Israel’s genocide in Gaza has unleashed a low-grade regional war that is gradually escalating towards what could become an all-out conflict. The central players in this simmering showdown are the members of the informal Resistance Axis, which include Hezbollah in Lebanon, a number of armed Palestinian groups including Hamas, the Syrian and Iranian governments, the Houthis or Ansarallah in Yemen, and Iraq’s armed Popular Mobilization Forces. Numerous strikes against Israeli and US military and commercial targets across the region have already been carried out by these groups since last October, from US military bases in Iraq to Israel-linked commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

As the possibility of a regional conflagration looms, corporate media outlets are turning their attention to the Resistance Axis—and often regurgitating stale, Orientalist narratives that have been deployed for decades to justify US and Israeli aggression in the region. Central to this media narrative is the presentation of Iran as a kind of puppet master overseeing and coordinating the activities of the Resistance Axis. What this narrative fails to take into account is that it is not Iran that has the Resistance Axis, but decades of US and Israeli aggression. Journalists Rania Khalek and Nima Shirazi join The Real News for a conversation on the media narratives spun around the Resistance Axis and Iran, and how decades of such portrayals have primed the US public to support forever wars in West Asia.

Rania Khalek is a Middle East-based journalist for Breakthrough News where she hosts the show Dispatches. Her work has also appeared at The Intercept, Truthout, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Al Jazeera, The Nation, Salon, AlterNet, Vice, and more.

Nima Shirazi is the cohost of Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, power, and politics.

Additional links:

• Patreon page for Breakthrough News
• Listen to the Citations Needed podcast with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson
• “Between the Hammer and the Anvil”: The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé, The Intercept
• Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis: Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance,’ Explained | WSJ

Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

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