In the last five years, Iran has committed numerous gross violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include unlawfully pursuing nuclear weapons; engaging in proxy warfare; indiscriminately firing missiles, drones and cluster bombs against civilians and civilian infrastructure; and murdering thousands of its own citizens for protesting against the Islamist regime.
Yet legacy media and the United Nations virtually ignore Iran’s serial treachery, treating it as a footnote or unremarkable. The New York Times, for example, refuses to call Iran’s use of cluster bombs a war crime, softening the use of the cruel weapon as one “experts say could violate the laws of war.” Mainstream media’s coverage of Iran’s killing of more than 30,000 protesters last January was all but nonexistent, as is coverage of Iran’s use of child soldiers and various other crimes.
Similarly, during Hamas’s war with Israel, the media refused to focus on the terror group’s war crimes, such as its use of human shields, consistent targeting of Israeli civilians and kidnapping of civilian hostages. Rather, legacy media flooded news feeds with false reports of Israel’s “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “starvation” and “targeting hospitals.”
Likewise, the United Nations spends abundant time hurling false accusations at Israel, but little time holding Iran accountable for its flagrant abuses of international law. U.N. agencies such as the Human Rights Council and General Assembly have passed many more resolutions against Israel than against Iran. In fact, the United Nations has condemned Israel more than all other countries combined.
The Islamic regime’s crimes fall into four areas:
• Pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Iran continues pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory.
• Engaging in proxy warfare. Iran continues to support terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, leading to, among other crimes, the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct, 7, 2023, led to the massacre of 1,200 men, women and children and the kidnapping of 251 others, many of whom were starved, raped and tortured in Gaza—all thanks to financial, logistical and military support from Iran.
• Targeting civilians. Iran fires missiles and drones indiscriminately, with many hitting civilians or civilian structures. It uses outlawed cluster bombs, which scatter bomblets over wide areas, to maximize civilian casualties.
• Mass murder. Last January, regime forces brutally slaughtered tens of thousands of demonstrators calling for an end to the Islamic Republic. According to Iran International, an independent Persian-language network based in the United Kingdom, citing documents from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, regime forces murdered 36,500 people in just two days.
Regime forces even raided hospitals to kill wounded demonstrators. A doctor who spoke under the pseudonym “Dr. R” for security reasons told The Jerusalem Post, “In the hospitals, many patients were found dead on their treatment beds, still attached to machines, with bullet holes in their heads.” He also said that “many doctors have been arrested, tortured, and some have even been sentenced to death because [they were] helping injured people.”
One would think mainstream media would vigorously cover these events, but they provided little to no reporting on them, compared to their obsessive reporting on Israel.
Mainstream media neglect Iran’s crimes. During the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, daily front-page stories about the conflict comprised 20% to 30% of content during peak news cycles. Many of these stories contained blatant lies about Israel’s defensive campaign in the coastal enclave.
In contrast, the persecution of Iranian protesters merited just five to 10 articles a week in legacy media outlets, with no front-page dominance for the first seven to 10 days of the demonstrations. Coverage of the protests consisted of a mere 2% to 5% of news cycles. Thus, many people around the world were unaware of Iran’s murderous atrocities. This trend continues even now.
For instance, a New York Times article covering the murder of an Israeli couple by a cluster bomb neglects to mention until 12 paragraphs into the story that it was a violation of international law.
There has also been scant coverage of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corp’s effort to recruit children as young as 12 to fill its ranks. Last month, an 11-year-old boy was killed standing guard at a military checkpoint. The use of child soldiers qualifies as a war crime under international law.
But legacy media rarely single out Iran for war crimes. A recent analysis of the BBC, CNN, NBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post (by CAMERA) shows that between Feb. 28 and March 21, there were 32 uses of the phrase “war crime,” of which 28 (88%) were directed solely toward the actions of the United States and/or Israel. None were directed solely toward the actions of Iran. Thanks to mainstream media, Iran is literally getting away with murder.
The United Nations cares little about Iran’s crimes. It’s too busy condemning Israel. For example, since 2020, the U.N. Human Rights Council has passed 32 anti-Israel resolutions but just 10 against Iran. Similarly, the U.N. General Assembly has passed 90 anti-Israel resolutions since 2020, but only eight against Iran. In 2025 alone, it adopted 15 resolutions on Israel and only 11 resolutions on the entire rest of the world, including one resolution against Iran.
Democratic Israel is relentlessly prosecuted, while murderous Iran gets off scot-free. Whereas Israel is a democracy governed by the rule of law, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a brutal, theocratic dictatorship that threatens its neighbors, slaughters its own people and flouts international law. Yet it is Israel that faces the wrath of mainstream media and the United Nations.
Originally published by Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME).
