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)
Prosecutors in Germany have formally charged a Ukrainian officer who they suspect of involvement in the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipeline system, which breached three out of four lines and caused the largest manmade methane release in history.
The suspicions have been public for some time. In August 2025, at the request of German officials, Italian police detained Ukrainian military veteran Serhii Kuznietsov in the resort town of Rimini. Germany accused him of contributing to the complex attack on Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 in 2022 and sought his extradition. Italian courts approved the request, despite Kuznietsov's appeals and his attempt to stage a hunger strike.
Kuznietsov now faces charges of causing an explosion, disrupting public service, damaging property, and an additional "accomplice to war crimes" charge for an attack on civilian infrastructure. According to German authorities, he and his colleagues chartered a small yacht in Rostock using forged identities and covert methods, then sailed out into the Baltic and emplaced explosive charges on the seabed pipelines.
German prosecutors have had less luck in securing the extradition of a second Ukrainian suspect who resides in Poland. A Polish court ruled against a German request for the suspect's transfer and released the man from custody. The Polish government - which long opposed the construction of the subsea Nord Stream system, viewing it as a strategic enabler for Russian aggression against neighboring states - has declined to intervene in the case. "It is certainly not in Poland's interest to charge or hand over this citizen to another state," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Polsat News last year. "The problem of Europe, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built."
The damage to the pipelines created a physical impediment to any effort to restart the Russian-controlled gas export system. For Ukraine, this outcome was advantageous, inflicting material damage on Russia's future prospects for resuming EU gas sales. The attack did not change the immediate status quo, as all Nord Stream deliveries had already shut down due to political positioning in both Germany and Russia - but even if a future German government wanted to resume subsea deliveries of cheap Russian energy, the damage to the lines would make it difficult to do so.
Image of signing of US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding by The White House/Wikimediacommons, in public domain
The provisional surrender document signed by Donald Trump appeared to represent a triumph for Iran and indeed for the world; but neither the USA nor Israel has the slightest sense of honour and they cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.
Iran knows this – after all, the USA twice attacked Iran actually during peace negotiations, on each occasion killing key Iranian negotiators.
To understand the American position, it is important to realise two key points:
Greater Israel is an absolute priority
Opening the Strait of Hormuz is not a US priority
While the US/Israeli alliance were defeated in their attempt to impose regime change on Iran, and indeed have consolidated the popular support of the Iranian government, they have succeeded in expanding Greater Israel. Israel has ethnically cleared and devastated a vast swathe of Southern Lebanon, expanding its military footprint, and notably attempting to repeat its ploy from November 2024 of pushing forward its armour under cover of ceasefire.
Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon has been a major negotiating point for the Iranian government and is a key – indeed the very first – point of the Iran/USA MOU. But in an extraordinary coup aimed at negating that deal, the USA has signed a deal with Israel and its puppet Aoun regime in Lebanon which seeks to legitimise Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon through the agreement of the “Lebanese government”.
This is an astonishing development. I did not think I could have a lower opinion of the appalling bloated traitor “General” “President” Aoun but not even I – nor I think any commentator – believed he would make such a deal with Israel. The plan is that the Americans, Israelis and Lebanese Army will act together to forcibly eliminate Hezbollah, and only after that is certified – by the Israelis – will the Israelis withdraw from Southern Lebanon.
Here are the operative paragraphs. Note that they carefully do not say in terms that Israel will actually leave Lebanon.
“3. …The Government of Israel and the Government of Lebanon commit to a reciprocal, sequenced process, with clear conditions, whereby the LAF will restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of associated infrastructure, enabling the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to progressively redeploy out of the Lebanese territory.”
“5 . …The Government of Israel underscores that the termination of this threat, through the disarmament and dismantlement of such groups in all of Lebanon and additional security arrangements to be agreed upon between the two countries, will eliminate any future need for IDF military action or presence in Lebanon.”
This is plainly completely incompatible with the USA/Iran MOU, which states as Point 1:
“The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.”
Of course, everybody knows that Israel will never withdraw voluntarily, any more than they withdrew from the Golan Heights. Annexation is plainly the goal and expansion of Greater Israel at least to the Litani River and probably further.
It is important to realise that this is not only Aoun seeking the annihilation of the Shia population of Southern Lebanon; he is also betraying his own community. Aoun is himself a Southern Lebanese Christian, and Israel has been destroying the homes, churches, hospitals and families of Southern Lebanese Christians with as much glee as they attack Muslims.
The agreement names two “pilot zones” where the combined Israeli and Lebanese Army forces will eliminate Hezbollah, followed by Israeli withdrawal from those zones. But these are zones which Israel is not currently occupying – they are areas where Israel was defeated in fighting by Hezbollah and which have been since subject to relentless Israeli bombardment.
So Aoun has agreed to support militarily an IDF advance further into Lebanon, against an agreement that Israel will be able to withdraw once these key Hezbollah redoubts have been destroyed. Even if Aoun were stupid enough to believe the Israelis will withdraw after the operation, this is a level of treachery it is difficult to comprehend.
Greater Israel is not a concept. It is a reality being created before our very eyes.
Israel now occupies 70% of Gaza and plainly the entire “Board of Peace” mechanism is nothing but smoke and mirrors, pure fraud. It has zero effect on the continued tightening of the Gaza concentration camp into an ever-shrinking area. Israeli settlements in the West Bank expand daily and every night the skies are red with Palestinian homes and crops burning. In East Jerusalem Palestinians are continually evicted and replaced by fresh European or American arrivals. In Syria, Israel is building permanent fortifications and its armour creeps forward field by field, with the full cooperation of “President” al-Jolani.
Iran was able to resist the combined military might of the USA and Israel. That is cause for celebration. But do not allow it to blind your eyes to the continued hard reality of the expansion of Greater Israel.
There is no gain for the US in the US/Iran Memorandum of Understanding which the US did not already possess before starting the war. It is therefore very possible, and in many senses valid, to read it as the formalisation of US defeat: a surrender document. Which is why you should be sceptical about US commitment to the terms.
The Strait of Hormuz was fully open before the US started the war. Allowing the flow of oil to resume has become a short-term US priority due to high domestic retail prices and pending elections, but the MOU envisages more Iranian control – and potentially fees – in the Strait than existed before the war.
There is no indication of restrictions on the Iranian nuclear programme that were not already available in the peaceful negotiations. Crucially there are no limitations on Iran’s vital ballistic missile production. The proposed relaxation of sanctions and release of frozen assets is a triumph for Iran and long overdue, and the $300 billion in dollars in reparations, from unspecified sources, is stunning.
So stunning of course that anyone with their head screwed on will realise there is no long term American intention to keep faith with the deal.
Trump is not stupid. There are many ways of characterising his kind of cunning, but it is not stupidity. He was not, as the prevailing narrative seeks to state, the only person in the World who did not realise the Strait of Hormuz would be closed by the war. The USA is quite happy to see the Strait of Hormuz closed, or permanently made more difficult and expensive to transit.
The key to understanding Trump’s position is his famous love of tariffs. Trump is a mercantilist. For many years the world worked on the general basis of accepting the economics of Adam Smith – that freedom of trade promoted universal, reciprocal wealth creation. That was the founding basis of the World Trade organisation, and is the internal philosophy of big trading blocs like the EU.
Trump rejects this and returns to the philosophy that other nations are all competitors, not potential partners, and that success lies not only in increasing your own production, but in damaging your rivals’ production – which ultimately will increase domestic production further. Trump rejects the basic premise of free trade.
The long prevailing belief in the beneficial effects of free trade historically was, as logic demands, accompanied by the demand for freedom of navigation.
Sweeping away tariffs goes hand in hand with sweeping away the controls on shipping which carry the goods. Before the rise of liberal economics, almost all states had practised mercantilism, with controls on shipping being a major source of state revenue. The magnificence of Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, in which Hamlet is set, was constructed entirely from revenues from tolls on ships exiting the Baltic by passing the strait it overlooks, for example. Mercantilism not only sought to control passage but to dictate which country’s ships were allowed to trade.
Freedom of navigation was initially enforced ultimately by the British, and later the American, Navy. States attempting to enforce customary passage fees, for example in the Malaccan Strait, were classified as “pirates” and freedom of navigation became a routine justification for imperialist aggression and/or colonial occupation. Freedom of navigation eventually became customary international law, ultimately codified in the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.
The simple truth is this: in openly abandoning the principle of free trade, the Trump regime has also abandoned the logically linked principle of freedom of navigation. This is evident not just in their indifference to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It is evident in the naval blockades of Cuba and Venezuela and above all in the worldwide blockade of Russian hydrocarbon deliveries, including the effective end of free passage through the Strait of Dover, and a de facto naval blockade of the Arctic passages.
Following the shale boom, the United States is a net hydrocarbon exporter. The USA balance of trade benefits from high hydrocarbon prices. Trump is doing everything he can to increase US hydrocarbon production by slashing environmental and other controls. This is a core Trump policy.
The USA does not import hydrocarbons through the Strait of Hormuz. That fact is key to Trump’s thinking.
In this mercantilist view, closure of the Strait has two benefits for the USA.
It disadvantages rival hydrocarbon suppliers
It disadvantages rival industrial competitors in Europe and Asia who do get hydrocarbons through Hormuz.
This is exactly the same logic behind the destruction of Nord Stream 2. The same mercantilist system also explains the effective seizure through naval blockade and control of Venezuela’s oil production, and the blockade of Russian hydrocarbons through sanctions and the “shadow fleet” propaganda disguising another naval blockade.
The UK’s recent actions in the Dover strait indicate that the West, not just the United States has surrendered the principle of freedom of navigation in straits.
Trump believes, as he has repeatedly stated in public, that domestic fuel prices in the USA are a blip and will equalise as the USA increases its domestic fuel production and Venezuelan fuel production. However this was not happening in time for the mid-term elections which is why reopening the Strait of Hormuz became a temporary priority that occasioned the ceasefire and MOU with Iran.
None of this implies good faith negotiation or a real prospect for a lasting peace.
This article was originally published by Craig Murray; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.
Iran International and the Money Behind the Narrative War
A well-funded media outlet pushes regime change in Iran. Who's paying the bills?
Americans usually think about confrontation with Iran in terms of sanctions, warships, nuclear sites, and diplomatic ultimatums. But an equally important front doesn’t involve firepower or government threats: the media space. Here, political narratives are built, repeated, legitimized, and eventually translated into pressure.
That’s why the financing of the media network Iran International deserves closer scrutiny in Washington. The question is not whether Iranians deserve independent journalism. They do. Nor is it whether journalists should be protected from intimidation by the Iranian government. They should. The question is whether a major foreign-based Persian-language outlet, operating with extraordinary sums of money and limited transparency about its backers, should be treated as an ordinary media organization when its coverage shapes Western understanding of Iran.
Iran International has not merely reported on Iran in a neutral vacuum. Its English-language coverage often gives space to stories about regime collapse, exile-led transition, tighter sanctions, military pressure, defections from the security forces, and the politics of former crown prince Reza Pahlavi. In February, the outlet reported that Pahlavi had called for tighter sanctions, potential military action, and a rapid political transition to topple Iran’s ruling system. In another high-profile interview, it framed Pahlavi’s argument that regime change in Iran would pave the way for peace in the Middle East.
Such Pahlavi-positive coverage does not make every article propaganda. It does show, however, a recognizable editorial emphasis: Iran is often presented through the lens of collapse, transition, and outside pressure rather than through the more complicated range of views from inside the country itself.
Then there’s the question of financing.
Following the Money
The Financial Times recently reported that Volant Media UK, the parent company of Iran International and Afghanistan International, received roughly £650 million in debt relief through a debt-for-equity swap. The same report said the company had lost more than £410 million over five years and owed related entities about £482 million as of the end of 2024. UK Companies House filings show a statement of capital after a share allotment of about £648 million and full accounts made up to December 2024.
These are not the normal economics of a subscription newsletter, a donor-backed nonprofit, or an advertising-driven television network. They point to something much larger: a media project sustained by capital whose political meaning matters.
Iran International says it is editorially independent and has not received state funding from Saudi Arabia, Israel, or any other government. That denial should be included in any fair discussion. But a denial does not end the public-interest question. In 2018, the Guardianreported that Iran International was being funded through a secretive offshore entity and a company whose director was a Saudi Arabian businessman with close links to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The article also noted that Iran International and its operator disputed the report.
Credible reporting and corporate filings, in other words, raise serious questions about Gulf-linked and offshore capital beyind Iran International, while the network’s own denials and the absence of a transparent investor list leave the public unable to fully assess whose interests may be amplified by such a costly media operation.
Comparable Transparency
Consider how Iran International compares with other foreign-backed Persian or Middle East broadcasters. Al Jazeera openly says that it is funded in part by the Qatari government. Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty operate under the U.S. Agency for Global Media structure, where VOA is a federal organization and RFE/RL receives grants from USAGM; Radio Farda was originally launched as a Persian-language service involving RFE/RL and VOA. Those outlets are not above criticism. Their coverage can reflect the priorities, blind spots, and strategic interests of their sponsors. But their state backing is visible enough that audiences know what they are evaluating.
Iran International is different in a narrower but important way. It is not presented as the declared public broadcaster of a state. It is a private, foreign-based, Persian-language outlet with a large political footprint, extraordinary financial support, and limited transparency about the ultimate source and purpose of its capital. That combination deserves scrutiny, especially when its editorial emphasis overlaps with the policy preferences of forces that support maximum pressure, regime change, or war.
Iran has become one of the easiest countries for Washington to discuss in abstractions. Too often, American officials speak of “the Iranian people” as if they are a single political bloc waiting for outside pressure to rescue them. That habit allows hawks to present coercion as solidarity, sanctions as compassion, and military threats as liberation.
Foreign-based Persian media occupy a complicated space in this narrative. They can provide information that state media inside Iran suppress. They can amplify genuine grievances and give voice to people who face censorship. But they can also become instruments in a struggle over legitimacy, especially when their funding is opaque and their editorial line appears aligned with networks that favor maximum pressure.
Not every critical report about Tehran is propaganda. Iran’s government gives journalists and citizens reasons to criticize it. But criticism of Tehran should not require pretending that wealthy outside actors are neutral when they invest enormous sums in shaping Iranian public opinion. The antiwar position is not to defend censorship. It is to demand transparency from every institution that helps prepare the ground for conflict.
The Iraq Precedent
The United States has seen this pattern before. Before the Iraq War, exile networks, selective media amplification, and policy advocacy blurred into one another. The result was a political environment in which claims that should have been challenged became assumptions. By the time the bombs fell, the narrative architecture had already been built.
Iran is not Iraq, and history never repeats cleanly. But the lesson is still relevant. When a media outlet with unclear financing becomes a key interpreter of another country’s politics for Western audiences, journalists, lawmakers, and think-tank analysts should slow down. They should ask who benefits when one version of the Iranian story is elevated above others. They should ask whether the outlet is reporting public opinion or manufacturing the impression of consensus.
This is not a call to silence Iran International. It is a call to treat media power as part of foreign policy. Transparency is not censorship. Asking hard questions about ownership is not an attack on free speech. Audiences have a right to evaluate not only what they are being told, but also who paid to amplify that message.
The debate over Iran International’s money is therefore not a side story. It is a peace issue. A media operation sustained by vast and partly unclear capital may still produce journalism. But it should not be granted automatic moral authority as the unfiltered voice of a nation. Before the United States lets another anti-Iran narrative harden into policy, it should ask a basic question: who is paying for the story Americans are being told?
This article was originally published by FPIF; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email
The February 2026 Iran war cannot be understood as an isolated event; but rather the outcome of over four decades of coordinated American and Israeli efforts to contain and topple the Islamic Republic. Similarly, Iran’s ability to withstand the military onslaught and emerge victorious must also be situated within that historical context.
After weeks of U.S-Israeli bombardment, Iran has shown not only that it has been able to withstand an assault by the world’s strongest militaries, but that it could successfully exact substantial military, geopolitical and economic costs on its adversaries. Despite suffering significant damage, and the martyrdom of senior military commanders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the state survived.
Tehran’s ability to maintain institutional continuity and operational resilience despite intense pressures could ultimately reshape the geopolitical landscape of West Asia.
Using asymmetric tactics and threatening global energy chokepoints, Iran forced a diplomatic standoff with Washington, which led to the signing on 17 June of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding, establishing an immediate cessation of hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon. The document also launched the first round of negotiations on 21 June towards securing a final agreement.
It is reasonable to conclude that a secular government or monarchy, like that of the former Shah, would likely have yielded to military duress. Ending the conflict on Iran’s terms, however, required a defiant government driven by an ideological mandate of resistance to oppressors and oppression. Even fierce government critics concede that the Islamic Republic successfully preserved the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and handed the U.S. and Israel an unprecedented defeat.
By recognizing the centrality of the ancient, deeply-rooted cultural concept of Iranzamin (the Land of Iran), that views defense of the physical and sovereign integrity of the historical homeland a sacred trust and government duty, we can better understand the Islamic Republic and the people’s response to the U.S.-Israeli unprovoked wars.
How well, over its 5,000-year history, Iranian monarchs fulfilled this sacred trust is the epic story of military triumphs and devastating territorial amputations. The 19th and 20th centuries, among the lowest points in Iran’s dynastic history, can be described as “centuries of amputation.”
For example, during the 19th century Qajar dynasty, Iran lost vast territories to Russia and Britain; in what came to be known as the “Great Game” – the competition for power between two competing empires.
Through war and subsequent treaties, Iran was permanently stripped of its South Caucasus territories (Georgia, Dagestan and Azerbaijan) in the Treaty of Golestan (1813). Today in Iran, the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) which required Iran to give up modern-day Armenia, remains a cultural wound, synonymous with national humiliation.
In addition, in 1857, under Qajar Shah Naser al-Din, Iran was forced by the British to give up its historical claims to the strategic Afghan city of Herat, permanently severing Western Afghanistan from Iran. And in the Treaty of Akhai (1881), Russia dictated that Iran relinquish all historic claims to Turkmenistan and parts of Uzbekistan. Due to the heedlessness of another Shah, Iran was compromised once again when Anglo-Soviet forces invaded and occupied the country during World War II.
The Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), founded by Reza Shah, was the last monarchy to rule Iran. His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, like his predecessors, proved incapable of defending the country from Western encroachment. That, as well as his fealty to a foreign power, led to his downfall in 1979.
To gain insight into present-day Iran, it is important to recognize that the 1979 Islamic Revolution and radicalization that followed is also rooted in the legacy of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and in the memory of the American CIA-backed coup that overthrew his democratic government in 1953. It can also be traced to the oppressive 26-year reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979), who subcontracted Iranian interests to the United States.
Understanding Mossadegh’s actions, ideals and meaning to generations of Iranians is essential in apprehending how the 1953 coup set Iran on a path that culminated in the 1979 Revolution and the creation of the staunch anti-imperialism of the Islamic Republic.
Mossadegh, an ardent constitutionalist and democratic reformer, viewed oil nationalization as an economic necessity, but also as the ultimate declaration of independence to free Iran from decades of foreign colonial exploitation. His policy resonated deeply with a public eager for self-determination.
Decades of British monopolization of Iran’s oil wealth was shattered in 1951, when Mosaddegh nationalized the oil industry. His fierce defense of Iran’s right to its own resources made him a target of Washington and London.
Conversely, the Shah, yielding to American and British pressure, lent his support to their covert conspiracy. When the initial coup attempt failed, the fearful Shah fled the country, returning to reclaim the throne only after a second, successful putsch – code name “Operation Ajax” – toppled Mossadegh.
The resurrected Shah, aligned once again with the West, oversaw the surrender of Iran’s oil autonomy, signing an agreement in 1954 that transferred significant extraction and development rights to a consortium of Western multinational corporations.
Following in the footsteps of his disgraced father, the eldest son of the fallen Shah, Reza Pahlavi – who recently proclaimed himself “Reza Shah II” – made a pilgrimage to Israel in 2023 to appease his Zionist backers – a visit arranged by the Israeli regime. Once there, he shamelessly prostrated himself before the Western Wall in Jerusalem and sipped tea with genocider, Benjamin Netanyahu; the war criminal who would later bomb the land of his birth and kill 3,468 of the people Pahlavi claims to speak for.
By bowing before the Western Wall, the wannabe king performed an act of submission to Israel and the United States. This gesture echoed the deeply internalized colonized mindset and belief in Western superiority that defined his father’s rule and era.
Under monarchical rule, Iran’s autonomy was routinely compromised by foreign powers. Claiming true independence required a radical decisive severance to purge the nation from external control; but also to free it from its deeply entrenched pro-Western subservient mindset.
Although kings and dynasties have risen and fallen throughout history, the ancient concept of Iranzamin has consistently prevailed, ultimately serving as an ideological foundation for the modern Islamic government of Iran.
The political-religious framework of the Islamic Republic has institutionalized a distinct ideology of resistance. Iran’s defensive strength relies on this foundational ideology, that has framed enmity toward global arrogance and national survival into an existential religious imperative.
This strategic theo-political integration has provided the resilience needed to survive foreign hostilities, maintain self-reliance, and repel the combined aggression of the U.S. and its Zionist proxy.
For Iran, the coordinated U.S.-Israel bombing campaign (Operation Epic Fury), is a national trauma that will never be forgotten. Its sheer magnitude – measured in thousands of casualties, widespread infrastructural damage, and the assassination of a sovereign head of state – surpassed the tragedy of 9-11 many times over in destruction and lasting political fallout.
For the Islamic Republic, the war was a watershed moment, testing its ability to fulfill the Iranzamin mandate to safeguard national security, repel external threats and preserve territorial integrity. Despite severe degradation to its conventional military and leadership, Tehran achieved major diplomatic concessions through its strategic use of the Strait of Hormuz blockade.
The U.S. military intervention against Iran, initiated to achieve “regime” change and break apart the Iranian nation, on behalf of Israel, backfired. Rather than collapsing the government, Washington has been forced to capitulate and make significant concessions to Tehran, including an end to the U.S. naval blockade of the strait, sanctions relief, release of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets, and pledges for economic reconstruction.
In addition, while struggling for the past 47 years to protect its own sovereignty, the Islamic Republic has not faltered in its commitment to the Palestinian cause, continuously championing their right to self-determination and statehood.
For them, the liberation of Palestine and their own resistance against Western domination are inseparable.
Tehran and its allies understand that Palestine symbolizes liberation and autonomy for the entire region. Breaking the spirit of Palestine – the long-standing aim of Israel and the U.S. – would remove the major obstacle to their ambitions to establish hegemony across West Asia.
Having faced brutal military offensives, Iran has an existential obligation and absolute right to maintain a robust modernized defense to deter further destruction and to protect its citizens against U.S and Israeli aggression.
The war has demonstrated the Islamic Republic’s capacity to adapt strategy to confront and resist overwhelming military force and reassert its position as a regional power. Iran has sent a forceful message to the bullies: the era of strong-arming, coercion and intimidation is over.
Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia. His “Cultural Foundations of Iranian Politics,” published by University of Utah Press and still in print, was recognized by Choice as Outstanding Academic Book for 1987–1988.
The Contradiction At The Heart Of Media Responses To The Trump/Iran Memo
“Iran has insisted for decades that it was not developing a nuclear weapon, even as it pursued the bomb,” the Washington Post (6/15/26) editorialized. “Why would anyone now trust a promise not to pursue a bomb?” Rather, why should anyone trust the Washington Post when it has for decades asserted without evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb?
A healthy media ecosystem might soberly reflect on this carnage, and contemplate how the US and Israel should compensate Iran. In such a media context, perhaps news outlets would even welcome the strategic defeat the US and Israel have suffered in Iran (Middle East Eye, 6/9/26) as a victory for a besieged Global South nation defending itself from militarily superior attackers, and as deterrent for prospective aggressors embarking on future assaults.
Instead, the editorial boards of the New York Times (6/15/26), Wall StreetJournal (6/16/26), WashingtonPost (6/15/26) and Bloomberg (6/17/26) provided often hallucinatory reflections on imperial management strategy. At the center of corporate media’s delusions is a contradiction: Iran is at once a behemoth that threatens the Middle East and the United States, and yet somehow also so weak that the US can and should dictate how it operates.
‘Terrorist proxies’
“Israel significantly diminished Hamas” is how the New York Times (6/15/26) describes killing at least 72,000 Palestinians, including 21,000 children.
While the New York Times (6/15/26) said that “Mr. Trump made a terrible mistake starting this war,” the paper nevertheless did its part for Iran demonology. It wrote that the country “support[s] terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah,” and added that Iran “has financed terrorism . . . far beyond” its region. We are left to wonder where Iran has supposedly funded terror outside of the Middle East, because the Times did not deign to offer any evidence or even explanation for that crucial part of its allegation.
Bloomberg (6/17/26), meanwhile, said Iran “fund[s] terrorist proxies across the Middle East,” while the WashingtonPost (6/15/26) invoked what it called Iran’s “support of terrorists around the region.”
As the academic Nijmeh Ali points out, “Discourses of terrorism shape what counts as legitimate violence, resistance and political agency.” Reducing Hamas and Hezbollah to “terrorist groups” who exist outside of history (FAIR.org, 3/13/26), as the papers do does, dismisses them as barbarians, and justifies the vastly more deadly and destructive US/Israeli imperial-colonial violence against the Palestinian (Electronic Intifada, 7/26/18; FAIR.org, 10/9/25) and Lebanese people (FAIR.org, 10/10/24).
In these papers’ psychic universe, the “terrorist” threat is from those responding to US/Israeli wars of aggression and conquest (FAIR.org, 5/19/26; FAIR.org, 10/13/23). Those who killed 165 people, most of them children, on an apparent double-tap strike on a school (Middle East Eye, 3/5/26) are not “terrorists,” nor are those who have repeatedly, deliberately attacked Gaza’s hospitals. In such a framework, the empire’s violence—if it’s violence at all—is a non-problem, while that of the racialized Other is a danger that must be eradicated.
‘An existential threat’
Bloomberg (6/17/26) complains that “even a temporary lifting of oil sanctions will put money in the regime’s coffers”—suggesting that its preferred outcome would be a permanent blockade.
The papers saw perils in Iran’s weapons, real or imagined. Bloomberg (6/17/26) said that Iran’s “drones remain a potent threat” and that its missiles “pose threats” as well. In reality, the “threat” posed by Iranian drones and missiles is only to the US and Israel’s ability to wage war on Iran unimpeded. Drones and missiles aren’t prohibited under international law, and Iran has a right to possess them and use them against attackers. Nothing in the piece, of course, said anything about limiting US and Israeli weapons access. To US media, Iranians are a “threat” when they have conventional weapons like drones and missiles, while Americans and Israelis are entitled to possess not only equivalent armaments, but also nuclear weapons.
As always, the specter of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic weighed on the imperial imagination, evidence be damned. The Wall StreetJournal (6/16/26) wrote: “We’ve supported the President’s Iran policy. We’ve done so because a nuclear Iran would be an existential threat.” The authors contended that “the media critics and Democrats” rebuking Trump over the war “would have stood by while a nuclear bomb became a fait accompli.”
The paper went on to assert: “Iran’s attestation that it doesn’t seek the bomb is meaningless. It has always said that—and done the opposite.” This is untrue, as the editors of the Wall StreetJournal would know if they read the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, which at the outset of the war quoted the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (3/2/26) as saying that Iran “doesn’t have a program for building nuclear weapons currently.”
In the same vein, the Washington Post claimed that “Iran has insisted for decades that it was not developing a nuclear weapon, even as it pursued the bomb.” In March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” In March 2026, Gabbard told a Senate hearing that Iran had not conducted what CBS (3/18/26) called “enrichment activities” in the period since the June 2025 US/Israeli war on Iran.
‘Dishonorable people’
The Wall Street Journal (6/16/26) asserts that “the people of Iran…would be the big losers” if Iran were allowed to export its main resource—because that would “rescue the regime financially.”
Even as these papers shrieked about the supposed Iranian menace, Bloomberg, the Journal and the Post offered readers fantasies of imperial omnipotence.
Under the US/Iran agreement, negotiations over the nuclear issue will take place over the next 60 days. The Journal (6/16/26) complained that
pushing off the most difficult nuclear issues in talks with “dishonorable people” who don’t deal “in good faith,” as the president called them on Friday, doesn’t inspire confidence. If the regime won’t agree to dismantle its nuclear program now, why would it do so after weeks of oil exports and other relief?
Apart from parroting Trump’s racist invocation of the “shifty oriental” trope, the Journal’s question reflected its detachment from reality. The US and Israel lost the war (FAIR.org, 4/24/26). Suggesting that Trump should force Iran to “dismantle its nuclear program” is as sensible as writing that the US must keep South Vietnam from going Communist after Saigon had already fallen.
The Post asserted: “Eventually the Iranian nuclear program needs to be dealt with.”
The US tried to “deal with” it. Stopping Iran from developing the nuclear weapons that it isn’t developing was one of the main justifications Trump put forth for starting this year’s war. But, as the Intercept (6/15/26) reported, “There is no evidence that nuclear sites that were not attacked during Trump’s 2025 Iran war, such as Pickaxe Mountain, were ever damaged” in the 2026 US/Israeli offensive.
Bloomberg acknowledged that the US now had “less leverage” over Iran than when it started the war, but couldn’t help wishcasting about nuclear negotiations, saying:
The focus should extend beyond the fate of the country’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium (which must be diluted or, preferably, shipped out of the country entirely) to other elements of its nuclear complex, including advanced centrifuges and research into potential weaponization.
The US launched a war of aggression on Iran that could ultimately cost the American public $1 trillion (CNBC, 4/14/26), and Iran not only survived but, thanks in large part to its demonstrable ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, is now strong enough that it could potentially attain regional primacy (Escalation Trap, 6/6/26). The US is, therefore, in no position to determine what Iran “must” or mustn’t do.
This article was originally published by FAIR; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.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
