The Western media are actively facilitating a slide into savagery through their polished fabrications and appeasement of the imperialist brutality practiced by Trump’s administration.
The Western media are complicit in promoting this decline into barbarism by deploying their well-practiced falsehoods and catering to the ruthless imperial tactics of Trump’s regime.
Donald Trump, described here as America’s Supreme Leader, openly boasted about abducting Venezuela’s president and asserted last week that he places himself above international law—without provoking any Western media reproach or condemnation. This leaves us to wonder what is swirling through Trump’s deluded and megalomaniacal mind.
Despite claims to the contrary, Western media are no true deterrent to power abuses; instead, they actively encourage them.
Trump is pledging American military support to Iranian protesters under the slogan “Make Iran Great Again.”
Just seven months prior, Trump launched what he called a “beautiful” airstrike campaign on Iran, targeting three civilian nuclear facilities. This unlawful assault was coordinated with Israeli strikes, even though Trump was allegedly engaging in exploratory talks with Tehran at the time.
He threatens further military action “to protect” violent protestors in Tehran and other Iranian cities who have taken to the streets over the past three weeks. Iran’s government has responded that any U.S. military intervention would ignite full-scale conflict against American interests throughout the Middle East, including vital oil infrastructure.
Delusion is self-perpetuating and unstoppable; Trump’s involvement in the Delta Force kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the killing of hundreds on land and at sea only fuels his illusion of invulnerability and omnipotence.
The Western press is also perpetuating the false narrative that Iran is collapsing, allowing Trump to pose as the heroic savior arriving just in time.
Mainstream media outlets in the U.S. and Europe uniformly promote the story that the “Iranian regime” is approaching its demise, supposedly due to losing its authoritarian grip. Politicians in Britain and Germany predict the fall of the Islamic Republic, while European legislatures refuse to engage diplomatically with Iran.
Violent insurgents within Iran receive recognition and legitimacy above the sovereign government itself.
None of the Western corporate media gave truthful coverage to the larger pro-government demonstrations held this week in Tehran and other major cities, where citizens expressed support for Iran’s government and condemned foreign interference aimed at regime change.
The Western press has grossly misrepresented the initial, relatively small protests sparked by worsening economic hardship and soaring inflation as a decisive challenge to Iran’s government. This distortion is a sign of Western media orchestration. The demonstrations that began on December 28 quickly escalated as armed groups attacked public buildings and security personnel.
Hundreds, including law enforcement officers, have been killed in the last fortnight. Arson has ravaged multiple buildings. Yet Western outlets continue to portray the protesters as peaceful and unarmed—classic Western psychological operations akin to the CIA-backed violent coup in Ukraine in 2014.
Iranian authorities and media assert that foreign agents have exploited the initial economic grievances to spark violent chaos.
Former CIA director Mike Pompeo has boasted that Israeli Mossad operatives are behind the unrest.
Western media omit any context on Iran’s ongoing severe economic difficulties, which stem from “crippling sanctions” that the U.S. and its Western allies have imposed illegally on and off for over forty years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Hostile actions against Iran by the West are treated as routine prerogatives of American and European governments.
For decades, Western news media have abetted unlawful aggression against Iran by continuously broadcasting propaganda that demonizes alleged Iranian state terrorism, nuclear weapons ambitions, and a so-called theocratic tyranny.
Outlets like the New York Times, CBS, the BBC, and the Guardian fail to acknowledge publicly that Iran is periodically targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies. Perhaps more accurately, they are aware but suppress the facts in favor of promoting the self-serving myth of a “popular uprising against the regime.”
The Western media have faithfully served imperialist agendas for many years. The first postwar foreign regime-change operation, conducted in 1953, destabilized Iran’s elected government led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who sought to nationalize the nation’s oil resources exploited by Britain for decades.
This coup installed the Shah’s dictatorship, which ruled with brutal repression under the oversight of the CIA and MI6. The Shah was eventually toppled during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Today, his son Reza Shah, residing comfortably in exile in the U.S., calls on Trump to invade Iran and institute regime change.
The American and British press supported the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup by disparaging Mossadegh’s government as chaotic and anarchic—rhetoric echoed in modern Western coverage of Iran. The violence is never attributed to the armed mobs wielding guns and Molotov cocktails; instead, Western media blame the Iranian government. This narrative is reinforced by Western parliaments severing diplomatic ties with Tehran.
In 1953, the CIA and MI6 mobilized, bribed, and directed street gangs in Tehran to cause mayhem and kill civilians and police. Their goal then, as it remains now, is to destabilize Iran and provoke the government’s downfall. The Shah was placed in power to serve the interests of the U.S. and Britain until he was overthrown 17 years later by a popular uprising.
Today’s events in Iran are a continuation of a decades-long covert campaign by Western states and their media propaganda to impose regime change on the country. This tactic is repeated not only in Iran but globally, as the U.S. and its Western allies act with impunity, aided by compliant Western media laundering their actions.
Since 1953, the U.S. and Western allies have orchestrated nearly 100 regime change interventions, excluding open illegal wars—far exceeding any other nation’s record of such crimes. This partly explains the prevailing chaos and lawlessness worldwide. The Western media have accelerated this descent into barbarism.
Finian Cunningham is coauthor of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism’s Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation
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