The Fog of Prewar in Iran › American Greatness
Roger Kimball
Everyone knows about “the fog of war.” What about the fog of prewar? There are a lot of similarities. In the fog of war, you can’t trust media reports, in part because the media have been fed disinformation by government sources and in part because much of the media is partisan, incompetent, or both.
The same is true in the fog of prewar. There is lots of disinformation, oodles of partisan reporting, impatient jockeying for position, precedence, and “the scoop.” But the distorting miasma of prewar exhibits something else: irritable impatience. “Why aren’t the authorities doing something? Where are they?”
There is a lot of prewar fog in the reporting about Iran just now. What started as sporadic protests against Iran’s collapsing economy soon evolved into a demand for regime change: the abolition of the Islamic totalitarian government. Many protestors are calling for the recall and restoration of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran. On January 8, in response to the escalating protests, the evil Shia regime in Tehran shut down the internet nationwide. That was the signal for the mullahs to escalate the repression of the populace into a wholesale slaughter. At first, it was estimated that 2,000 had been killed. That was soon upped to 12,000. A few days ago, many reports increased that number to 20,000: 20,000 people shot or hanged by the IRGC. That figure was later revised upward to 30,000. Today, the number has been increased again to “at least” 50,000, with some citing the number 100,000.
It is largely thanks to Elon Musk, who provided free Starlink access to the internet for those brave enough to deploy a terminal (illegal in Iran), that a visual record of the ensuing massacre has leaked to the West. The images and audio that have emerged from the totalitarian hellhole that is the Islamic Republic of Iran are gruesome. Many show scores upon scores of body bags littering the streets. One shows a line of schoolchildren, aged 8 to 13, handcuffed with bags over their heads. Why? Because they were singing anti-regime songs. There is footage of wounded Iranians being murdered in the hospital by regime thugs who went room to room, killing the protestors “by headshots while intubated, catheterized, and/or attached to cardiac leads.” There are also multiple reports that the regime has used some sort of toxic chemical weapon on the protestors, a flagrant violation of international law if true. The response at home? So far, muted at best. Dinesh D’Souza may well be right that the left is preparing to declare the entire people of Iran “Islamophobic.”
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https://amgreatness.com/2026/01/18/the-fog-of-prewar-in-iran/
