Like you, I’ve been trying to follow events in the war against Iran and feel like I know next to nothing, despite (because of) the advent of the internet, satellites and social media.
I think that pundit Richard Fernandez may be on to something with this post, where he writes,
You could call it a battle between misinformation and secrecy, between the deceivers and the masters at saying nothing.
On the one hand, we have Baghdad Bob (the Iranians) whose every utterance is reprinted and amplified relentlessly, while on the other hand we have the Americans and Israelis, who don’t want to divluge any operational secrets.
So every missile and drone launched against Gulf countries/Israel/Cyprus/ Turkey/Azerbaijan gets reported in great detail, with strikes against Iran presented in summary statistics and general terms.
Fernandez observes,
If you’re trying to follow OEF from open source information you will detect a pro Islamic Republic narrative.
On the other side,
Opposing this narrative on the other side of the information war are US spokespeople repetitiously citing rising numbers of strikes and targets destroyed in a manner calculated to almost put the media to sleep. The stats mean nothing to reporters nor to most of the pundits guested on their programs probably intentionally so.
Fernandez concludes,
This suggests that far from being mindless bumbling morons, the Israelis and US are constantly assessing, calculating and adjusting. To what end? That’s what their information strategy is designed to prevent me from figuring out.
You and me both.
