AhlulBayt News Agency: Reports indicate that organized pressure from Israeli lobbies on Western media to shape narratives against Iran has intensified.
In recent weeks, the Media Monitoring Center has revealed what it describes as “unprecedented pressure from Israeli lobbies on Western media.” A range of media organizations in Europe and North America have been pressured to follow two specific narrative lines regarding Iran.
First, the actions of Iran’s security forces against armed individuals and infiltration groups during recent protests are to be portrayed as “crackdowns on the people.” Second, casualty figures from these events are to be reported with multiple-fold exaggeration; according to claims, some media outlets have reflected numbers 10 to 13 times higher than the official statistics.
Media analysts believe these efforts are part of a broader campaign to shift global public attention. They argue that Israel, facing international pressure due to heavy casualties in Gaza, is trying to ease some of that pressure by highlighting negative narratives about Iran and steering the media landscape in a different direction.
Iranian officials have claimed in separate statements that the United States and Israel were pursuing a complex plan to create a “widespread urban war” in Iran during the recent economic protests. According to them, the entry of armed individuals among the protesters was part of this scenario. Official figures released by Iran indicate that 3,117 people were killed in these events, including 2,427 ordinary citizens and military personnel, and 690 armed “terrorist” individuals.
Conflicting and exponentially increasing figures regarding the deaths in Iran’s December events were being reported by various Western and Israeli networks—led by media hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran—despite these networks admitting that, due to internet shutdowns, they had no direct access to news from inside Iran. The puzzling question is how media outlets that claimed to lack on-the-ground information were able to report daily, with specific numbers, on rising casualties.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Security Council, citing a “responsibility toward the truth,” refrained from releasing official death tolls until a precise distinction could be made between ordinary citizens, military and law enforcement personnel, and terrorist and rioter elements.
But the answer to why Western media were pushed to follow the narrative of rising deaths in Iran—and how far this number was intended to go—can be found in statements by Netanyahu, who claimed regarding the deaths in Iran: “The silence of many European countries in the face of the massacre of tens of thousands in Iran is shameful! This silence reflects exceptional misguidance and hypocrisy. Where are all those who accused Israel of genocide, which never actually existed?”
These statements clearly show how exposing the scale of the genocide in Gaza and the killing of over 71,000 Palestinians has shifted the international environment against the Zionist regime—so much so that the regime seizes every opportunity and distorted narrative to sideline this “crime of the century.”
Experts believe that Israeli officials are well aware that these pretexts will not succeed in erasing this stain from the face of Zionism.
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