Our Pro-War Media Get It Humiliatingly Wrong, Time and Again – While Others Pay the Price

Commentators built consent for calamitous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Gaza and Iran, and poured scorn on those who opposed the disastrous slaughters. And yet their careers continue to flourish.

Iranians drive past an anti-US billboard in Tehran on August 3, 2026. The U.S. launched strikes on Iran on February 28, believing it would be a quick operation. Photo by Atta Kenare / AFP via Getty Images

Who is more shameless than the warmongers of the West?

Take Jake Wallis Simons, former editor of the Jewish Chronicle, under whose editorship the newspaper published fabricated stories about Gaza. When it came to the illegal U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, he certainly enjoyed the sowing: the reaping, not so much.

There were few noisier British cheerleaders for attacking Iran. After U.S. forces kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January, Wallis Simons used his Telegraph column to urge Trump “to pull the trigger” on Iran, declaring that it “must surely be the next enemy to fall.” A week before the war, he penned “The case for Trump attacking Iran”, suggesting that an assault “may even inspire another Arab Spring”.