yemen’s Ansar Allah, known at the Houthis, arose as a rebellion against Ali Abdullah Saleh, the nation’s US-backed dictator (BBC, 12/4/17, 3/25/25). It gained power and prominence by continuing to struggle against his successor, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and then the “catastrophic” US/Saudi war on Yemen (In These Times, 4/13/23). Both Ansar Allah and Hezbollah are, it’s worth noting, guilty of helping the Palestinians resist the US/Israeli genocide (FAIR.org, 1/24/25).
If the Post wanted to help its readers make sense of the world, the paper would make some effort to explain who Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah are, and the contexts in which they have engaged in political violence, as well as the vastly more deadly and injurious violence initiated by the US and Israel they have faced. Instead, the paper offers a simplistic, ahistorical demonization of these groups as ideological scaffolding for “the supreme international crime” against Iran, as well as the slaughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni people.
‘Main threat to the entire region’
The Wall Street Journal (3/2/26) finds it “hard to imagine instability greater than what the [Iran’s] revolutionary regime has promoted for nearly five decades.”
The first Wall StreetJournal (3/1/26) editorial claimed that Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Arab states where US forces are based, and from which attacks on Iran are being carried out, underscore that Iran “is the main threat to the entire region.”
The second (3/2/26) called the US/Israeli aggression “a necessary act of deterrence against a regime that is the world’s foremost promoter of terrorism.” The piece responded to the view that the war could lead to “new conflicts among other powers in the region” by saying, “Events are impossible to predict, but it’s hard to imagine instability greater than what the revolutionary regime has promoted for nearly five decades.”
It’s nonsensical to say that Iran is “the main threat to the entire region” and that “it’s hard to imagine instability greater” than that which Iran has “promoted in the region.” None of Iran’s alleged, unspecified crimes in the region come close to the actual bloodshed (not its mere “threat”) and “instability” the US and Israel have wrought in the “greater Middle East,” not only in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, but in Afghanistan (FAIR.org, 8/19/21), Iraq (BBC, 10/16/13; Guardian, 3/4/00) and Libya (Alternet, 12/5/17).
‘The danger of lobbing some bombs’
All three papers also lent credence to the idea that it would be legitimate to conduct a war on Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. The Washington Post (2/28/26) asserted:
Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump insisted that last summer’s bunker-buster bombs totally “obliterated” Iran’s enrichment program, but now he says it needs to be “totally, again, obliterated.” It’s always been clear he was exaggerating the success of Operation Midnight Hammer, and Iran has remained unwilling to give up its goal of proliferation. The danger of lobbing some bombs without seeing this through is that Iran’s leaders could become more determined than ever to get a bomb to deter future strikes.
Yet the day before the US/Israeli aggression commenced, it came to light that Iran had agreed to not stockpile enriched uranium (CBS, 2/27/26). Without such nuclear fuel, it’s impossible to make a nuclear bomb. Contrary to the Post’s suggestion, Iran apparently was not “unwilling to give up” its alleged “goal of proliferation.”
The Wall StreetJournal (3/2/26) acted as if this Iranian offer had not taken place, saying that Trump “gave Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ample chance to strike a deal on nuclear weapons and its missile force, but the ayatollah refused.” The editorial praised the US/Israeli campaign, saying that even if the Iranian government survives, “the nuclear program will be difficult and expensive to rebuild.”
Yet on February 18, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi said the organization had not seen any indication that Iran might currently be working to develop a nuclear weapon (CBS, 2/19/26). How Iran might “rebuild” a program that it may not have in the first place is anyone’s guess.
A ‘worthy goal’
“Preventive strikes…have no basis under international law,” noted the Australian Institute of International Affairs (7/3/25). “Strikes cannot be justified solely on the grounds that a future attack is believed inevitable—as it is impossible to determine whether such a condition will ever come about.”
Even though the New York Times (2/28/26) noted that “Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon,” the paper described “the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program” as a “worthy goal.” The paper added:
American presidents of both parties have rightly made a commitment to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb.
We recognize that fulfilling this commitment could justify military action at some point…. The consequences of allowing Iran to follow the path of North Korea—and acquire nuclear weapons after years of exploiting international patience—are too great.
“Prevent[ing] from getting a [nuclear] bomb” could not, in fact, “justify military action.” Pre-emptive or preventative wars “clearly” violate international law (Australian Institute of International Affairs, 7/3/25), so even if Iran was on the cusp of having a nuclear bomb, that would not be grounds to attack them.
None of the editorials in the Times, Journal or Post mentioned that, in the run up to the US/Israeli aggression, the IAEA said it had no evidence that Iran was working on nuclear weapons development, or that Iran had agreed to an arrangement under which it couldn’t develop a nuclear bomb. Instead, the papers implied that a nuclear-armed Iran was a near-term possibility, and that such a prospect would warrant bombing the country.
When scholars and students look back on 2026 and study how some of the US’s most prominent papers responded to the war of aggression on Iran, the main takeaway won’t be that the Journal offered unhesitating applause while the Times and the Post equivocated. It will be that all three defended the indefensible.Email
Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.
They Attack, We Defend: How The Media Toe The Line On Iran Unlike Russia’s war on Ukraine, British journalists rarely highlight the illegality of the US-Israeli attack on Iran Source: The U.S. National Archives
The UK media’s take on the use of ‘hard power’ depends entirely on who’s exercising it.
The labelling of Russia’s war in Ukraine in February 2022 was clear from the start. According to the Nexis database, 12,700 stories across the UK media in the first week of the war were focused on what was unequivocally referred to as Russia’s “invasion of Ukraine”.
Clive Myrie, presenting an extended BBC News at Ten on the first night of the war spoke of a “huge Russian military offensive” next to a strapline of “Russia invades Ukraine” that remained on screen throughout the headlines.
Tom Bradby, presenting ITV’s News at Ten, spoke of “a day of infamy for the Russian government and terror for millions of Ukranians”. Echoing the statement by then foreign secretary Liz Truss that this was “an unprovoked, premeditated attack against a sovereign democratic state”, he asserted that Putin had “invaded a democratic, sovereign neighbour in a war of imperial conquest.”
In the wall-to-wall coverage of the US-Israel pre-emptive attack on Iran on 28 February 2026, no broadcast journalists spoke of “imperial conquest” nor did they mention the issue of Iranian sovereignty.
And while coverage of the Russian invasion was consistently described as “unprovoked” – with 2336 stories in the first week – only 390 stories referred to claims that the US/Israel assault on Iran was “unprovoked” in the same period.
This is despite evidence that NATO expansion contributed to Putin’s decision to invade while ‘significant progress’ was claimed in talks between the US and Iran over the future of the latter’s nuclear programme before the bombing started.
Illegal wars?
As opposed to the single “invasion” strapline used to illustrate Russia’s aggression, the BBC’s main TV news bulletin used multiple straplines including “US-Israel attack Iran”, “Iran strikes back” and ‘Fears for Middle East war.”
In contrast to the outpouring of condemnation of Russia’s actions, there were only 1,785 stories in the first week that were specifically focused on the “attack on Iran”, just 14% of the number that spoke of a “Russian invasion” four years previously.
While 251 stories referred to Russia’s “illegal invasion” in its first week, there were just 82 stories in UK media that addressed Israel and America’s bombing of Iran as an “illegal attack” in the week after 28 February. Many of these simply reported comments made by Green and Liberal Democrat MPs in Parliament as opposed to asking their own questions about the legality of the attacks.
Laura Kuenssberg did press the Israeli president Isaac Herzog on this point in her Sunday morning BBC programme on 8 March (and was dismissed by Herzog as asking “unbelievable questions”).
The issue of legality was also addressed in a debate organised by Channel 4 News and in individual pieces by the Guardian, Reuters and Sky (though that was in an interview with the Russian ambassador).
These interventions no doubt expressed genuine tensions within Labour – anxious not to reopen the debate about the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq – about whether the US/Israeli attacks could be justified under international law.
Yet, at the time of writing, only two out of the 152 stories on the BBC’s “Iran War” online pages (1.3%) and just one of the 257 stories (0.39%) on Sky News’ Iran pages – a clip of Keir Starmer insisting that he wouldn’t join a war without a “lawful basis” –come close to considering the crucial question of whether the attacks were legal or not. (For some reason, Sky’s interview with the Russian ambassador isn’t listed here).
‘Defensive’
Analyses of whether devastating pre-emptive strikes by Israel and the US comply with international law have been overshadowed by the spectacle of the attacks themselves and the notion that, as the Sunposed it on 2 March, Iran presents a ‘VERY real threat to normal Brits’.
As John Irvine, ITV’s senior political correspondent, put in on the Weekend News bulletin the evening before: “I think it’s pretty obvious by now that the greatest threat to this entire region comes from Iran’s missile arsenal”.
In particular, journalists have emphasised the “defensive” nature of the UK’s role with some 715 stories on “defensive strikes” in the first week of the coverage.
Mainstream journalists have, however, failed systematically to investigate the impact of Starmer’s agreement to facilitate ‘specific and limited defensive action against missile facilities in Iran’.
All too often, the tendency has been to take the claim that the UK is engaging in legitimate self-defence at face value.
On the first night of the bombing on 28 February, ITV News’ correspondent, Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, simply repeated Keir Starmer’s claim that “British planes are in the sky today as part of coordinated regional defensive operations to protect our people, our interests and our allies.”
Over on the BBC’s main weekend bulletin, political correspondent Chris Mason parroted Starmer’s line word for word: “Yes, British planes have been in the sky in the region in a defensive capability and he emphasises within international law so protecting allies.”
No alternative explanation was offered in either case.
Diversion tactics
Instead, there has been extensive discussion of the hollowed state of the military and of the delays in sending HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean to, as the BBC put it, “join the UK’s defensive operations in the region”.
There have been breathless accounts of UK jets shooting down Iranian drones and late-night discussions on the BBC News Channel with security analyst Mikey Kay assessing the technical capacities of UK military hardware.
What there has not been is detailed investigation by defence correspondents of the implications of providing ‘safe passage’ for US planes through UK bases and of the difficulties in assessing whether it’s possible to distinguish in reality between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ bombing.
Meanwhile, Gaza – whose residents are still being attacked by Israeli forces – has slipped out of the headlines as journalists focus their attention elsewhere. This has allowed Israel to step up its settlement activity in the West Bank and to present its military activity in Lebanon, where its bombs have killed 570 people, as another example of defensive activity.
UK media have helped to normalise this by, more often than not, describing the movement of Israeli troops into southern Lebanon as an “incursion” rather than an actual ground invasion.
While there were 242 stories in the first week of the war to Israel’s “incursion” into Lebanon (including 21 on BBC World), only 41 stories referred to an “invasion of Lebanon”. This included six stories on BBC World of which only three were actually about the current situation.
The UK media’s compliant coverage and its failure to challenge the current foreign policy consensus is completely at odds with the UK public. 59% of those polled by YouGov oppose US military against Iran with only 25% in support.
50% are opposed to Starmer’s decision to allow the US to use UK airbases for military action against Iran with only 32% in support.
Rather than reflecting this constituency, mainstream news are acting as loyal lieutenants in an illegitimate and profoundly destabilising war.
