It’s honestly wild how useless the legacy media across Canada, the United States, and Europe have been in covering Trump and Netanyahu’s war with Iran.

Two days into an unprovoked attack that killed the spiritual leader of Twelver Shi’a Islam and kicked the whole region into open conflict, and if you relied on most Western outlets, you’d barely clock that the United States and Israel were the ones who lit the match. Somehow the spark always disappears from the story.

Instead, we get the same tired script that’s been running since 1979. Iran the eternal regional menace. Iran the nuclear boogeyman. Iran the barbarian state.

Meanwhile the Iranian people get flattened into two convenient caricatures: either savage fanatics or helpless victims waiting to be rescued by Western bombs. Pick whichever version fits the headline that day. The routine is pushing fifty years old now.

Despite a fatwa declaring weapons of mass destruction incompatible with Islam, Iran has apparently been “weeks away” from a nuclear bomb for decades. Weeks away in the eighties. Weeks away in the nineties. Weeks away in the 2000s. Weeks away yesterday.

At some point the mandem watching from the sidelines have to ask: how long are we supposed to pretend this storyline still makes sense?

Because the real history doesn’t start in 1979. The West had beef with Iran long before the revolution. Britain and the United States didn’t want to lose their grip on Iranian oil, and when that grip started slipping the CIA and MI6 started moving greasy. Coups, interference, pressure campaigns – the usual regime-maintenance toolkit.

Then came the Iran–Iraq War. When Saddam Hussein invaded revolutionary Iran in 1980, Iraq wasn’t fighting alone. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, UAE, the United States, the Soviet Union, and multiple Western European states all backed Baghdad with weapons, financing, and political cover. That support included the infrastructure that enabled Iraq’s chemical weapons campaign. Mustard gas. Nerve agents. Whole towns getting gassed.

These weapons were banned under the Geneva Protocol, but the international community mostly looked the other way. Washington and Moscow both preferred a chemically gassed Iran to a victorious revolutionary one. Containment mattered more than principles.

And this is the part Western coverage conveniently forgets: a lot of Iran’s strategy grew out of that environment.

Iran’s own chemical weapons program started around 1983 or 1984 as a response to Iraq’s widespread use of chemical agents. Even then, Iran only began deploying chemical munitions late in the war — around 1987 and 1988 — and at a far lower grade than what Iraq had been using for years.

Iraq carried out the overwhelming majority of the chemical attacks. Hundreds of large-scale strikes against both military and civilian targets.

Iran’s use was limited, retaliatory, and came after years of being gassed while the so-called civilized world shrugged.

Same pattern elsewhere.

Hezbollah didn’t just materialize out of thin air in 1985. Lebanese Shi’a militants formed it with backing from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Iran’s support for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad didn’t appear in a vacuum either. It grew out of Israel’s occupation policies and out of the spectacular spinelessness of neighbouring Arab regimes like Jordan and Egypt.

Iran’s relationship with the Houthis in Yemen follows the same logic. Opposition to Saudi influence, hostility toward a Yemeni government aligned with Washington, and deep grievances about corruption and regional marginalization all fed into that alliance.

So the cycle goes like this: Iran responds to pressure. The West responds to Iran responding. Iran responds again. And round and round we go, endless geopolitical ping-pong.

But you wouldn’t know that from the coverage. The timeline always starts exactly where it becomes convenient.

Maybe the clearest example of Iran showing restraint came in June 2025. Israel and the United States launched surprise air assaults on Iranian nuclear facilities. Just a day before those strikes, the International Atomic Energy Agency had declared Iran non-compliant with its nuclear obligations for the first time in twenty years because of stockpiles of uranium enriched to sixty percent. But even then, the IAEA said it had no proof of a systematic effort to build a nuclear weapon.

Iran’s response was sharp but calibrated. Missiles and drones toward Israel, and a pre-notified strike on a U.S. base in Qatar.

Now we’re somewhere else entirely. Israel and the United States have launched another round of surprise strikes across Iranian sites and cities, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei along with other senior officials and schoolgirls.

Iran has answered with waves of missiles and drones targeting Israel, American bases, and U.S.-aligned proxy regimes. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut down.

And yet the media keep asking the same question like broken records: “When will Iran negotiate peace?”

Not when will Washington stop bombing. Not when will Tel Aviv stop escalating. Not whether assassinating foreign leaders might count as a war crime. Just when Iran will calm things down. It’s actually embarrassing.

European governments, proving once again they’re riding shotgun in Washington’s convoy, have all lined up behind Israel and the United States right on cue. Proxy behaviour. Straight up.

Even Canada’s Prime Minister — a man who once delivered lofty lectures about the collapse of the rules-based international order — can’t bring himself to apply those principles when it actually matters. Funny how that works. The selective moral outrage is tired.

More people are clocking the pattern now, but noticing the hustle doesn’t mean you can stop it. The system keeps rolling.

And to be clear – I’m not some Iran cheerleader. Iran is a repressive state. Its treatment of protest movements and dissent is harsh and often ugly. But is it uniquely brutal compared to its neighbours? Not really. Western governments trade happily with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel whenever it suits them.

Apparently, repression only becomes unacceptable when the government doing it refuses to stay in Washington’s lane.

Trump and Netanyahu have made an already volatile region even more combustible.

And until the international community starts treating Israel and the United States the way Israel and the United States treat Iran, nothing is going to change.

Nothing.

Sanction Israel and the United States.

Embargo Israel and the United States.

If the rules actually mean anything, then the countries writing them should be the first ones expected to follow them.