Israel resorts to media tactics and techniques such as false narrative, fabrication, censorship, rumor-spreading, and a display of power amid aggression against Iran on June 13.
Despite the bombing of hospitals, the Zionist regime’s officials and media have launched a campaign to deceive world public opinion.
The multiple warnings to Iranians to evacuate various areas can also be analyzed in this regard. Zionists are seeking to convince the world with this move that protecting the lives of citizens and civilians is important to them.
A week has passed since the beginning of the Zionist regime’s aggressive attacks on Iran’s territorial integrity.
During this time, simultaneously with the criminal Zionist regime’s blatant aggression against Iran, we have witnessed its media to launch psychological warfare, spread rumors, manage the narrative, and use a strategy of instilling fear and terror, sowing discord, and disturbing public opinion using traditional and digital media.
Therefore, the Zionist regime resorts to a set of media techniques to advance its objectives in the war with Iran, and gives its aggressive attacks names with positive connotations such as “legitimate defense” and “the right to self-defense.”
The news article depicts a set of media tactics and techniques of the Zionist regime amid its aggression against Iran’s territorial integrity.
1. Spreading rumors
In its attacks on Iran, the Zionist regime carried out a classic example of psychological bombing, which consists of spreading rumors, releasing suspicious videos, and attempting to demonstrate power.
For example, on social media, dozens of fake accounts, attributed to the Zionist cyber army, claim that Iranian defense systems are ineffective and that several underground sites have been razed to the ground.
The confirmed images released, however, do not record even a real explosion deep inside the alleged targets.
In fact, this psychological warfare, rather than creating a military reality, was an attempt to create anxiety in the mental structure of Iranian citizens, perhaps by weakening morale and increasing pessimism about the country’s defense capabilities, creating space for political pressure.
2. Alternative and incorrect narrations
One of the techniques of the Zionist regime’s psychological warfare is the creation of alternative narratives. The regime knows very well that facts are not so important; rather, what people believe determines the winner on the battlefield.
During the recent airstrikes on military facilities in the cities of Tehran, Kermanshah, Isfahan, and Shiraz, the Zionist regime, from the very beginning, created a widespread media wave to portray the public opinion as a successful, intelligent, and precise operation; while the Iranian Ministry of Defense announced hours later that a large portion of the suicide drones had been shot down before reaching their targets but the enemy immediately, in coordination with the New York Times and the Times of Israel, claimed that all attacks had hit sensitive military facilities. The purpose of this media deception was not to inform, but to create a sense of defeat and vulnerability in Iranian public opinion.
3. Fake news
The Zionist regime, along with its aggressive actions, is manipulating and falsifying war-related news and images in the media. For example, in footages, the regime claims to have destroyed Iranian launchers while analysis of the videos shows that the regime has produced several videos from different angles of the destruction of just one launcher and has published them separately, edited and arranged in different ways!
Therefore, the Hebrew media has created a stream by producing mass fake news against Iran. From widespread internet and electricity blackouts to claims of mass escapes of security prisoners, a range of fabricated narratives are being published in an organized manner.
Content analysis of these news items shows that many of the videos and images released either belong to events in other countries, or are distorted reports of old events.
The main goal of this media stream is to instill instability, a collapse of internal security, and a lack of sovereign control in Iran; while such news is more a reflection of the Zionist regime’s need to produce a psychological crisis for its domestic and foreign audiences than it is true.
4. Showing the security of civilians in Iran
The Israeli regime pretends in its propaganda that it carries out its attacks carefully and without attacking residential areas, but even medical centers are not safe from the aggressive attacks of the Zionist regime.
These include the projectile hitting Hakim Hospital in Tehran and the targeting of an ambulance in the capital, which resulted in the martyrdom of three paramedics. Also, the regime attacked Farabi Hospital in Kermanshah in the very first days of the aggression.
5. Showing precise attacks of Israel in comparison to carless attacks of Iran
The Zionist regime’s media is trying to instill the idea that their attacks are precise and targeted, while Iran’s attacks are scattered and aimless.
To prove the regime is wrong, the Weizmann Institute, which has been linked to the Israeli regime’s weapons research for years, was targeted by an Iranian missile attack; an attack carried out in response to the institute’s role in developing tools that have been used against civilians.
The Times of Israel was recently forced to admit that Iran had destroyed 45 Weizmann Institute laboratories. The estimated cost of building just one laboratory facility, without its equipment, is about $50 million. Equipping it with the advanced equipment could cost another $50 million.
6. Censorship and cover-up
The Zionist regime has consistently demonstrated its strict control over the free flow of information by controlling media access to war zones, restricting journalists’ access to war zones, arresting a number of journalists who published images of Iranian attacks on occupied territories, and expelling foreign journalists.
While Israeli regime are working hard to prevent the release of casualty figures from Iran’s missile attacks on the occupied territories, some sources such as Washington Post reported that the number of Israeli casualties since the beginning of Iran’s missile operations has exceeded 1,800.
7. Ignoring reality by misrepresentation of military power of the Israeli army
Hebrew media outlets publish several videos daily of alleged attacks on Iranian soil, which are often fake, fabricated, or exaggerated.
Israel has claimed that its fighter jets have reached Mashhad, calling it the largest air operation in the world’s history; while technically, these fighter jets are unable to return from such a distance without refueling.
Many Israeli operations carried out by drones are falsely recorded as airstrikes to present an image of “absolute superiority.”
8. AI, hashtags, and manipulation
In the days following the attack, the trending of certain hashtags on X, formerly Twitter, was not a coincidence but the product of the mobilization of robotic accounts and AI by the Zionist cyber army. The goal of these hashtags was to incite an all-out war, incite fear, and spread psychological instability.
Cybersecurity analysts believe that over 70% of the accounts that trended these hashtags in the early hours were non-human in nature and aimed to falsely manage global public opinion about the severity and depth of the attacks.