Finian Cunningham
The Western media are assisting the descent into barbarism through their well-honed lies and pandering to the imperialist thuggery of Trump's regime.
The Western media are assisting the descent into barbarism through their well-honed lies and pandering to the imperialist thuggery of Trump's regime.
After all, America's Supreme Leader, Donald Trump, boasted about kidnapping Venezuela's president and declaring last week that he considers himself above international law, and there was no Western media criticism, never mind condemnation. So, who knows what thoughts are ricocheting around Trump's delusional, megalomaniac mind?
The Western media are no check on abuse of power, as they laughably claim to be. They are cheerleading for more.
Trump is promising that American military help is on the way to Iranian protesters to "Make Iran Great Again."
Only seven months ago, the U.S. president launched a "beautiful" blitzkrieg on Iran, bombing the country's three civilian nuclear sites. That illegal aggression was carried out in conjunction with Israeli air strikes despite Trump supposedly at the time conducting exploratory negotiations with Tehran.
Trump is warning of further military intervention "to protect" Iranian gangs who have taken to violent protests on the streets of Tehran and other cities over the past three weeks. The Iranian government said any military action by the United States will mean all-out war against U.S. interests across the Middle East, including critical oil supplies.
The trouble with delusion is that there's no stopping it; it's self-reinforcing. Trump's Delta Force abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and killing of hundreds of people on land and at sea reinforce his delusion of impunity and omnipotence.
The Western news media are also fueling the false narrative that Iran is collapsing and that Trump can cosplay as the shining knight riding to the rescue.
All the U.S. and European mainstream media are peddling the narrative that the "Iranian regime" is facing its final days because, allegedly, it is losing its corrupt authoritarian control. British and German politicians are saying the Islamic Republic is going down. European parliaments are refusing to recognize diplomatic norms with Iran.
Violent seditionists in Iran are recognized and legitimized above the sovereign government.
None of the Western corporate-controlled media reported accurately on the much greater mass demonstrations that took place this week in Tehran and other major cities that were in support of the country's government and denouncing regime-change interference in its internal affairs.
The Western media have distorted initial, relatively small public protests over deteriorating economic conditions and soaring inflation as representing a definitive challenge to the Iranian government. This is wishful thinking that belies orchestration by Western media. The protests in Iran that began on December 28 rapidly turned violent with armed mobs attacking public buildings and security forces.
Hundreds of people, including security officers, have been killed over the past two weeks. Buildings have been torched in arson attacks. And still the Western media lionize protesters as peaceful and unarmed. It's the classic Western psychological operation, as was seen in the CIA-backed violent coup in Ukraine in 2014.
The Iranian authorities and Iranian media claim that foreign agitators have exploited the initial protests over economic grievances to fan violent chaos.
Former CIA director Mike Pompeo has crowed about Israeli Mossad agents fomenting the disturbances.
The Western media do not explain the background to chronic economic hardships in Iran as a result of "crippling sanctions" that the United States and its Western partners have imposed illegally on and off for four decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Western aggression against Iran is simply normalized as an acceptable prerogative for American and European governments.
The Western news media have been facilitating criminal aggression against Iran for decades, with their non-stop propaganda demonizing alleged Iranian state terrorism, alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, and an alleged theocratic tyranny.
It never occurs to the likes of the New York Times, CBS, the BBC or the Guardian that Iran is periodically targeted for regime change by the United States and its Western partners. Well, perhaps, that is too benign a reading. It does occur to these media, but they dutifully bury the facts and instead peddle the self-serving false narrative of a "popular uprising against the regime."
The Western media have been loyally serving Western imperialist crimes for a long time. In 1953, the first foreign regime-change operation in the postwar era took place in Iran. The United States and Britain destabilized the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh because he dared to nationalize the country's oil industry, which London, in particular, had plundered for decades.
The regime change ushered in the dictatorship of the Shah, who ruled with a brutal iron fist under the watch of the American CIA and Britain's MI6. The Shah was eventually overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The monarch's son, Reza Shah, living in luxury exile in the U.S., is currently calling for Trump to invade Iran for regime change.
The American and British media enabled the 1953 CIA and MI6 coup d'état against Iranian democracy by smearing the Mossadegh government, claiming that it was overseeing chaos and anarchy, claims that are echoed today in Western reporting on Iran. The violence is not blamed on gun-wielding and Molotov-cocktail-throwing mobs. Western media have attributed all deaths to the government, and Western parliaments follow suit by cutting ties with Tehran.
In 1953, the CIA and MI6 mobilized, bribed, and directed street gangs to run amok in Tehran, killing civilians and police officers. The deliberate objective, then, as it is now, is for Washington and London to make Iran ungovernable and precipitate the overthrow of the government. The Shah was installed as the ruler to do the bidding of American and British interests until his despotic reign was overthrown 17 years later by a popular uprising.
What's going on today in Iran is a replay of a long-running dirty game that the Western states and their propaganda media have been imposing on that country for nearly eight decades. The dirty game of regime change keeps being repeated, not just in Iran but in countless other countries around the world, because the U.S. and its Western partners are given impunity by the Western media, dutifully laundering the dirty business.
The U.S. and its Western lackeys have been involved in up to 100 regime change operations since 1953, and that's not including overt illegal wars. No other state comes close to this record of criminality. No wonder the world seems to be in such chaos and lawlessness. The Western media has sped the descent into barbarism.
Finian Cunningham is coauthor of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism's Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation