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the new york times
America's Opinion Pages Overwhelmingly Backed Trump's Attack on Iran
This opposition rate of less than a fifth is in stark contrast to US public opinion on the matter, which showed that 56% of Americans opposed Trump’s bombing. Why wasn’t this reflected in the range of opinions presented by America’s top press outlets? These numbers highlight just how poorly represented the views of the public are in elite media.
‘Trump’s courageous and correct decision’
FAIR looked at all opinion pieces in the four papers that addressed Trump’s strikes on Iran, from June 21 through June 24. Forty-seven percent (17) explicitly praised Trump’s unauthorized act of war.
Many of these cheered the aggressive assertion of US power. The New York Times’ Bret Stephens (6/22/25) lauded “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision,” which “deserves respect, no matter how one feels about this president and the rest of his policies.” At the Washington Post, David Ignatius (6/22/25) offered similar praise under the headline, “Trump’s Iran Strike Was Clear and Bold,” and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board (6/22/25) declared, “Trump Meets the Moment on Iran.”
USA Today (6/22/25) published columnist Nicole Russell’s “Trump Warned Iran. Then He Acted Boldly to Protect America.” The headline was later changed to an even more laudatory: “Trump Was Right to Bomb Iran. Even Democrats Will Be Safer Because of It.” In a Wall Street Journal guest column (6/24/25), Karen Elliott House celebrated the “restor[ation] of US deterrence and credibility.”
Some directly attempted to defend the strikes’ legality. In a Post guest column (6/23/25), Geoffrey Corn, Claire Finkelstein and Orde Kittrie claimed to explain “Why Trump Didn’t Have to Ask Congress Before Striking Iran.” The piece relied extensively on the playground rhetorical tool of if they did it, why can’t I?, confidently listing earlier US presidents’ attacks that defied constitutional law, as if past violations justify the current one.
They asserted that “the operation also derives support from international law as an exercise of collective self-defense in defense of Israel,” ignoring the fact that international law does not allow you to “defend” yourself against a country that hasn’t attacked you—let alone the illogical formulation of the US engaging in “self-defense” on behalf of another country.
USA Today columnist Dace Potas (6/22/25), who called the attacks “strategically the right move and a just action,” also defended the constitutionality of Trump’s strikes, attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call to impeach Trump over the strikes:
If the president is not able to respond to a hostile regime building weapons that could destroy entire American cities, then I’m not sure what else, short of an actual invasion of the homeland, would allow for him to act.
That’s the thing about self-defense, though—it’s supposed to involve an attack.
Journal columnist Gerard Baker (6/23/25), who called the attack “judicious and pragmatic,” likewise pointed to Iran’s nuclear program, claiming that “no one seriously doubts the Iran nuclear threat”—despite both US intelligence and the International Agency for Atomic Energy concluding otherwise.
Yet another angle came from Times columnist Thomas Friedman (6/22/25), who argued that the “Attacks on Iran Are Part of a Much Bigger Global Struggle”—between the forces of “inclusion,” who believe in “more decent, if not democratic, governance,” and the forces of “resistance,” who “thrive on resisting those trends because conflict enables them to keep their people down.” Friedman called Trump’s strikes “necessary” for the right side to “triumph” in this good-vs-evil struggle.
Questions without criticism
Of the remaining opinion pieces, ten accepted the strikes as a fait accompli and offered analysis that mostly speculated about the future and offered no anti-bombing pushback.
For instance, the Wall Street Journal published a commentary (6/23/25) asking “Can Iran Strike Back Effectively?” A New York Times op-ed (6/22/25) by security consultant Colin P. Clarke speculated about “How Iran Might Strike Back.”
The Times also published columnist W.J. Hennigan’s piece (6/22/25) that warned that “We Have No Idea Where This War Will Go.” Hennigan speculated: “It’s almost certain we haven’t seen the end of US military action in this war,” but he did not indicate whether this might be a good or bad thing.
Others were slightly more wary, such as a Times op-ed (6/23/25) headlined “What Bombs Can’t Do In Iran.” The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Karim Sadjadpour asked, “Will this extraordinary act of war strengthen Tehran’s authoritarians or hasten their demise?” Sadjadpour tells readers that “while military strikes may expose an authoritarian regime’s weaknesses, they rarely create the conditions necessary for lasting democratic change”—yet he offers support for both possible outcomes.
Similarly, the Washington Post (6/22/25) published a triple-bylined opinion piece debating the question: “Will the US/Iran Conflict Spin Out of Control?” Participant Jason Rezaian did not criticize the bombing itself, only the lack of strategy around it, judging that Trump’s idea of “decimating Iran’s defenses and then letting them stay in power to terrorize their citizens, dissidents and opponents around the world would be a massive failure” and concluding, “my concern is that there is no plan to speak of.”
Attacking Trump, supporting war
Of the seven articles that criticized Trump’s actions, more were critical of Trump and his personality or disregard of procedure than were opposed to the illegal and aggressive actions of an empire. Three of these came from USA Today’s Rex Huppke. His first column (6/21/25) argued that “Trump may have just hurled America into war because he was mad nobody liked his recent military parade.”
His second piece (6/22/25) accused Trump of starting the war based on “vibes,” and rightly attacked the credibility of the administration, citing the numerous contradictory or false statements from US and Israeli officials. However, that column made it clear that Huppke hoped for a successful strike on Iran, even as he acknowledged it could end in “disaster”:
If Trump’s bombing of Iran proves successful—and I, of course, hope it does—it’ll be dumb luck. But if it leads to disaster, it’ll be exactly what anyone paying attention to these reckless hucksters predicted.
At the New York Times, former Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a guest column (6/24/25) under the headline: “Trump’s Iran Strike Was a Mistake. I Hope It Succeeds.” Blinken’s primary issue with Trump’s attack was that Blinken deemed it ineffective; his secondary concern was that his own State Department achievements were being overlooked: “Mr. Trump’s actions were possible only because of the work of the Obama and Biden administrations.”
‘International authoritarianism’
Of the 36 editorials and opinion pieces published by the top papers on the Iran bombing, only three (8%) explicitly opposed the bombing on legal or moral grounds. The New York Times and USA Today ran opinions grounded in legal arguments. USA Today also published human rights attorney Yasmin Z. Vafa on the human toll of this war on the citizens of Iran.
In her Times op-ed (6/23/25), Yale Law School professor Oona A. Hathaway points out that the attacks were not only unconstitutional, but in violation of international law, as Trump did not seek approval from either Congress or the UN Security Council. Hathaway was the sole opinion writer to describe Trump’s illegal actions with the same diction usually reserved for America’s enemies:
The seeming rise of authoritarianism at home is precipitating a kind of international authoritarianism, in which the American president can unleash the most powerful military the world has ever known on a whim.
USA Today‘s Chris Brennan (6/24/25) also emphasized Trump’s lack of congressional approval under the headline: “There’s a Legal Way to Go to War. Trump Flouting the Constitution Isn’t It.”
The same day in USA Today (6/24/25), Vafa—an Iranian refugee herself—brought a human angle to this conflict that is unfortunately hard to come by in the top papers’ pages. She wrote: “This kind of violence doesn’t happen in theory. It happens in living rooms. In kitchens. In schoolyards and in hospitals.”
Vafa not only raised the US’s history of destabilization in the Middle East, she also contextualized these kinds of attacks’ role in creating the refugee crises that right-wingers then use to create moral panics. “We are here because you were there,” she wrote.
The people speak
The New York Times (6/22/25) did publish a series of letters to the editor from their readers on “The Consequences of US Strikes in Iran.” Unlike the professional columnists, many of these readers were explicitly against the bombing. One letter began: “Once again our government has launched a war against a nation that has not attacked the United States.”
Another writer wrote:
Whether President Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities has postponed one danger or not, it has surely destroyed the effort to limit nuclear proliferation. The damage is incalculable.
Another wrote: “By crossing the line and attacking Iran, the United States should not be under the misconception that it has made a step toward peace.”
In fact, the only pro-bombing letter the Times published in the package was not written by an average citizen, but by Aviva Klompas, identified by the Times as “a former speechwriter for Israel.”
The Big Lie this time
Every big US aggression is sold by a Big Lie, told over and over again by policy makers and repeated ad nauseam in the press. US interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Ukraine have all been sold to the public based on Big Lies.
This time for US newspaper columnists, the Big Lie is twofold: firstly, that Iran was rejecting negotiations in favor of building a bomb; secondly, that Iran wants to build a bomb to destroy Israel. These lies rely not only on ignorance, but also on a media apparatus that repeats them until they’re accepted as an uncontested premise for all discussion.
As FAIR (10/17/17, 6/23/25) has described in the past, these claims have no basis in fact. Iran, which has long been in favor of a nuclear weapons–free Middle East, has attempted to negotiate a stable deal with the West for over a decade. Hindering this are Israel’s insistence on its undeclared nuclear arsenal, as well as both Trump and Biden’s rejection of the deal negotiated under Obama. Even if that weren’t the case, there’s no indication whatsoever that Iran, should it produce a nuclear bomb, would commit national suicide by attacking Israel with it.
These misrepresentations are made all the more egregious by the fact that there is a Mideastern country that has rejected the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which occupies neighboring lands under military dictatorship, regularly attacks and violates treaties with its neighbors, has proven repeatedly to be a bad-faith negotiator, is currently committing an internationally recognized genocide, and does all this in the name of rights given to them by God. That country is Israel. If the columnists at leading US newspapers had any consistency, they would be calling for Trump to launch a surprise attack on Israel’s nuclear facilities and stockpiles.
But they don’t do this, because they either don’t know or don’t care about the relevant history. They’re all willing to uncritically manufacture consent for the US empire.
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