What occurred on or around Saturday, March 20 in the Indian ocean during an alleged “Iranian attack” on the joint British-US airbase Diego Garcia?

For obvious reasons—namely the vastness of the Indian ocean and the rapid and classified nature of missile attacks—all anyone seems to know is what British, American, and Israeli authorities have told reporters. No independent observers saw a missile launch from Iran, no independent observers have examined recovered debris, no independent observers even know for sure if a missile was launched in the first place. All anyone knows, by all accounts, is what their respective governments have told them. This makes the central claim since echoed dozens of times in Western media—that “Iran Targeted Diego Garcia Base With Ballistic Missiles”—an assertion, an allegation.

An allegation, it’s worth noting, Iranian officials have strenuously denied and the Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte says NATO “cannot confirm” was Iran.

Yet, without an ounce of critical reporting from mainstream Western press, this allegation has quickly morphed into an unequivocal fact, something that we know for sure happened, and the purpose of reporting is to sort out what to do about this major escalation. Critical questions like, “How do we know for sure this was Iran?” or “How do we know, if it was Iran, how far the missiles made it?” remained unasked, much less answered:

Wall Street Journal: “Iran Targeted Diego Garcia Base With Ballistic Missiles”
New York Times: “Iranian Missiles Strike Far-Off Target, but U.S. Remains Out of Range Iran’s attempted attack on a military base 2,500 miles away raises questions of the reach of its arsenal.”
CNN: “Iran launched missiles at US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean. Here’s what that says about its capabilities”
BBC: “Could Iranian missiles reach London and Paris? Iranian missiles have tried to target the joint US-UK military base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.”

None of the reports are framing the “attack” as an allegation made by one party about another party in a war. They are all presenting this missile launch as per se true. The stakes for this claim, it’s important to establish, couldn’t be higher. As President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aggressively lobby European countries to join their war effort, namely to help “open up the strait of Hormuz,” the incentive to inflate the threat posed by Iran to Europe is clear. Indeed, the coverage of the “attack” was centered almost entirely on its implications: that it somehow proved Iran was not only lying about the range of their ballistic missiles, but could now “strike major cities in Europe”:

This isn’t a Tet Offensive or sinking of the Lusitania-level news event, of course, but it’s somewhere on the spectrum—an inciting incident, a “wake up call” on the severity of the “Iranian threat to the West” being packaged by pro-war propagandists as a call to arms. Given these potentially high stakes, one would think it extremely important that Western media handle these allegations with care and nuance, and demand more proof than simply the say-so of obviously conflicted governments. Instead, outlets are mindlessly embracing the premise without any independent confirmation and running with the panicked implications of the allegation. What we’ve seen over the past few days has been, almost to the outlet, mindless stenography. Britain, the US, and Israel have said it happened, therefore it happened and countries in the same military coalition get to “confirm” each others’ self-serving claims.

This is another example of the double standard of burden of proof when it comes to attribution. As I’ve detailed elsewhere (and do so in greater detail in my forthcoming book), after the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing on October 17 2023 in Gaza and the subsequent crybully campaign launched by pro-Israel pressure groups, major outlets like the New York Times and CNN do not ascribe blame for a particular bombing until after the IDF themselves claims responsibility. This is a totally novel standard invented just for Israel on October 18, 2023 and it is now being used for Israel and—by the transitive property—the US in its attack on Iran. Meanwhile, Iran is afforded no such burden of proof and is considered guilty until proven innocent. I asked New York Times reporters Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt via email Monday why the Times took five days to attribute the Minab school bombing to the US because, as the Times comms department insisted, they needed to “work to collect evidence,” but immediately took as fact Iranian responsibility for the alleged attack on Diego Garcia without a shred of independent evidence. They did not return my request for comment.

I have also reached out on social media to reporters from the BBC and CNN to see why they, too, have accepted this narrative at face value without any independent corroboration.

Some outlets went further than irresponsible copy-and-pasting, even reporting that Iran claimed credit for the attack—which they, of course never did. NBC News’ Freddie Clayton asserted in his initial report that Iran “claimed“ credit for the attack, citing (without any link) Iranian media outlet Mehr. “Iran fires missiles at remote U.K.-U.S. base, claiming long-range capabilities it previously denied,” read the headline. The sub-headline would then add, “Tehran claimed the strike demonstrated capabilities for long-distance attacks, with Diego Garcia the same distance from Iran as much of central Europe.”

There’s only one problem: Tehran never claimed anything of the sort.

What Clayton was clearly doing was just paraphrasing a claim made by The Times of Israel, which claimed (also without a link) Iranian news agency Mehr news took credit for the launch. The issue is The Times of Israel is an Israeli government mouthpiece and didn’t actually cite any Iranian officials claiming anything. After I pointed this out on social media Sunday night, NBC News stealth edited their article, changing the headline and lede from Iran “claiming” it has long-range capabilities to saying the alleged attack “suggests” Iran has long-range capabilities. The headline/subhead was changed from “Iran fires missiles at remote U.K.-U.S. base, claiming long-range capabilities it previously denied” to “Iran fires missiles at remote U.K.-U.S. base, suggesting long-range capabilities it previously denied.” And the lede was changed from “Iran has fired missiles at the joint U.K.-U.S. Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean, claiming the strike shows it is capable of longer-distance attacks than previously known” to “Iran has fired missiles at the joint U.K.-U.S. Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean, suggesting it is capable of longer-distance attacks than previously known.”

So, while Clayton continues to state as fact an unsubstantiated claim made by government officials, he at least is acknowledging Iran taking credit for the attack is something he and the Times of Israel just made up. So, progress of sorts.

Did Iran attack Diego Garcia? It’s, of course, possible. It’s possible the Iranians are lying and, for some reason, not fessing up to their own attempt at intimidation. But what we have now is two competing claims by two conflicted parties. There is no objective reason why Western media should be privileging certain governments’ claims over others. Doing so is pure chauvinism. Instead of doing their putative jobs—demanding independent evidence, digging further, asking difficult questions to those in power—Western media is playing the role of court stenographer, dutifully repeating the government’s version of event without any critical lens. This version of events, it’s worth emphasizing, has the potential to drag Europe into this war and escalate an already devastating and pointless war of aggression into something much larger and deadlier.

The Column

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