Nournews: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described a Washington Post report claiming that U.S. military casualties in the war with Iran were higher than the figures released by the Pentagon as a “complete lie,” and went so far as to say the newspaper was even worse than Iran’s state media. Almost at the same time, Donald Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would be barred from entering the White House, warning that other outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post, could also be added to the list.
These two developments cannot simply be viewed through the lens of Trump’s long-running feud with the media. They came amid the Iran-U.S. war and the publication of a series of reports by American media outlets on the costs and constraints of the conflict—reports that have diverged from the White House’s narrative of an unequivocal victory. The Washington Post reported discrepancies in casualty figures, CNN reported a sharp decline in U.S. stocks of Patriot and THAAD interceptors, while the Wall Street Journal reported this week that dozens of Patriot interceptors and more than a dozen THAAD interceptors had been used to counter an Iranian missile attack on Jordan.
A Washington Post report in August on severe ammunition shortages had already indicated that the issue went beyond a dispute with the media. According to the report, the United States had used more than 1,000 Patriot and THAAD interceptors and more than 850 Tomahawk missiles in the first weeks of the war, with ammunition shortages beginning to affect Washington’s military options. Following the publication of the report, Trump criticized “whistleblowers” and said they would face prosecution.
Under these circumstances, Trump’s response follows a clear pattern: when a report does not conform to the White House’s preferred narrative, the credibility of the media outlet and the journalist is targeted rather than the substance of the data being addressed. “Fake news,” “lies” and accusations of betrayal have become part of the standard vocabulary of this confrontation. This is where military warfare intersects with the war of narratives, because casualties, interceptor consumption, the cost of war and the ability to sustain military operations are not merely military statistics; they directly shape how the American public perceives the outcome of the conflict.
Trump, of course, did not adopt this approach with the Iran war. For years, he has preferred to communicate directly with his audience and bypass intermediary media outlets. When Twitter permanently suspended his account in January 2021, one of the most important channels through which the U.S. president communicated directly with tens of millions of people was cut off. Twitter said at the time that the decision was based on the risk of further incitement to violence.
Trump’s response was to move further toward personal media—a path that was later consolidated through Truth Social. The significance of this experience for the Iran war lies in the fact that Trump essentially does not view the media merely as a means of transmitting news; for him, the media is part of political power and a field in which power is exercised. The message must reach the audience directly, be repeated and, as far as possible, be delivered to the public without passing through the filters of independent media.
But this model has encountered a serious problem in the Iran war: the media is no longer limited to CNN and the Washington Post. Tucker Carlson is a clear example of this transformation. Once a prominent conservative voice and one of Trump’s closest media allies, Carlson became a critic of Trump’s war policy after the Iran war began. Trump responded by calling Carlson “low IQ” and “stupid.” The dispute over the Iran war subsequently spilled over into divisions within parts of the MAGA movement.
This development is significant because it shows that the White House’s challenge is not limited to hostile media outlets. In the age of social media, anyone with an audience can become a media outlet in their own right. CNN can be removed from the White House, but that does not mean CNN’s narrative disappears. Nor can a podcaster such as Carlson simply be pushed out of the field with a label.
Trump’s communication style also shows elements of a one-way propaganda model, often associated in political communication with what is described as “Goebbelsian logic”: simplifying the message, repeatedly asserting the same claim, constructing a binary of “our narrative versus their lies,” and discrediting sources that challenge the official narrative.
This approach intersects with what classical communication theory calls the “magic bullet” or “hypodermic needle” theory—the idea that a powerful message is fired directly from the center of power at an audience, which then receives and absorbs it.
In recent years, Trump has relied on essentially the same logic, albeit through new media. Twitter, and later Truth Social following the suspension of his account, became channels that allowed him to bypass traditional media and deliver messages directly to millions of people. The same pattern has become more pronounced during the Iran war. Announcements of victory, repeated emphasis on U.S. superiority and descriptions of unfavorable reports as “fake” all seek to establish a single narrative before competing narratives can take shape.
But this is precisely where the media landscape surrounding the Iran war presents a challenge: media is no longer a one-way loudspeaker. The Washington Post’s reporting on discrepancies between official figures for U.S. military casualties and data cited by the newspaper’s sources, CNN’s reporting on declining stocks of air-defense missiles, and the Wall Street Journal’s report on the heavy use of interceptors during Iran’s missile attack on Jordan each reveal part of the picture that Washington’s official narrative is attempting to control. Even when U.S. officials describe such reports as “lies” or “fake news,” the response to the reports itself becomes part of the war of narratives.
The example of Gaza is particularly significant in this context. At a time when the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza was heavily restricted during the war, local journalists, citizen journalists, mobile phones and social media effectively created alternative channels for transmitting images and accounts of the Israeli military campaign to the people of Gaza. These channels can be described as “media tunnels of Gaza”—routes that, despite the severe physical control imposed over the battlefield, could not be eliminated simply by restricting media access. Accounts of realities and alleged crimes against Palestinian civilians traveled through alternative channels, challenging the monopoly over the official narrative and shaping global public perceptions of the violence inflicted on Palestinians.
The same experience carries implications for the Iran war. Washington can label a media outlet “fake,” restrict media access or repeat the official narrative again and again; but it cannot control the production and distribution of narratives as easily as it once could. In the age of social media, the “magic bullet” is no longer fired at a passive target. Audiences can repost, interpret and compare a message—and even turn it against the narrative of the sender. As a result, the effort to construct a one-sided narrative of the Iran war, alongside a growing number of independent reports on its costs, casualties, ammunition stocks and outcomes, has itself become one of the main arenas of dispute.
In fact, one of the key differences between the Iran war and the classical model of propaganda lies here: the issue is not simply which side disseminates more messages. The question is whether it can sustain its narrative in the face of a network of competing accounts, on-the-ground reporting and “human media.” For Washington, the war of narratives is therefore not merely a battle to persuade public opinion; it is also a struggle to prevent a widening gap between the “official victory narrative” and the realities emerging from the battlefield and reaching the media.
The Iran war, therefore, is not only a war of missiles, aircraft and the Strait of Hormuz; it is also a war of narratives. Trump seeks to consolidate a narrative of victory through sympathetic media outlets and direct communication with the public. But every report about casualties, ammunition shortages, the cost of the war or discrepancies in the official account creates a crack in that picture. And the more the effort to close that gap relies on attacks against the media, the more those confrontations themselves will become news.
In Gaza, the “media tunnels” showed that control over the narrative of a war cannot remain indefinitely in the hands of one side. The Iran war now presents a new test—not only of U.S. military power, but also of the White House’s ability to control the narrative of the war that reaches the American public and the world.
Nournews