Image: AI generated
Any logical thinking person should be sick to death of watching Western media manipulate every Iranian statement into a horror movie script designed to terrify ordinary people while giving the US and Israel a free pass.
Recently, Iran’s chief military spokesman, General Abolfazl Shekarchi, made a blunt warning: that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide will not be safe for Tehran’s enemies as long as US and Israeli bombs keep raining down on his country. This came almost three weeks into an air campaign that’s killed Iran’s supreme leader, top security chief Ali Larijani and other high‑ranking officials and smashed its military and energy sectors.
To any clear-thinking person, the General’s message is a clear wartime message aimed at US and Israeli officials, military personnel and operatives who don’t spend their entire lives sealed in bunkers. It’s Iran saying: “You kill our leadership in their streets and offices; we know where yours go on holiday, and they won’t be safe there either.” Ugly? Yes. Dangerous? Absolutely. But that’s a targeted deterrent in the middle of a shooting war, not a random promise to mow down innocent tourists.
However, the way outlets plugged into the Associated Press wiring – which then flows into AAP and the rest of the Western ecosystem – framed it was totally different. Headlines have been pumped out about Iran “threatening world tourism sites,” “recreational and tourist sites globally,” and “targeting tourism sites worldwide.” They foregrounded “tourism” and “sites,” and quietly buried the crucial qualifier: “for Tehran’s enemies.” It’s a tiny shift in wording that makes a massive difference to how the public reads the story.
US and Israeli forces have openly bragged about decimating Iran’s military and killing key figures: the dead supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his successor fighting for legitimacy under fire, Supreme National Security Council head Ali Larijani, senior Revolutionary Guard officers and more. Israeli officials have essentially said out loud their war aim is to wipe out Iran’s leadership and break the regime. But they never will.
When they assassinate Iranian leaders in their own country, this is presented as “decapitation,” “pressure,” part of a “strategy” to weaken the regime. Entire sectors of Iran’s economy are smashed, thousands killed or injured, and it’s covered in the dry language of policy analysis and military necessity.
But when one Iranian general says, “we will hunt your decision‑makers wherever they think they’re safe, including in leisure spaces,” the West suddenly discovers its moral outrage and calls it a threat to “tourism sites worldwide.” That’s not objectivity but narrative work. It takes Western violence against officials and infrastructure and normalises it as governance, while coding Iranian retaliation as mindless slaughter of holiday‑makers.
The double standard is blatantly insulting. And it’s not accidental. It primes Western publics – including Australians – to accept that if, at some point, a bomb goes off in a place crowded with civilians, “well, Iran did say it would hit tourism, didn’t it?” The stage is set in advance, the scapegoat named, and any questioning of the story will be ridiculed as conspiracy.
We’ve seen this logic at work at home in Australia. Take AAP’s fact‑check on the Bondi Junction Westfield stabbing massacre, where six people were killed by Joel Cauchi. Within hours, social media was full of people calling it a “false flag,” speculating that the attack was staged to push everything from stop‑and‑search powers to digital ID laws.
AAP came down hard claiming Bondi was a false flag is “false,” the available “evidence doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” and there is “no credible evidence” the attack was staged.
AAP defines “false flag” largely via examples that have been misused by US conspiracy culture – 9/11, Sandy Hook, mass shootings – and folds Bondi into that same basket. If you even raise the possibility that security services might manipulate an incident, or at least ruthlessly exploit it, you’re lumped in with the worst kind of denialism and victim‑harassment.
What’s carefully avoided is any serious reckoning with the fact that states – including Western democracies – have absolutely lied and spun their way into wars and crackdowns, from the Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s WMDs. You won’t find that context in an AAP fact‑check or an honest discussion of how terror incidents are used to ram through new powers and reshape public attitudes. People are expected to swallow the “lone wolf, mental illness, nothing more to see here” line, and if you don’t, you’re the problem.
AAP and its peers act as bouncers at the door of public discourse. They don’t just debunk bad evidence; they police the very idea security agencies might have agendas, and close off the space where ordinary people can ask the most basic, democratic question: “Who benefits from this climate of fear?”
When AAP and other Western‑aligned outlets reframe an Iranian warning to US and Israeli enemies as an indiscriminate threat to “tourism sites worldwide,” the same move scaled up. The point isn’t just to report what was said; but to embed a script in the public mind:, Iran equals global terror against civilians, anywhere, anytime. If something happens, you’ve already been softened up to nod along when fingers point in one direction.
Iran has never been a State sponsored supporter of terrorism, but the US and Israel are.
Examining the language of “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations anywhere in the world will no longer be safe for you,” where “you” explicitly refers to Tehran’s enemies. That line, in context, is about hunting those responsible for bombing Iran’s leadership and infrastructure. But by stripping out that context, by putting “world tourism” in the headline and burying the qualifier, Western outlets turn it into a blanket threat against civilians.
What’s blatantly obvious is the deliberate fear‑mongering mainstream media is attempting to hype up.. It serves multiple purposes:
It demonises Iran in the broadest possible way, beyond military or political elites, so that any negotiation or de‑escalation can be painted as appeasement.
It creates psychological cover for US and Israeli escalation: if “they” are coming for our beaches and shopping malls, anything “we” do to them is justified.
It prepares the ground for blaming Iran for any future atrocity that suits Western strategic needs, regardless of who actually carries it out.
People aren’t meant to to say this out loud. Instead they’re meant to accept that “our” media just neutrally transmit facts and only fringe weirdos talk about false flags or manufactured consent.
What’s obvious is a media system that:
Normalises US–Israeli assassinations and large‑scale strikes on Iran as “strategy” while portraying Iranian retaliation as uniquely deranged.
Filters Iranian statements through a lens that maximises fear and minimises context, especially when “tourism” and “civilians” can be invoked.
Uses fact‑checking at home, like the Bondi piece, not only to correct bad evidence but to stigmatise deeper suspicion of security agencies as inherently conspiratorial.
That ecosystem is not neutral. It has interests. It lives off access to officials, off alignment with NATO‑centric narratives, of the unspoken assumption Western violence is basically sane while “their” violence is pathological.
People are allowed to reject that framing and to say: I see what you’re doing, and I’m not buying it. Everyone can hold two thoughts at once – that some online conspiracy content is garbage, and that governments absolutely do exploit terror and fear to push agendas.
As long as Western media keep twisting Iran’s statements into horror trailers for the next war, and outlets like AAP keep patrolling the borders of “acceptable” scepticism, everyone should remain loudly, unapologetically suspicious of every story they attempt to sell.
Agreed!!!
For fifty years I have heard Israel's lies and, for more than fifty years I've heard the US's lies. Now hearing the two of them together with both their current leaders I know it's at least treble the lies.