The Western Media's Thirty-Year War on Truth and Its Complicity in the Catastrophe in Palestine and Iran

For decades, the Western public has been led to believe that the road to peace in the Middle East runs through the rubble of Tehran. As the illegal and unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran enters its most critical phase, we are witnessing not just the destruction of a nation’s infrastructure, but the total moral collapse of the Western media establishments that cheerled the world to this point.

They are not merely reporting this war; they manufactured its pretext. They are complicit in its execution. And even now, as smuggled evidence reveals the destruction of major infrastructure within Israel and the miscalculations of the “megalomaniac” architects of this conflict, these corporate mouthpieces continue to peddle the fiction of an imminent Western victory to a public they have deliberately kept in the dark.

Below is a view of today’s headlines of the US–Israel–Iran war (Mar 11, 2026) and how they frame the war.

Western media complicity digs deeper with the use of curated language that has portrayed Palestinians as sub-human, animals and terror driven. To understand how we got here, one must deconstruct the language used to dehumanise the ‘enemy’. For years, Iran has been unable to escape a series of damning adjectives in the Western vocabulary: terror state, Islamist, fundamentalist, mullah-controlled, a threat to global peace. This is not journalism; it is demonisation. The language used is deliberate and dehumanising. For years, Iran has been branded a “rogue state,” the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” and a nation run by “bloodthirsty thugs”. It strips Iranians of their humanity and frames U.S. and Israeli aggression as a “civilising” mission.

This is the result of a thirty-year propaganda campaign designed to demonise Iran and force the world into submission to a USA-centric modality. The narrative of Iran -and that of Palestine- as an “existential threat” is a fabrication, a profitable and convenient lie.

And so western media has become the echo chambers of war. The architects of this deception are easily named. Media giants like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have functioned not as journalistic enterprises, but as conveyor belts for Trumpian hostility ( and that of previous presidents) and Israeli governmental propaganda. Former Fox host Tucker Carlson, despite his own flaws, recently laid bare this dynamic, describing these outlets as being joined by Israel’s “covert lobbyists” to beat the drums of war, conditioning the public to view military action as rational while marginalising those who warn of the consequences. 

This network of disinformation extends to Axios, which has amplified Israeli security assessments emphasising urgency and worst-case scenarios and to outlets like CNN and MSNBC, which a new investigation has revealed are employing hundreds of staff with direct ties to Israeli lobbying groups such as AIPAC and foreign euphemistically named ‘intelligence agencies’. These are not conspiracy theories; they are the documented employment histories published by the “paper of record.”

The result is a media groupthink where Iran’s diplomatic overtures for years are ignored, its defensive doctrine is mocked and every Iranian action is framed through the lens of “regime change” rather than national sovereignty .

Yet the facts on the ground tell a different story. While headlines in the West blare about Iranian aggression, evidence mounts that the USA military was likely responsible for the horrific strike on a school in Minab, which killed over 160 young girls, a massacre that the USA press has been all too eager to blame on Iranian incompetence or to ignore entirely. The conflicting beliefs required to condemn Iranian retaliation while justifying and celebrating  as necessary the extrajudicial killing (and kidnapping) of foreign leaders and the bombing of schools is the hallmark of a media apparatus that has abandoned ethics for empire.

Which brings us to AIPAC’s stranglehold and the cowardice of the press. Why this cowardice? Follow the money and the pressure. AIPAC and affiliated lobby groups have spent billions to unseat progressive politicians and silence any congressional voice that calls for ceasefire or adheres to international law. This political pressure trickles down directly into the newsroom. As one observer recently noted, claiming that there is no connection between AIPAC’s political spending and the censorship of critical narratives in the media is a disingenuous misrepresentation of reality.

Even as the “smuggled evidence” from the ground shows the destruction of Israeli and USA military assets in Arab client states and the failure of the “quick victory” promised by the unstable Trump, who bizarrely branded this massive military operation an “excursion”, the media refuses to recant. They are trapped by their own narrative. To report the truth now would be to admit that they have been peddling propaganda for a regime that has led the United States into a strategic quagmire. For some journalists to counter this narrative would be job suicide. 

Then there is the voice of sanity. Amid this cesspool of complicity, a few voices remain tethered to reality. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economist has emerged as one of the most vital truth-tellers of this crisis. While corporate media anchors wring their hands over Iran’s retaliatory capability, Sachs reminds us of the foundations of the crime. 

In a devastating analysis following the US-Israeli strikes, Sachs stated unequivocally: “The USA and Israel, in flagrant violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, and without authorisation from the Security Council, have launched an unprovoked war against Iran. They are trying to strangle the UN Charter and the rule of international law.”.

Sachs has dared to name the underlying malignancy: “The US goal is not the safety of the American people, but global hegemony.” He points out that the “axis of evil” rhetoric is a cover for a 30-year campaign to overthrow any government that opposes US-Israeli dominance in the Middle East. He is one of the few analysts willing to connect the dots between the lobbies, the media and the body bags.

The Western media’s coverage of the Iran war is not journalism; it is a death rattle of a profession that sold its integrity for access to power. They have presented the aggressor as the victim and the defender as an existential threat. They have done the bidding of the “megalomaniac” Trump and the messianic devotees in Tel Aviv, all while pretending to hold power to account.

History will judge these institutions harshly. It will note that when the bombs fell on Tehran, when the children died in Minab and when the infrastructure of Israel began to crumble, the men and women in the newsrooms of New York and Washington looked away.

They chose the lobbyist over the truth. And in doing so, they made themselves parties to the crime. They too should be charged with war crimes. 

* Shabodien Roomanay is the board Chairman of Muslim Views Publication, founding member of the Salt River Heritage Society, and a trustee of the SA Foundation for Islamic Art. 

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.