Did Iran agree to enter talks with the United States that could potentially end Middle East hostilities? The answer to this riddle underpins growing speculation that the U.S. has knowingly misled the world on the true state of this war over the last three weeks.
Equally incriminating, there’s also mounting concern that the U.S. media has been complicit in peddling the Trump administration’s misinformation.
While the Iranians have denied having entered into peace talks with the U.S., growing speculation that Trump may have found an off-ramp to an otherwise protracted war has already seen the price of crude oil tumble 13% and below the psychological barrier of US$100 a barrel.
At face value, this is good news, yet the more that comes out about the Trump administration’s porkies in relation to the now 24-day war, the less likely will talk of ‘the end being neigh’ be taken seriously.
First casualty of war
Admittedly, Trump is by no means the first leader in history to paint a rose-coloured picture of a country’s war efforts.
It was the ancient Greek tragedian, Aeschylus, who described truth as the first casualty of war.
But while President Richard Nixon was famously hostile toward the press, there is no direct public record of him using the specific words "criminal" and "unpatriotic" to describe media coverage of the Vietnam War.
Fast forward to March this year, and President Trump has undermined his earliest action in office – signing executive orders restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship - by using these terms to describe U.S. media news coverage of the U.S. and Israel war on Iran.
Weaponising the FCC
At Trump’s behest, his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, has gone a step further by threatening to revoke the licenses of broadcasters’ accused of “running hoaxes and new distortions that don’t operate in the public interest”.
Trump was understood to be “thrilled” to see Carr investigating “corrupt and highly unpatriotic news organisations”.
According to Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders (FSF) USA, Trump's second administration is being characterised by concrete actions to threaten, intimidate, control or weaken the media.
Weimers points to Carr’s threat related to coverage as one of the most blatant examples of that approach.
While in practice, the FCC can’t simply revoke an organisation’s licence, Weimers reminded the market that threats tend to work – without needing to be backed up.
When false claims backfire
Meanwhile, the New York Times editorial board delivered a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s false claims about the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran in a weekend opinion piece — and warned how they could ultimately backfire on him.
Trump’s “stream of falsehoods” about the conflict is nothing new, the board noted.
“Lying is standard behaviour for Mr. Trump, of course,” it wrote.
According to a Washington Post analysis, Trump made more than 30,000 misleading or untruthful claims during his first term in office alone.
“Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive,” the Times’ board continued, arguing it “creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common” and ultimately “undermines American values and interests”.
The board acknowledged “there is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war”, which has so far killed 13 U.S. service members, given what it described as Iran’s “murderous” government and its threats to people at home and abroad.
No planning - no exit strategy
However, instead of making a base case for the Iran war, the Times criticised Trump for lying “about the reasons for the war and about its progress", in an apparent attempt to hide his poor planning and the war’s questionable foundation.
“Whatever short-term gain Mr. Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world,” it concluded.
To be sure, the media has every right to be bamboozled by Trump’s newfound appetite for war give that during his election night victory speech in November 2024, he described himself as a global peacemaker who was not going to start a war.
However, during his first year in office, Trump has bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Venezuela.
Jump to March 2026, and Trump has ordered the largest U.S. military build-up in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
While Trump’s argument for attacking Iran – nuanced as an imminent threat and only weeks away from developing long-range ballistic missiles – has since been dismissed as spurious – media has come under a lot of criticism for peddling this official line.
Fake news
U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has gone to greater lengths to crack down on actual reporting at the Pentagon by filling his pressroom with “influencers” and propagandists.
The former Fox News host recently castigated CNN’s coverage of the [Iran] war as fake news.
He is understood to have relished the prospect of the Trump-friendly Ellison family, which has already swallowed up CBS News, finally acquiring CNN through the current massive merger.
After hearing Hegseth’s criticisms last Friday, CNN political commentator David Axelrod noted that “it feels like a decision has been made that if the war news isn’t better, better to attack those who report news of the war”.
Meantime, when an ABC reporter tried to question the president over why 5,000 marines and sailors were being deployed, Trump replied, “You’re a very obnoxious person”.
At the best of times, U.S. media face challenges, including government-imposed blackouts - and increased misinformation from the parties involved - reporting on the Iran war.
Then there’s government intimidation, including the weaponisation of the FCC, which means there are clear and palpable consequences for not towing the official government line on the war, even in the knowledge that it bears no resemblance to the truth.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how Trump can manage to de-escalate the Iran war based on alleged peace talks that the Iranian’s themselves claim never happened.
