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On media outlets frequent use of the term "Iranian-backed"
Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria.
Whenever western media outlets speak of these groups they seem to prefix the term Iranian-Backed.
I'm starting to raise my eyebrows a bit at how universally the term is being used. It feels almost mandated. My understanding is these are indeed supported financially and materially by Iran, but they also very much operate independently. So the extent of the relationship is unknown or at least debated.
Does this strike anyone else as odd or suspicious? Is this use fair and justified?
My mind can't help but wander to the laying of a propaganda foundation for direct conflict with Iran.
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Not really. You seemed to have answered it yourself; they are indeed backed by Iran. It is true that, for example, Hezbollah is much more closely linked with Iran than Hamas is, but regardless, Iran's financial support is fairly heavy implicit support for the group. The fact that "Iranian-backed" is more common in the news is just a factor of how politics in the middle east has been evolving. Saudi backed activity has generally been calmer in the last decade compared to Iranian.
The context to the Hamas attack was that Saudi, and Saudi allied countries, were in the process of a normalization deal with Israel, for instance.
Iran has been on the backfoot, and has been more aggressive as a result. So they end up on the news more. Not particularly suspicious or odd.
But Hamas (according to Haaretz) was also backed by Israel. Why isn't this mentioned?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/a-brief-history-of-the-netanyahu-hamas-alliance/0000018b-47d9-d242-abef-57ff1be90000
Because that was more than a decade ago when Hamas was more of an extremist political party in Palestine?
FYI, the Netanyahu government's backroom financial support of Hamas didn't end a decade ago. The Haaretz article mentions the Israel approved Qatar to Hamas payments, but this NYT article from last month goes into way more details:
That implies that there is some mastermind in the background requiring the media to publish such things.
Hezbollah has been pretty much founded by Iran. Hamas has been surviving the past decade on weapon smuggling from Iran to Gaza and from money sent by I think Quatar. While to some extent they are independent, they generally share the same goals as Iran: Destroying Israel. Iran is pretty much their only ally on the world stage, and any intelligent leader would not alienate their only ally, especially a state level ally. Especially as long as they share strategic goals.
If you wanna see what happens to groups like that that actually do that and end up with no allies at all, check out the rise and fall of the Islamic State. To get the US, Russia, Iran + friends all on the same page in defeating you, you must truly be fucking stupid.
Does it? I know governments can formally gag certain topics. I don't think its a huge stretch to think governments can shape stories through formal or informal means.
What I'm saying is there is already a formal gag process in place; there's an existing system in place to "get the biggest adversaries in publishing to keep their stories in line". The printing policy is straight forward as well. Group x must be referred to as "Iranian-backed group-x".
To be clear, I'm not saying this is surely what's happening, I'm defending my position that this isn't a huge stretch.
EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking Iranian-backed might be a viewership thing. I.e. maybe building coherent narratives is better for clicks and eyeball retention. In this case, the overarching narrative is that Iran is big-bad in middle-east right now. It serves that narrative to repeatedly mention big-bad's name.
What news outlets exactly are you talking about? If this were, say, Chinese news outlets, then sure, it's not a big stretch. The CCP has the infrastructure, the connections, and the control to do that.
I'm assuming you're talking about US outlets, though. It's a pretty big stretch there. Even if the US government wanted to, there is not the infrastructure, connections, or power for them to control the news like that. For one, the government isn't even unified to begin with; any kind of limitation of news outlets butts heads directly with the 1st amendment, and as you probably know, the Supreme Court and the Democrats, who currently hold power of foreign policy, do not exactly get along.
Nor are US outlets that unified. I mean, a substantial amount of them quite literally peddled the idea that the current government is illegitimate and was the result of a stolen election. Do you really think they would quietly go along with some kind of government mandate over wording when that's an incredibly scandalous violation of the first amendment?
Finally, it is, again, a violation of the 1st amendment. Gag orders do exist, but they are always high profile and highly visible because they violate the 1st amendment, and have to have strong reasoning. Gag orders usually are in the context of a temporary measure put in place by judges to prevent biases or undue influence occuring to an ongoing court case.
Even outside of 'thumbing the scale' with internal news agencies, how is the US going to control all the international agencies who report on their every action?
This is not a hill I'm willing to die on, I simply don't know enough about it, nor do I feel strongly about it. I was referring to US media, or more broadly, western media. My argument is (perhaps weakly) supported by the existence of gag orders and the increasing concentration of media-outlet ownership. i.e. increasingly larger firms, owned by a smaller group of people. If either one of the aforementioned supports gives out, then the argument topples with it.
From what I can tell conspiracy theories tend to latch on to a few facts that in isolation can support a pre-existing world view. Pretty much anything will have a few facts that can be held on to in support of a conspiracy theory. The broader picture is more important.
Not that you couldn’t be right. I just think it’s the less likely option.
Edit: I think you’re right that this isn’t some huge coincidence where a bunch of independent news agencies all started using a term independently. But it’s probably just memetics. They’re copying each other.
The government can control what the government puts out, so while it may not be about to force agencies to use it's verbiage it simply restates it every time. The government refers to group X as belligerents. Any time the press asks about group X, the government says "belligerents in country Y are conducting Z" then the press reports that US government officials claim belligerents are doing Z. Now organizations are reporting the governments line.
If Press Org 1 decides to refer to them as belligerents and Org 2 calls them terrorists, they can. Putting out a press release with approve language is hardly a formal gag process that somehow binds all publishing houses.
Cool that makes sense. So there may be journalistic "tenancies" (for lack of a better word) to follow government language on foreign affair topics? Wonder if there's carrot/stick incentive structure in play that encourages this. Or it's simply for legitimacy reasons.
There's totally a carrot and stick. Say the government is holding a press conference - they can only invite five organizations. AP and Reuters are coming, probably CNN and who else? Last time your organization reported on this topic it was negative of US involvement, so they don't invite you. Which, fine, you can pick up AP's story but that means you can't ask questions and your story is more limited.
But, you're free to publish whatever, just don't expect greater access. Then again, the U.S. will publish official statements about shit because if they just tell people things the news cycle sweeps them under the rug for them. Three died in a drone strike? Admit it and it'll be old news in a day. Deny it and someone will dig up the truth and you'll get a week of bad press.
When you say “narrative”, you make it sound like it’s an insidious twisting of the truth. The average western citizen, having all of the facts laid out to them with no bias, probably would consider Iran the big bad in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia and Israel are the other major players in the region and both have fairly strong relationships with the western world despite having numerous human rights issues of their own. Still, compared to Iran they’re not nearly as authoritarian, extremist, or combative towards the west. Iran has also shown itself to be almost totally unwilling to work with the west on peace and security in the region, unlike Israel and KSA.
Iran is funding much of the terrorism and insurgency in the area nowadays because they can’t compete with the other major powers in a straight up fight. They actively fund the Houthis in Yemen to attack Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah in Lebanon And Hamas in Palestine to attack Israel, and every so often one of those groups directly attacks western interests too.
Why wouldn’t the average westerner consider Iran to be the most dangerous threat in the Middle East?
Iran is a geopolitical boogeyman for a significant segment of US politics, particularly on the right-wing.
"such-and-such is backed by Iran" is one of those things that is technically true, to a degree, but is sprinkled onto news stories like you mentioned in a way that does not convey the full context and ends up being "true, but misleading".
for a comparison, have you ever read news stories that prefix mentions of the Israeli military with "US-backed"? the US funds Israel's military as much or more than Iran funds Hezbollah or any similar organization. but for what I'm sure are Perfectly Understandable Journalism Reasons, that doesn't seem to get mentioned nearly as often as "Iranian-backed".
an "incompetence, (mostly) not malice" explanation would be that these news outlets know their readers have trouble keeping track of which group in the Middle East is which and what side they're on, so they use "Iranian-backed" as a lazy shorthand for "aligned against the US".
I'm reminded of a series Slate used to do, called If It Happened There, in which news stories from the US were covered in the same tone as used for these international stories.
this one is my favorite: Nation Entranced as Supermodel’s Husband Is Implicated in Ball Firmness Scandal
Israel is different in two ways: one, it's common knowledge to readers of US publications that the US supports Israel. The point of "-backed" is to give readers quick context about geopolitical alliances. Two, Israel doesn't need the support in the same way Hezbollah does. The US does contribute significant military funding to Israel, but even without that, they are a major military power in the area, and have a high degree of governmental stability, such that there's not much doubt that they could continue existing without support.
If you look at groups where those two conditions aren't true, you do see "-US backed". For instance, this AP article from September of last year
link
The groups involved are the SDF and the Deir el-Zour Military Council, which readers most likely have zero knowledge about, so "-US backed" is used to add that context.
It's also that Israel isn't a terrorist group, despite what tiktok would try to have us believe.
Yes, apartheid state is more accurate.
They are (I think I can even say objectively) not an apartheid state. Apartheids defining characteristic was legal segregation based on ones race. They don't have that. It may even be more accurate to say apartheids defining characteristic is discrimination of the majority race, which Israel of course also doesn't have.
If you are under the impression that there is not extremely unequal treatment and segregation based on race in Israel, you are extremely misinformed to an almost farcical degree. A Jew and a non-Jew cannot get married in Israel without leaving the country. There are so many examples of Jews and Arabs not being equal under the law in Israel that it would be exhausting to list them all. Calling Israel an apartheid state is probably less controversial than calling Hamas a terrorist organization.
Jewish isn't a race. Arab israelis are equal under the law to Jewish israelis.
"Calling Israel an apartheid state is probably less controversial than calling Hamas a terrorist organization." I don't even know how to respond to this except to say ???
Even the government of Israel would not assert that there is no such thing as the Jewish race -- in fact I'm quite certain they would say the exact opposite, given that they have passed laws establishing that Israel is a nationstate of the Jewish people. Nor do I think it would be somehow better or different if Judaism were not an ethnic religion, as segregation and oppression based on religion is not magically different or less bad than doing so based on someone's ethnic background.
But I don't think a constructive discussion is likely to come of this if we can't agree on our assessment of largely uncontroversial facts like this, so it's probably better if we end our discussion here. My final word on the matter will be this thorough report on the matter from 2021 by Human Rights Watch, titled "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution".
I've discussed the israel-palestine conflict with many of my friends (vast majority of whom are anti-israel) and strangers alike and I've yet to find a single law that actually supports this apartheid argument. All I see is individual lawmakers saying reprehensible things, same as could be said in any country. In fact, I'd bet everything I own Palestinian lawmakers have said much worse things about Jews on a more consistent basis. Regardless, on the Israeli side, Nothing codified in law. The more I read about the history of the area the more I am convinced Israel is justified in their war against Hamas. Conflating 'discriminating' against a group of people (not an ethnic group) that is consistently trying to commit genocide against your entire people as the same thing as apartheid is ridiculous to me. Best of luck.
Israel has a million good reasons to repress Palestine (the state) because of how Palestine is consistently trying to overthrow Israel and commit genocide against them. If Palestine stopped sending rockets the war would end tomorrow. If Israel stopped fighting they would be wiped off the earth. To conflate this with "Israel is repressing Arabs" is worse than semantics, it's super misleading and ignores all the realities of what the are actually fighting
Takes like this will age like milk. I would bet money on it.
I don’t think this is true. Or, in what sense?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/how-big-is-israels-military-and-how-much-funding-does-it-get-from-the-us
The US contributes about 15% of Israel’s military budget.
In contrast,
https://tass.com/world/1698491/amp
Now we could quibble over sources and exact figures, but I don’t think we are going find that these percentages are even close to the same by any source.
The percentage is what matters to me when it comes to determining who sets their agenda. If the US cut all funding to Israel, they would be slightly hampered. If Iran cut all funding to Hamas, they would be begging for spare change on the streets.
And would probably get it from Great Ally Saudi Arabia.
It's unlikely that Saudi Arabia would directly fund Hamas. They wanted to normalize relations with Israel until October 7th torpedoed any popular support for relationship normalisation. They would definitely support the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, but Hamas is entirely different.
Why would Saudi Arabia fund/arm a terrorist group that wants to genocide the country they want to normalize relationships with?
Well, you've got two terms - Iranian-aligned and Iranian-backed.
Now, back when the US 'ended' OIF and ISIS began brewing in the Levant, Iran specifically provided financial support to Iraqi militias to fight back. Those were the IBMGs - since they provided direct financial and otherwise support.
Well, following the Global Coalition efforts to assist the Iraqi government with the fight against ISIS/ISIL some of those former IBMGs were officially incorporated as part of the Iraqi military - meaning they were no longer backed by Iran but the Iraqi government despite still regularly cooperating with and coordinating with the Iranian government - so the verbiage was changed to Iranian-aligned.
So, in short, we have a variety of Iranian backed and aligned assets across the world.
Is this a propaganda thing? Kind of. As neutrally as I can, Iran does want to be a power player in the region, not unlike the US aligned Saudi Arabia. Does the US want a ground war in Iran? Likely not. But it does speak to the 'soft' power struggle in the region between the US and Iran. Iran obviously supplies many US adversaries and so highlighting any certain groups involvement with them does serve to say "How bad can X be? Well, they're backed by Iran. So they have potential access to those assets." But, the US does meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, so logically it makes sense that a local power would attempt to subvert that.
Long story short, when you see Iranian-aligned or backed, think about the values espoused by the Iranian government (not the people, just the government) and what they may stand to gain from supporting such agencies. What does the Islamist government of Iran gain from supporting the Houthis in Yemen? If they gain power from the UN recognized government, they can potentially exert that pressure on Saudi Arabia to push them away from US influence, furthering Iran's status in the region as a leader.
Now, avoiding the political question of 'who has any right to do any thing,' it is important to recognize the difference between locally grown movements and movements with foreign influence in all conflicts - so while it may carry many caveats I still think it's useful to recognize groups affiliations.
No. I don't find it suspicious.
If those groups are Iranian funded, that term is just providing straight information.
Obviously they are not automatons controlled by Iran, they have their own volition playing a dominant role.
I don't want war at all.
Some people will not give you that choice.
I'd be more okay with it all if they did this everywhere.
'Koch-backed' and 'Murdoch-backed' would be a welcome addition to the news.
When the news is koch-backed or murdoch-backed, the backing becomes implicit for any coverage they provide.
Entirely justified in my opinion. Those organizations are supported by Iran like you said, that makes them Iranian-backed organizations. I don't see a problem with this at all.
It's fair. Despite the forces that likely predicated their existence, these aren't the good guys. That's not to say current operations against them are particularly well-waged either.
And we (the West, particularly the US who tend to lead these) will likely never have a direct conflict with Iran. If we had any motivation to do so we would've done it years ago.
In addition to the existing answers, more simply, they are adding context as to how these groups are operating on the world stage in relation to other nations.