New York Times: Will Iran Ever Get Around to Killing the Jews Like They Say They Will?

The last three weeks have produced no shortage of sickening headlines, but the latest from the New York Times on Wednesday forged new pathways into the most unreachable frontiers of depravity.

“After years of vowing to destroy Israel, Iran faces a dilemma,” the headline read. What “dilemma” is that, you wonder? The subhead clarifies: “With Israel bent on crushing Iran’s ally Hamas, Tehran must decide whether it and the proxy militias it arms and trains will live up to its fiery rhetoric.”

To put the proposition in plainer terms, Iran’s predicament seems to be that it has incubated a variety of bloodthirsty terrorist groups in the region, all of whom have promised to kill as many Jews as possible. But now, with Hamas having demonstrated that the mass slaughter of Israeli Jews is possible and the Gaza war in full swing, will Iran and its proxies make good on their pledge? The mind reels.

The article from Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi doesn’t quite evince the perverse immorality expertly captured by the editors who summarized her piece in its headline and subhead. The body of the text dutifully sanitizes the murderous sects operating under Iranian control. Those groups “give Iran leverage in international negotiations,” after all — leverage that has taken the form of not just the massacre of Israelis but attacks on American soldiers in Iraq and Syria right now.

But Iran is in a bind, Fassihi insists. “Iran does not want a regional war,” she flatly asserts, the violent activity from Iranian proxies across the Middle East from Yemen to Lebanon very much notwithstanding. Perhaps, just as how the Times characterized the abstracted anti-Israel demonstrator who tears down images of young children being held hostage by Hamas, those terrorist cells just need a “release valve” to vent some steam. But Tehran has fed its terrorist partners a steady diet of eschatological and antisemitic propaganda for years, and now it has to do something. Because “if Iran does nothing, its fiery leaders risk losing credibility among constituents and allies.”

Once again, the something here is the murder of Israelis and Americans. Is that an undesirable outcome? We don’t get the sense of that from Fassihi’s bloodless copy. The events of October 7 inaugurated a civilizational clash from which the Times seems to believe it stands apart. But the outlet’s efforts to preserve its neutrality don’t seem so very neutral at all.