Iran’s recent gleeful boasting that it has successfully developed a new hypersonic missile that takes just “400 seconds to [strike] Tel Aviv” did not go unnoticed by the global media last week.
CNN, for example, opened its report by noting how unusual it is to see Hebrew written on adverts in the streets of Tehran, referencing the ominous billboards that appeared in the Iranian capital last week signaling Iran’s unconcealed desire to wipe Israel off the map.
Meanwhile, The Guardian — frequently criticized for its unalloyed attacks on the Jewish state — also led with the warning to Israel and detailed at length the unhinged threats made by Iran’s leaders.
However, when it came to Michael Jansen over at the Irish Times, it appears there was something exciting — tantalizing, even — about the prospect of Tel Aviv being razed to the ground by an Iranian missile.
In the piece in which the new weapon is cavalierly described as a “game-changer,” Jansen presents the very construction of the missile as borne out of some defensive need to safeguard against Israeli threats while the Iranian nuclear program is viewed through the lens of Israeli aggression towards Iran with no mention of the latter’s desire for nuclear weapons:
If the hypersonic missile is as effective as Iran claims, the weapon could boost Iran’s deterrence and give it a military advantage over international and regional foes. A substantial number of hypersonic missiles could mount devastating counter strikes if Iran is attacked and could be a game changer in the Middle East […]
Israel has repeatedly called for military action against Iran’s nuclear programme and has carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Israel was blamed for a drone attack on an Iranian military factory in January of this year.”
There is also no mention at all of the frequent Iran-linked threats against Israel via the many Iranian proxies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah and Hamas.
Failing to Consider the Obvious
Referring to Western anti-missile systems, including Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow, Jansen writes, “Iran’s Fatah, apparently, seeks out and destroys these anti-missile systems which were in service before the emergence of hypersonic missiles.”
This invites the question of why the Iranians would need to take out purely defensive systems unless they needed to eliminate the one thing preventing their ballistic missiles from reaching their targets. But Jansen is so convinced that Iran needs a hypersonic missile for defense alone that she doesn’t consider the obvious.
If she had, she would have included the headline-grabbing billboards that appeared on Tehran’s streets last week and dominated coverage of the missile in other international media outlets. Instead, these are not mentioned once in the Irish Times piece, save for one reference in a photo caption.
Indeed, Michael Jansen’s implicit defense of Iran makes it seem as though the Irish Times doesn’t want its readers to know about the regime’s genocidal ambitions.
Trust @IrishTimes‘ Michael Jansen to portray an Iranian hypersonic missile as a purely defensive measure against Israeli aggression.
Even the Iranian billboard saying “400 seconds to Tel Aviv” is only mentioned in a photo caption rather than the story.https://t.co/rpVUWEJRQV
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 11, 2023
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Photo credit: Sepah News/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
