The New York Times likes Iran and its proxies – um, what?

I grew up reading the New York Times. The newspaper was delivered every day to my parent’s house since before I was born. As I think typical among New York Jewish households from my vintage, few institutions carried as much authority and influence as the Times. But that has changed. The paper’s disgraceful coverage of the war in Israel and Gaza over the past year has stripped away any veneer of prestige. Still, old habits die hard, and I can’t help but check the New York Times headlines (even though I now refrain from reading most of the articles).

Every now and then a headline seems so preposterous that I can’t help but read the article – a sort of perverse form of antisemitic clickbait. And that happened with a recent article with the headline: “Iran’s Dilemma: How to Preserve Its Proxies and Avoid Full-Scale War.” The article isn’t unusual for the New York Times, which like many other news organizations has devolved from reporting news to entertaining its readers with pieces that make them feel good by reinforcing false narratives they hold (the narrative for most Times readers being that Israel is fighting an aggressive and unreasonable war of offense against oppressed and defenseless victims). But while typical for the Times, the article crystallized in one junk piece of “news analysis” the ridiculous position the newspaper finds itself in one year into its reporting on this war.

The article seeks to answer the question: how can Iran preserve its “proxies” – the terrorist groups that Tehran funds and arms such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen – without being drawn into a direct confrontation itself? The question is presented like a normal problem that any normal country seeking reasonable goals on the world stage might ask, like how can a country protect its manufacturing sector while avoiding tariffs on imports? Aside from normalizing a desire to arm terrorists as something any country should want to do, the article fails to state the obvious – the best way that Iran could have preserved its “proxies” would have been by not having them go on rampages of rape, murder, hostage-taking, and rocket-firing. I suppose it goes without saying that this terror should continue. So, given that ceasing terror is apparently unreasonable, how can Iran achieve its goals of encircling Israel with terrorists armed to the teeth while at the same time not causing Iran to suffer the costs of a direct conflict? A “reasonable” question, that the reporter comically takes seriously in his attempt at an answer.

The Times analysis is so ludicrous that it warrants a deep dive. It starts with a picture of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, addressing the UN with a caption saying he told the UN that “Israel was seeking to trap his country into a wider war.” The reporter, Steven Erlanger, accepts Pezeshkian’s framing and begins his piece by noting that “Iran has so far refused to be goaded by Israel into a larger regional war.” In Israel, you cannot walk 10 feet without seeing a poster reminding you that our hostages who have not been executed remain in dungeons a year after being kidnapped. There isn’t an Israeli who hasn’t gone to a funeral this year (most of us have gone to several). Israelis in the north have been living in hotels or with friends for the past year as incessant rocket fire has made their homes uninhabitable. If the Times framing of Israel “goading” Iran into a war seems ridiculous, that’s because it is. According to President Pezeshkian and his yes-men at the New York Times, Iran and its proxies should be permitted to terrorize Israelis without consequence, and if Israel responds, then it is we who are baiting them. That logic is upside down to Israelis and sensible people, but perfectly understandable to Mr. Erlanger and his colleagues at the Times.

Erlanger then lists Iran’s seemingly reasonable goals. He reports that Iran “wants to restore deterrence against Israel while avoiding a full-scale war between the two countries.” He adds that Iran “wants to preserve the proxies that provide what it calls forward defense against Israel – Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen – without going into battle on their behalf.” And he concludes his list by noting that Iran “wants to get some of the punishing economic sanctions against it lifted by renewing nuclear negotiations with the West.”

Mr. Erlanger came up with this list of Iranian goals by consulting with “analysts.” Of course, he did not bother to look at Iran’s own statements. One needn’t spend much time or effort researching to uncover repeated and numerous Iranian proclamations that one of their goals (skipped over in Mr. Erlanger’s list) is the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people. But when you want to entertain your readers by confirming their preferred narrative, you cannot be expected to spend much time researching.

Even putting aside the shoddy research, shouldn’t Iran’s goals of “deterrence” and using “proxies” for “forward defense” be understandable? Only if you accept Iran’s propaganda as truth (which the Times is apparently eager to do). The reality is that while Iran’s leaders repeatedly and unabashedly proclaim that they want death to Israel and death to America, Israel’s leaders have never indicated a desire to destroy Iran. There is of course a difference between Israel threatening to punish Iran if it or its proxies attack, and Iran vowing to destroy Israel no mater what. That distinction is not recognized by the Times but it is apparent to anyone with common sense: Iran can avoid an Israeli attack by not murdering Israelis and not funding and arming terrorists to do the same. Israel can only avoid an Iranian attack by not existing.

Yet the Times is happy to accept the characterization of “forward defense” and “deterrence.” And the tough questions, such as how does the massacring of families sleeping in their beds, the raping of young women at a music festival, and the kidnapping of children and elderly constitute “forward defense,” will go unasked so as not to upset Times readers. Instead, the Times turns the tables. A better behaved country would have just allowed the October 7 attack to come and go. Instead, under Mr. Erlanger’s analysis, after October 7 Israel “seized an opportunity to destroy or diminish two Iranian proxies: Hamas on its southern border and Hezbollah to its north.” That is, the Iranian proxies were simply practicing “forward defense” by burning entire families alive in their homes. But Israel decided to take advantage of the defensive murders, rapes, kidnappings and rocket attacks by going on offense.

How could the Times, once such a venerable newspaper, become so laughable? As noted above, in the race for clicks and shares in today’s media environment, part of the answer is knowing your audience. Most readers of the Times want to demonize Israel, and the Times obliges (those clicks are just too valuable to pass up). And certainly, the editors and reporters have their biases. But while it is easy to chalk up the careless reporting of the Times to antisemitism, I think ironically it stems from a misguided (and failed) attempt not to be racist.

Despite the multiracial makeup of Israel, the left-leaning world has decided that Israel is white or European, and the Islamic world is comprised of people of color. Because of this, in what George W. Bush famously described as the soft bigotry of low expectations, Times reporters dismiss genocidal statements by Arab and Muslim leaders as mere rhetoric. When they say “death to Israel,” they can’t actually mean that. They are just so oppressed they don’t know any better. Therefore, when listing Iran’s goals, Mr. Erlanger found it entirely reasonable to talk about deterrence and easing of sanctions and it didn’t occur to him to include genocide.

But we in Israel do not have the luxury of dismissing Iran’s genocidal goals. With our hostages still held captive and with rockets pummeling the north, Israelis have to face reality – not an imagined dynamic of Iranians being oppressed and merely seeking deterrence. It’s why one year into this hellish war, I have shed any vestige of considering the New York Times as a serious news source, and why I encourage readers to take the Times for what it has become: entertainment for those who cling to a false narrative.