Iran and Manufactured Consent
On the night of 21 June the United States bombed Iran, a country they were not previously at war with, without provocation. The targets of the bombings were supposed sites of Iran's nuclear weaponry project. Of course on the previous days Iran and Israel had already been exchanging missiles, after Israel started a war on 13 June by attacking residential areas and supposed nuclear facilities, in a supposed effort to attack Iran's nuclear program. Since then, at the time of writing, there have been almost 500 civillian deaths and thousands of injuries caused by attacks from both sides, though Israeli attacks caused 90% of these casualties.
Why is there even a war?
I mentioned that the targets are supposedly key personnel and sites for the Iranian nuclear program, but the issue I have with that isn't what you may think. As many people have pointed out there is no actual proof of Iran having a nuclear weapons program, obviously implying there may not be one. I would disagree with those implications. I think it is obvious that Iran is building a nuclear arsenal, but I have issues with the idea of that being the actual reason for the attack. It is in no way a weird or particularly bad thing for Iran to have nuclear weaponry or even a nuclear weapons program. Yes, of course it is bad to make weapons in general, but Iran having nukes isn't worse than any other country having them. If the United States are allowed a nuclear arsenal why wouldn't Iran be? The argument that Israelis and Americans have been making in response to this, is that Iran aims at the destruction of the state of Israel, and would therefore instantly use said nukes on Israel. But this logic is deeply flawed. There are quite a few states which aim at the destruction of another, own nukes, and don't use them to destroy those states. To use a relevant example, both the states of India and Pakistan want the other to cease existing. This has not caused either of the nuclear states to use nukes on the other. Therefore the nuclear weapons program of Iran can't be the reason for the attacks, unless both Israel and the United States are under leadership that is more stupid than evil, which I do not believe.
So, what do I believe the actual reason is? Recently, and in fact every time he has been in the Israeli prime minister's office, Benjamin Netanyahu has struggled with his power over the state, and the thing he historically does when this is the case, is either to play to the far right, or to make sure there is a war the Israeli public cares about. This is why Netanyahu refuses to do everything in his power to rescue the hostages, despite this being the number one thing the public demands of him: the public wouldn't want the fighting to continue, he would become less popular, and the attacks on Gaza would stop, leading to the far-right ceasing their support. But, after years of human rights abuses, Gaza has recently stopped being that attractive of a target to the Israeli public, the Israeli far-right, and the international community. This meant that Netanyahu needed a new target, and a new war, to stay in power. Iran was simply the most obvious option for an enemy that would immediately make sense to the public and the international community (the far-right would support a war no matter what, fascists are insane), as they are supporters of Hezbollah and the Houthis, two parties that are declared enemies of Israel. Additionally, a new war serves as a distraction from the ethnic cleansing and arguably genocide that is being committed in Gaza. And that's truly all I believe there to be to it: it's just a play for Netanyahu to stay in power.
After the war got started, the likelihood of the United States joining in was relatively high from the beginning. Iran has been a declared enemy of the United States for years, and there is a lot of money to be made for the military industrial complex, the latter being the same reason for the US's continued support of Israel regardless of accusations of human rights abuses, no matter how terrible. But, unlike the continued human rights abuses in Gaza a war with Iran is something the US can join in on to generate additional profits.
Responses from the liberal media
The responses from liberal media outlets in America (e.g. CNN, AP, Reuters, NYT) and Germany (e.g. Zeit, Spiegel, SZ, FAZ) have been unsurprisingly positive overall. If you've found this blog and use social media, you are sure to have seen headlines like "US strikes mark a stunning demonstration of military might and presidential power" (CNN), and "U.S. Military Is Pulled Back Into Middle East Wars" (NYT), or "Vance presses Iran to 'go down the path of peace'" (AP). I was positively surprised to have found a single article that was somewhat condemnatory in Der Spiegel, but this was a single article in all the liberal news that are taken even somewhat seriously. The purpose of all this is obviously to convince the public of the idea that this war is justified and good, to grant the United States and other supporters of Israel the political capital to go through with the war.
Since this is obvious to most people who consider themselves part of the left, the only reason for me to write this, is to make it clear that despite all the nominal support of human rights from the liberal media, said outlets will never prioritize this support over making money. When supporting a human rights cause means that profits for a liberal publication will decrease, they will stop supporting said cause. In turn, this means that if a shareholder of a liberal outlet is of a certain opinion that isn't supported by the general public, that shareholder can pressure the outlet into writing what they believe, which eventually becomes what the general public believes after reading that opinion often enough. You can see this happening when you look at what the New York Times has been writing about trans people and how the public perception of trans people has changed since, this is manufactured consent. Therefore the only way to permanently stop an outlet from abandoning a human rights cause is by seperating the outlet from relying on money from individual rich people. And this does genuinely work, as can be seen with outlets that rely on small donations and subscriptions from readers, such as Taz and Aftermath, and independent journalists like Marisa Kabas and Erin Reed, are much better on this. The only possible negative when relying on independent journalists and outlets is that you might disagree with their assessments and opinions, which can easily be the case when reading a traditional newspaper.
The point of all this is that you shouldn't always rely on what traditional media says, as when their money is threatened they will write what rich people think will get the people they want elected. Everyone knows they should have a media diet that consists of multiple political view points, so that, in the end, you can come up with your own opinions on the matter through critical thinking, I am simply arguing that people should add independent journalism into that media diet as well.