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| Kushner, Vance, and Witkoff - US negotiators sent to negotiate with Iran (ABC) |
The prevailing narrative is familiar: a U.S. war with Iran
could only make things worse. The mainstream media - their cheering section -
reinforces this view with selectively curated “evidence,” filtered through
selective attention, selective interpretation, and selective memory.
Consider the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. It did not
include Israel’s war with Hezbollah. A distinction largely ignored by media
pundits. Hezbollah is routinely described as a “militia,” a term that subtly
legitimizes it, implying a weaker force merely fighting back against a regional
superpower. Missing from that framing is that Hezbollah actually is a heavily
armed Iranian proxy committed to Israel’s destruction.
When rockets are fired into Israel and Israel responds, the
narrative flips: Israel ‘escalates’, Iran ‘reacts’. The facts matter less than
the storyline. And that storyline - sometimes implied, sometimes explicit -
casts Israel as the aggressor, led by a prime minister driven by extremists in
his governing coalition. Meanwhile, segments of Israel’s own left appear more
focused on removing Netanyahu than confronting the very real threats posed by
Iran and its proxies.
In this telling, Iran was never the problem. Its regional
aggression, its proxy network, even the atrocities committed by those proxies
are downplayed or ignored. So too is the regime’s brutal repression of its own
people. These inconvenient facts simply don’t fit the narrative.
Instead, we are shown rising gas prices and economic strain.
Real issues, to be sure. But presented as proof that the war was misguided from
the start. The ceasefire becomes evidence of weakness. The war itself becomes
‘unnecessary’, its costs emphasized, its outcomes dismissed.
But that conclusion requires ignoring a great deal...
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