US Media Mostly Care for Iranians When They Can Be Used to Justify Bombing

FAIR

The United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, propelling the entire region into a predictable cataclysm of unprecedented proportions.

This puts paid to the alleged “peacemaking” project of US President Donald Trump, who was supposed to be keeping the country out of international wars rather than actively seeking to expedite the end of the world.

The attacks put an abrupt end to the negotiations underway between the US and Iran—to the delight of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always viewed as anathema anything remotely resembling diplomacy or the pursuit of peace.

Three days before the joint strikes, a Politico exclusive (2/25/26) reported that “senior advisers” to Trump “would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country.” As per the report, administration officials were “privately arguing that an Israeli attack would trigger Iran to retaliate, helping muster support from American voters for a US strike.”

So much for subsequent US/Israeli attempts to cast the assault as “preemptive” in nature. Indeed, there is nothing at all “preemptive” about forcing Iran to retaliate; this is instead what you would call a deliberate provocation. READ MORE AT FAIR.

How the New York Times paved the way for apocalyptic war

 Middle East Eye

Shortly after the United States and Israel launched unprecedented strikes on Iran this weekend, blithely propelling the entire region into unfathomable chaos, the editorial board of the New York Times published its two cents’ worth in an editorial directed towards US sociopath-in-chief Donald Trump: “Why Have You Started This War, Mr. President?”

It’s a valid question, to be sure - particularly given Trump’s previous promise that he wouldn’t entangle the country in unnecessary conflicts abroad.

And yet it is a question that would be far less hypocritically posed by, say, a newspaper that had not once run an opinion piece by John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran”.

A few paragraphs into their ostensible antiwar intervention - which was subsequently retitled “Trump’s Attack on Iran Is Reckless” - the Times editorial board contended that the president’s “goals are ill-defined”, while he has “failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome”. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.