[News] Leading Papers Call For Destroying Iran To Save It

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/leading-papers-call-for-destroying-iran-to-save-it/>
Leading Papers Call For Destroying Iran To Save It
By Gregory Shupak, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
February 11, 2026
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

The United States has no right to wage war on Iran, or to have a say who
governs the country. The opinion pages of the *New York Times* and *Washington
Post*, however, are offering facile humanitarian arguments for the US to
escalate its attacks on Iran. These are based on the nonsensical assumption
that the US wants to help brighten Iranians’ futures.

In two editorials addressing the possibility of the US undertaking a
bombing and shooting war on Iran, the *Washington Post* expressed no
opposition to such policies and endorsed economic warfare as well.

Crediting Trump with “the wisdom of distinguishing between an authoritarian
regime and the people who suffer under its rule,” the first *Post* editorial
(1/2/26
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/02/iran-protests-trump-threats-maximum-pressure/>)
approvingly quoted Trump’s Truth Social promise (1/2/26) to Iranian
protesters that the US “will come to their rescue…. We are locked and
loaded and ready to go.”

For the *Post*, the problem was not that Trump was threatening to bomb a
sovereign state, but that “airstrikes are, at best, a temporary solution”:

If the administration wants this time to be different, it will need to
oversee a patient, sustained campaign of maximum pressure against the
government…. The optimal strategy is to economically squeeze the regime as
hard as possible at this moment of maximum vulnerability. More stringent
enforcement of existing oil sanctions would go a long way…. Western
financial controls are actually working quite well.

Thus, the paper offers advice on how to integrate bombing Iran into a
broader effort to overthrow the country’s government in a hybrid war.
Central to that project are the sanctions with which the *Post* is so
thoroughly impressed. Such measures have “squeeze[d] the regime” by, for
example, decimating “the government’s primary source of revenue, oil
exports, limiting the state’s ability to provide for millions of
impoverished Iranians through social safety nets” (*CNN*, 10/19/25
<https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/19/middleeast/how-western-sanctions-iran-hurt-middle-class-intl>
).

That the US continues to apply the sanctions, knowing that they have these
effects, demonstrates that it has no interest in, as the *Post *put it,
“free[ing]” Iranians “from bondage.”
‘Always more room for sanctions’

The second *Washington* *Post* editorial (1/23/26
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/23/iran-protests-trump-military-action-deterrence/>)
expressed disappointment that, despite “mass killings” and the “most
repressive crackdown in decades,” “Trump has ratcheted back his earlier
rhetoric.” It emphasized that “the regime is now mocking Trump for backing
down.” The paper offered advice for the president:

Airstrikes alone won’t bring down the regime—or make it behave like a
normal country. But Israel and the US have shown in recent years that
bombing can cause significant tactical setbacks. And there is always more
room for sanctions pressure….

The president cannot maintain effective deterrence by turning the other
cheek [in response to Iranians who have taunted him]. How he responds is
just as important as how quickly he does it.

The implication is that, to deter Iran’s government from killing Iranians,
the US needs to kill Iranians. After all, bombing campaigns come with “mass
killings” of their own: The US/Israeli aggression against Iran last June
killed
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19436149.2025.2578034#d1e85> more
than 1,000 Iranians, most of them civilians.

Meanwhile, those sanctions the paper wants to use to deter the Iranian
government from “harm[ing] its own people” do quite a bit of damage
<https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/68/3/sqae103/7721444> in their own
right, often causing “low-income citizens’ food consumption” to
“deteriorate due to sanctions”—a rather novel approach to harm reduction.

Bombing other countries, depriving them of food—is this what it means to
“behave like a normal country”?
‘Too depraved’ for reform

Over its own pro–regime change piece, the* New York Times* editorial board
headline (1/14/26
<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/opinion/iran-protests-khamenei-trump.html>)
declared: “Iran’s Murderous Regime Is Irredeemable.”

“The Khamenei regime is too depraved to be reformed,” the editors wrote,
spending the majority of the piece building its case to that effect before
turning to solutions. For the *Times*, these start “with a unified
expression of solidarity with the protesters,” and quickly move to punitive
measures against the Iranian government:

The world can also extend the sanctions it has imposed on Iran. The Trump
administration this week announced new tariffs on any countries that do
business with Iran, and other democracies should impose their own economic
penalties.

For the authors, “deprav[ity]” needs to be resisted by Washington and its
partners, who have demonstrated their moral superiority with their
presumably depravity-free sanctions. These have, as Germany’s *DW* (11/23/25
<https://amp.dw.com/en/iran-sanctions-mean-life-saving-medication-in-short-supply/a-74825554>)
reported, “caused medical shortages that hit [Iran’s] most vulnerable
citizens hardest,” preventing the country from being able “to purchase
special medicines—like those required by cancer patients.”

The *Times* also supported US military violence against Iran—if with
somewhat more restraint than the *Post*, asking Trump to “move much more
judiciously than he typically does.” The *Times* wants him to seek
“approval from Congress before any military operation,” and make “clear its
limitations and goals.” The paper warned Trump not to attack “without
adequate preparation and resources”:

Above all, he should avoid the lack of strategic discipline and illegal
actions that have defined the Venezuela campaign. He should ask which
policies have the best chance of undermining the regime’s violent
repression and creating the conditions for a democratic transition.

One glaring problem with suggesting that a US “military operation” should
be based on “policies [that] have the best chance of…creating the
conditions for a democratic transition” is that very recent precedents show
that US wars don’t bring about democracy, and are not intended to do so;
instead, such wars bring about social collapse.

Consider, for example, US interventions in Libya
<https://fair.org/home/media-nato-regime-change-war-libya-slave-markets/>
and Syria
<https://fair.org/home/media-erase-us-role-in-syrias-misery-call-for-us-to-inflict-more-misery/>.
In both cases, the US backed decidedly nondemocratic forces (*Jacobin*,
9/2/13 <https://jacobin.com/2013/09/libya-and-its-contexts/>; *Harper’s*,
1/16 <https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/a-special-relationship/>) and, as
one might expect, neither war resulted in democracy. In Libya’s case, the
outcome has been slavery and state collapse (*In These Times*, 8/18/20
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-last-thing-libya-needs-is-an-intensification-of-the-u-s-proxy-war>).
In Syria, the new, unelected government is implicated in sectarian mass
murder (*FAIR.org*, 6/2/25
<https://fair.org/home/syrian-bloodbaths-from-nefarious-to-benign/>).
If DHS killed Pretti, why not bomb Iran?

There are no grounds for believing that the US would chart a different
course if it bombs Iran again. But that hasn’t stopped other *Times*
contributors
from suggesting that the US should conduct a war in Iran—for the good of
Iranians, of course.

*Times* columnist Bret Stephens
<https://fair.org/home/media-hawks-make-case-for-war-against-iran/> (1/27/26
<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/opinion/iran-regime-killing-protesters.html>)
worried about the “risk” posed by “the example of a US president who urged
protesters to go in the streets and said help was on the way, only to
betray them through inaction.”

Invoking the DHS’s killing of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti
<https://fair.org/home/beyond-corporate-media-journalists-are-stepping-up-and-speaking-up-about-ice/>,
Stephens urged “thoughtful Americans” to encourage the same administration
that killed him to exercise “the military option” in Iran:

But if Pretti’s death is a tragedy, what do we say or do in the face of the
murder of thousands of Iranians? Are they, as Stalin might have said, just
another statistic?

Stephens is citing people’s outrage against the US government killing a
protester as a reason they should support the US government inflicting more
violence against Iran. The logical corollary to that would be that if
you’re opposed to Iran suppressing anti-government forces
<https://fair.org/home/us-media-keen-on-iranian-unrest-less-so-on-us-and-israels-role-in-it/>,
you should therefore be in favor of Tehran launching armed attacks to
defend protesters in the US.

Masih Alinejad
<https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/01/06/u-s-media-outlets-fail-to-disclose-u-s-government-ties-of-iranian-journalist-echoing-trump-talking-points/>,
a US-government-funded
<https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=5ee251cd7ded9b0aa8be5e40c218b6c8>
Iranian-American
journalist, wrote in the *Times* (1/27/26
<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/opinion/iran-protests-military-intervention.html>)
that Trump

encouraged Iranians to intensify their mass protests, writing, “HELP IS ON
ITS WAY.” That help never came, and many protesters now feel betrayed.
Still, the USS *Abraham Lincoln* aircraft carrier strike group has recently
arrived in the Middle East. Mr. Trump has not said what he plans to do now
that it is there, but it does give him the option of striking a blow
against government repression.

Policy of pain

Both Stephens and Alinejad present their calls for the US to assault Iran
in moral terms, suggesting that the US should demonstrate loyalty to
Iranian protestors by “help[ing]” them through an armed attack on the
country in which they live. Their premise is that the US is interested in
enabling the Iranian population to flourish, an assertion contradicted by
more than 70 years of Washington’s policy of inflicting pain on Iranians in
an effort to dominate them.

That US policy has included overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected
government in 1953 (*NPR*, 2/7/19
<https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-democracy-in-four-days>),
propping up the Shah’s brutal dictatorship for the next 26 years (*BBC*,
6/3/16 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36431160>; *AP*, 2/6/19
<https://apnews.com/article/072580b5f24b4f8ea2402221d530257e>), sponsoring
Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the country and use of chemical weapons
against it (*Foreign Policy*, 8/26/13
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/>),
partnering with Israel in a years-long campaign of murdering Iranian
scientists (*Responsible Statecraft*, 12/21/20
<https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/12/21/israel-linked-assassinations-how-much-is-the-u-s-really-involved/>),
and currently maintaining—along with its allies—a sanctions regime that is
associated with a substantial drop in Iranian life expectancy (*Al Jazeera*
, 1/13/26
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/13/how-us-sanctions-crippled-lives-of-iranians-trump-says-he-wants-to-help>
).

If Stephens or Alinejad had evidence that the US is so radically
re-orienting its conduct in the international arena, one imagines that they
would want to share with their readers the proof that the Trump
administration’s magnanimity is so profound that it overrides the UN Charter
<https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-7>, and justifies
America carrying out a war to “help” a country it has terrorized for
decades.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20260212/08b1dc6e/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 898161 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20260212/08b1dc6e/attachment-0001.png>