Manufacturing Consent: The Media’s Role in Omitting Israel’s First Strike on Iran

On June 13, 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a preemptive airstrike targeting Iranian nuclear and allied military sites in Tehran, Natanz, and Damascus. The strikes killed multiple top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), along with scientists central to Iran’s nuclear development. That same day, Iran retaliated with Operation True Promise 3, launching over 150 missiles and 100 drones at Israeli cities including Tel Aviv and Haifa.

But while Iran’s response dominated international headlines, Israel’s initiating strike—both in fact and legality—was barely acknowledged in most Western media outlets. In the immediate aftermath, coverage focused on Israeli defense systems intercepting most threats. Reports declared the Iranian attack a “symbolic failure.” It was only later that Reuters confirmed Iranian missiles had broken through Israel’s defenses, causing infrastructural damage and political fallout.

What International Law Says About Preemptive Strikes

International law, as outlined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, allows the use of force only in self-defense after an armed attack. This principle was reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice’s 2004 advisory opinion

Legal scholar Mary Ellen O’Connell, a leading voice on international conflict law, maintains that “preemptive self-defense” has lacks legal standing under current international norms. She emphasizes that the legality of military force depends on necessity and immediacy—criteria not met in this case. Legal experts argue that Israel has not provided verifiable evidence of an imminent Iranian threat that would justify invoking anticipatory self-defense. And yet, this legal context has been almost entirely absent from mainstream coverage. Most outlets adopted Israel’s “preemptive” language without challenge, subtly framing its actions as defensive while scrutinizing Iran’s response as escalation.

Framing the Conflict and Manufactured Consent

The term manufactured consent was coined by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. The theory describes how mass media guide public opinion not through overt propaganda but through emphasis, framing, and omission—subtle tools aligned with elite, political, and economic interests. In this model, media do not merely report events; they filter them. Information is shaped by ownership structures, advertising demands, and the reliance on government or corporate sources. Narratives that reinforce the dominant worldview are amplified. Others are sidelined or excluded entirely.

Western media outlets flooded the airwaves with footage from Tel Aviv: damaged apartment blocks, interviews with Israeli civilians, Iron Dome interceptions captured in real time. Yet stories of the 200+ Iranian civilians killed—alongside IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists—were either downplayed or omitted entirely in Western outlets like CNN, BBC, and The New York Times. There were no profile pieces, no human-interest segments, and no social media campaigns to #PrayForTehran. Very few outlets reported in equal depth on the Iranian casualties or the destruction of Iranian infrastructure.

According to Iranian state media and corroborated by global energy tracking agencies, Israel’s strikes damaged critical gas and fuel depots and destroyed sections of Iran’s missile development facilities. The Associated Press reported that Israeli airstrikes targeted key military and nuclear sites in Iran, resulting in significant casualties and infrastructure damage.

Journalism’s Responsibility in Conflict

According to Dr. Leila Sadat, former special adviser to the International Criminal Court, the way media present conflicts has profound effects on public understanding, legal accountability, and international pressure. “If you shape the story around retaliation without clarifying who acted first,” she notes, “you are shaping not just perception—but legitimacy.”

This framework is on full display in the coverage of the Iran-Israel exchange. Following Iran’s missile response, media outlets provided detailed accounts of damage within Israel, civilian fear, and emergency responses. Vivid images and eyewitness reports helped humanize Israeli suffering. Meanwhile, reporting on Iranian casualties and destruction—particularly in and around Isfahan International Airport—was far more muted, despite satellite imagery confirming damage in both military and civilian areas.

When coverage omits who initiated violence, fails to contextualize it legally, or doesn’t humanize all victims equally, it becomes harder for the public to question the moral and legal foundations of military action. That vacuum of scrutiny, in turn, fuels cycles of escalation, dehumanization, and impunity. As Chomsky has noted, Western media often distinguish between “worthy victims” and “unworthy victims”—terms that describe how grief and humanity are selectively ascribed. Victims in allied nations receive empathy and visibility; but victims in adversarial or non-aligned countries are often rendered statistics, or omitted entirely.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” — Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent

The Israel-Iran exchange is not just a flashpoint of military activity—it is a case study in how public understanding of war is manufactured. While Iran’s missile retaliation has dominated headlines, the silence around Israel’s initiating role has distorted the narrative and shielded it from legal or moral accountability. Because in the end, truth is not just about facts. It’s about framing.