Matthew M. Hausman is a trial attorney and writer who lives and works in Connecticut. A former journalist, Mr. Hausman continues to write on a variety of topics, including science, health and medicine, Jewish issues and foreign affairs, and has been a legal affairs columnist for a number of publications.
During my weekly morning walk to shul on Shabbat, I pass the house of a pleasant, elderly gentile woman who always comes out to wish me a “good sabbath" and shmooze. Last month, I told her she would not be seeing me for a couple weeks because my wife and I would be in Israel visiting our son and his family for Purim.
So, she was surprised when she saw me walking by the next week. When she asked why I was still in the States, I explained that all flights had been cancelled because of the war with Iran, to which she exclaimed, “so you couldn’t go because of that [expletive] Trump." Somewhat taken aback, I responded that, no, we could not go because of Iran, and that the preemptive strikes against the Islamic Republic were a joint US-Israel venture.
My neighbor was as uninformed as anybody who relies on CNN or MS Now (formerly MSNBC) for their news and has a preternatural, visceral hatred for President Trump.
But it got me to thinking. Considering the clear justification for Operation Roaring Lion to eliminate Iran as a nuclear and ballistic missile threat and exporter of regional and global terrorism, it is worth comparing the mainstream media’s coverage now to its fawning treatment of the “Arab Spring" fifteen years ago. The disparity between then and now reflects neither objectivity nor neutrality but instead institutional bias.
Today’s coverage of the war often includes selective reporting that (a) obfuscates the need to contain Iran, (b) implies moral equivalence between Iranian aggression and the coordinated response to it, (c) attempts to downplay the mullahs’ fanatical extremism, and (d) implies that Israel influences American foreign policy. And such addled analyses are being exploited by those on the “horseshoe right," like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who invoke ancient conspiracy theories regarding disproportionate Jewish power and control to explain the current war and suggest that Trump was duped into acting (that is particularly ridiculous).
In covering the Arab Spring, the media provided sycophantic and uncritical analysis, falsely asserting that it represented an authentic democratizing moment throughout Arab-Muslim society inspired by the Obama administration - though in truth it was fueled by radical Islamists, aided by administration policies that empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates.
Coverage of Operation Roaring Lion, in contrast, includes revisionist and mendacious portrayals of an apocalyptic regime that preaches genocide, brutalizes its citizens, and has been attacking American targets in the Mideast and around the world for nearly fifty years. Largely ignored are those Iranians who truly want regime change and see American and Israeli intervention as integral to the process.
Such skewed reporting flows from the same outlets that fifteen years ago said nothing when Obama turned his back on Iranian protesters because of his feckless, vainglorious pursuit of a nuclear deal - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA") - which only facilitated the mullahs’ nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions and rewarded their bad faith with billions of dollars in unfrozen assets and sanctions relief.
The Arab Spring was not an organic outcry for democracy as much as a crafted narrative giving the illusion of western reforms in a region that had known only autocratic rule since the rise of Islam. It was described as validating Obama’s counterintuitive policy of “leading from behind," which only served to compromise relationships with US allies and create a power vacuum that invited Russian and Chinese aggression, empowered Islamic radicalism, enabled the proliferation of terrorism, and encouraged the nuclearization of Iran.
The truth is, the so-called “spring" was a myth created by the media to define societal turbulence that was not grounded in homogenous ideologies or thematic consistency, and to give kudos to a presidential administration whose foreign policy ranged from ineffectual to disastrous. Indeed, the uprisings that characterized it were disparate, localized conflicts that produced neither political reform nor democratic freedom; and the mobs that rampaged from Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia to Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain were motivated by divergent political, religious, and cultural priorities - not any yearning for western values.
The western media dubbed it the “social media revolution" because participants used platforms like Facebook and Twitter to organize and publicize their protests in real time, while crediting the Obama administration with promoting the spread of western political ideals throughout the Mideast. Such accolades were neither deserved nor reflective of facts on the ground, however, but were used to deflect criticism of incompetent or misguided policies that emboldened Islamists and expedited their political ascendancy throughout the Mideast.
In fact, many believed the 2012 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi involved militias linked to Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that were encouraged to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya (as well as the governments in Egypt and Tunisia). Although Qaddafi had officially renounced terrorism, relinquished weapons of mass destruction, and submitted to nuclear inspections, he was deposed by rebel extremists who were reportedly armed with weapons funneled to them with American approval.
Of course, most outlets at the time failed to report these events critically, choosing instead to validate the narrative of a president who came into office with no record of accomplishment and whose performance showed an alarming lack of foreign policy insight and ability.
The differences in press coverage of Obama versus Trump are like night and day.
Whereas coverage of the Arab Spring under Obama often consisted of glowing puffery, treatment of the current war with Iran seems tinged by the media’s reluctance to say anything positive about Trump. Or Israel.
Though Trump’s brash predictions of a quick war seemed more self-serving than strategically objective, they did not minimize the justification for acting against an Iranian regime that, even after the “twelve-day war" in 2025, continued to proclaim its intent to develop nuclear and ballistic weapons for use against Israel, Jewish targets, and the West. But many in the media cannot seem to get beyond Trump’s bombast - or their own Trump Derangement Syndrome - to understand that an extremist regime run by apocalyptic clerics would have no compunction about using such weapons to realize their radical eschatology.
And it is impossible to erase from the equation the fact that beyond despising President Trump, Democrats who oppose him seem to have no coherent agenda going into the US midterm elections. When fifty-five House Democrats refuse to support a Congressional resolution acknowledging Iran as a terrorist state, one has to question their motives, and also the agenda of a media establishment that trumpets partisan hyperbole.
One also has to question the motivations of news organizations that provided airtime to Iranian apologists without substantive pushback on multiple occasions before and after the war began; or published an obituary of Ayatollah Khamenei that actually praised him in some media and in others whitewashed his deceptiveness regarding Iran's nuclear aspirations and downplayed his role in exporting brutality throughout his own country, the Mideast and beyond (as reported by CAMERA.ORG with respect to ABC News and the New York Times, respectively).
One need not like Trump to understand that Iran must be contained or that the threat it poses today is the legacy of injudicious Obama- and Biden-era policies, including
(a) the JCPOA, which did not prevent but rather facilitated Iran’s nuclear program, and
(b) the unfreezing of billions in assets and relaxation of sanctions, which gave Iran the financial wherewithal to develop its weapons programs and strengthen its hand in global terrorism.
It is also necessary to recognize and parse the ramblings of a media whose objectivity is compromised by its dislike of Trump, disdain for Israel, and conflation of journalism with political activism.
Moreover, it should be lost on nobody familiar with Mideast history and geopolitics that the Gulf Arab states - who have never been philosemitic - understand the threat posed by a nuclear Iran. It seems they are more comfortable with the idea of a militarily capable Israel that has no expansionist intentions, than a radical Shiite aggressor that does.
But perhaps these events are unfolding in accordance with biblical prophecy (e.g., Yechezkel, 38-39) foretelling that the final war of Gog and Magog will start with Elam (Persia). Indeed, Sefer Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) contains the following prophetic words concerning Israel’s ultimate triumph:
“And I will bring against Elam [identified with Persia] four winds from the four ends of the heavens, and I will scatter them to all these winds, and there shall be no nation where the exiles of Elam shall not come. And I will break Elam before their enemies and before those who seek their lives, and I will bring upon them evil - the kindling of My wrath, says Hashem, and I will send the sword after them until I completely destroy them." (Yirmiyahu, 49:36-37.)
And maybe there’s comfort in knowing that, though the instrumentality of prophesy may be rooted in this world, the prophetic decree certainly comes from above.