U.S. President Donald Trump finally acts like the leader of the free world he is supposed to be by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, and his critics in the media are giving themselves a concussion trying to spin it as a bad thing.

There has been the usual chorus of complaints from left-wing and some conservative (ugh) commentators, along with Democrats. The arguments are largely recycled from the opposition to former president George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, or any argument marshalled against the U.S. doing anything useful in the world whatsoever: Trump was acting unilaterally; the strikes were unlawful or unconstitutional; the consequences are unpredictable; there was not enough time for diplomacy; Israel is just as bad as Iran; or my personal favourite, Trump did the right thing, but it is now the wrong thing because Trump did it.

The opinion pages of the

Globe and Mail

,

New York Times

and the

Guardian

have been littered with these arguments in the lead up to, and in the days since, the U.S. strikes. The most ill-informed, head shaking and downright immoral of them all, however, came from Globe columnist Gary Mason,

who posted on X on Saturday:

“I’m hoping someone will soon explain to me why it’s okay for Israel to have nukes but not Iran. I’m sure there is a perfectly good reason. I’ve just not heard it yet.”

Mason, who eventually deleted the post, implied that democratic Israel, which is surrounded by enemies wishing genocide upon it, is somehow morally equivalent to an oppressive, warmongering theocratic dictatorship that is the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism. It is obvious why Israel has a nuclear deterrent, though it has never threatened to use its arsenal and barely even acknowledges it exists.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies have been responsible for terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East and it supports terrorist planning around the world. The regime is dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, and has been trying to develop a nuclear weapon for over 20 years. The Trump-ordered bombing on Saturday was the correct thing to do.

Iran had enough enriched uranium to build nine nuclear bombs, and it tried to prevent UN inspectors from monitoring its nuclear program. Trump had given the Islamic Republic 60 days to come to a deal that would allow for peaceful nuclear development and the lifting of sanctions. The regime refused.

Former U.S. president Barack Obama’s

appeasement

of dictators in Russia, Iran, Syria, China and elsewhere is one of the primary reasons why the relative global stability that existed at the end of the Cold War has vanished, causing the world to become unmoored. It is unsurprising that Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, as another former Democratic president, Joe Biden, practically invited him to.

With that in mind, the notion that Iran could successfully be negotiated with, at least without a show of force, is fantastical thinking. American deterrence needed to be restored, and whatever other foreign policy failings Trump has — on international trade, or his lack of support for Ukraine — striking Iran’s nuclear sites was necessary. Even if the Islamic Republic’s enriched uranium cannot all be accounted for, the Americans have signalled forcefully that they are willing to defend and assert their strategic interests in the Middle East.

As for whether or not the attack was unlawful, Trump probably should have sought congressional approval, but as the New York Times

reported

on Sunday, “Congress has made formal war declarations in only five conflicts, and none since World War II.”

The Times added that the last president to seek support of any kind for the use of military force was Bush before invading Iraq: “There has been a legal equivalent from Congress that President George W. Bush was the last American leader to successfully seek: an authorization for the use of military force, often called an AUMF.”

Both Biden and Obama

ordered bombings

on presidential authority alone. Congress has effectively given up its war-making powers.

Ultimately, criticism of Trump’s bombing of Iran rests on either the belief that Iran was really serious about diplomacy, that Israel is somehow equivalent to it or that Trump should be held to a different standard than Democratic presidents because he is Trump. The latter argument has been popular among nominally conservative critics of the U.S. president.

Atlantic writer, and former Bush speechwriter, David Frum

argued

on Sunday that the attack was correct, but fatally flawed because it was ordered by Trump, and not someone else: “Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation.”

Frum fails to note that apart from the point about seeking support in Congress, much the same could have been, and was, said about his former boss.

On this side of the border, Globe columnist Andrew Coyne made a similar point to Frum,

noting on X

that he has “no confidence whatever” in Trump or “his team” to “assess” or “manage” the risks involved in a military confrontation with Iran.

But Coyne couldn’t even acknowledge that the strike on the Islamic Republic was the right thing to do: “I’m open to persuasion of the merits of taking out Iran’s nukes, in principle — even with all of the enormous risks involved.”

Open to persuasion? Back when he was a National Post columnist, Coyne was the one doing the persuading for U.S. military intervention, supporting the Iraq war and later advocating for U.S. involvement in Syria. “If all the choices are bad, you might as well do the right thing,”

he wrote in a 2013 column

, where the “right thing” was military intervention.

When Obama failed to react forcefully enough to former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Coyne

noted

: “You think the Iranian regime, for example, is not watching all this with a cool and appraising eye?” He then called Obama’s subsequent engagement with Iran “the bitterest part of the farce.”

It is quite obvious that 2013 Coyne, not the 2025 edition, was right.

A distaste for Trump has robbed the common sense of too many commentators, even otherwise sensible ones.

National Post

• Michael Higgins: After Trump’s airstrikes on Iran, the world is a safer place
• Anthony Koch: Sometimes, war is the answer

What a difference six months make. In December, Canada’s Conservatives were in the catbird seat with 48 per cent support, while the Liberals dropped to 19. Practically everyone pegged Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as Canada’s next prime minister.

Then Justin Trudeau stepped down, Donald Trump took office and Mark Carney got elected Liberal leader. One federal election later, the Liberals have a minority and would likely have a majority if a vote were held today. It’s a reversal of fortunes worthy of a Shakespearean play (or, for the gen Z crowd, a Netflix drama).

The lesson is that politics is all about timing. While Poilievre was the perfect foil for the hapless Trudeau, it’s not clear how he counters Carney. Apple chomping videos won’t cut it. In the current climate, they look positively juvenile. The world sits on the brink of another world war, Canada is trying to get a trade deal with the U.S. and we just inked a defence agreement with the European Union. This is a game for grownups, not social media stars.

It also doesn’t help that the Liberals are implementing much of the Conservative agenda, starting with a carbon tax cut, an income tax cut and legislation to speed up major projects and resources development. The latter, Bill C-5, passed with the help of the Conservatives, and despite opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups, both key constituencies for the previous Liberal government.

Such a thing would have never happened under Trudeau, for whom electoral calculus and virtue-signalling trumped the national interest. He said it was a shame that a female president hadn’t been elected instead of Trump.

He apologized for abuses at Canada’s residential schools, but turned a blind eye to the torching of churches. And he trashed Canada’s relationship with India to gain favour with Sikh voters, while turning his back on Israel to court the Muslim vote.

In contrast, Carney is emerging as a non-ideological pragmatist. He’s hell-bent on getting Canada what it needs: a trade deal with the U.S., diversified partnerships in trade and security and a renewed relationship with India.

At the G7 summit, he praised Trump, hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and managed expectations of a final communique even before the confab began. He may not be an experienced politician, but he is a diplomat, and it showed.

That’s not to say Carney doesn’t have a belief system, notably on climate change. Left-wing outlets may decry his embrace of oil and gas, but if they read between the lines, it’s clear that he prefers a greener path. However, he realizes that unless you do both, he won’t pass Go: it’s not just the Trump administration that takes a dim view, but hard-up consumers who are also turning their backs on electric vehicles.

And on the other end of the political spectrum, Carney is also raising eyebrows. At a press conference with EU leaders, he described Canada as “the most European of the non-European countries,” and talked of “increased harmonization of our regulatory frameworks.” The EU is famous for its byzantine and overweening regulations, from the ingredients in baguettes to ESG mandates to rules governing the digital economy — an approach that’s curiously at odds with the get ‘er done spirit of Bill C-5.

But this quixotic approach may be exactly what keeps Carney in power, because it marginalizes both the left and the right, squeezing them into more extreme spaces that centrist voters eschew. For Poilievre, it’s bad news: if he meets Carney on his middle ground, he risks alienating the anti-globalist crowd, but if he panders to those voters, he will drive even more “progressive conservatives” to Carney. For the Conservative leader, it could be a long, hot summer, indeed.

Postmedia Network

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.

• Kelly McParland: Carney and Poilievre struggle to distinguish themselves
• FIRST READING: Poilievre now further from electoral victory than at any point since winning leadership

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced that Canada

will finally meet

NATO’s defence-spending target of two per cent of GDP. But, as the man wouldn’t know austerity if it hit him over the head, it will come at a significant cost to Canadian taxpayers.

The defence spending target has been a long-standing bone of contention between Canada and NATO. “Allies currently meeting the NATO guideline to spend a minimum of two per cent of their (GDP) on defence will aim to continue to do so,” the members agreed in

a declaration

following a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in 2014. Any allies below this level would “aim to move towards the two per cent guideline within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO capability targets and filling NATO’s capability shortfalls.”

Canada, one of NATO’s founding members in 1949, failed to meet that deadline. Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau kept kicking the can down the road and moving the goalposts with them. He ultimately agreed to meet the benchmark

in 2032

, after several allies, including the United States, forced his hand.

Even worse, Trudeau attempted to deflect attention away from this egregious and irresponsible financial deficiency. The low point came in 2023, when the

Washington Post revealed

a “leaked secret Pentagon assessment,” in which Trudeau had reportedly told NATO officials that Canada would never meet the two per cent target.

The authors of the assessment also suggested that NATO members had serious concerns about Canada’s military. “Widespread defence shortfalls hinder Canadian capabilities,” they wrote, “while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions.”

Trudeau responded to this bombshell announcement

by saying

, “I continue to say, and will always say, that Canada is a reliable partner to NATO, (a) reliable partner around the world.” Oh, really? A reliable partner to NATO, and a world leader who truly believed in the safety and security of all democratic nations, would have found a way to make good on a promise his country had made to its allies.

It never made sense that Trudeau, a classic tax-and-spend Liberal who wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on pet projects, couldn’t meet the NATO defence-spending target.

After the previous Liberal government doubled the national debt in a few short years, one would have hoped that Carney would have taken steps to get federal spending under control, especially while looking to increase defence spending by a whopping $9.3 billion this year.

Yet his massive spending plan, detailed in the government’s

main estimates

, which were tabled late last month, shows he plans on spending at least $486.9 billion — more than Trudeau spent in his final year. And that number will likely increase when it’s updated to include the

$24 billion

worth of spending promises Carney made during the election.

Making matter worse, Carney told an audience at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs that, “We will ensure every dollar is invested wisely, including by prioritizing made-in-Canada manufacturing and supply chains,” and that, “We should no longer send three-quarters of our defence capital spending to America.”

While the Liberal Kool-Aid drinkers will lap up this political rhetoric, his strategy will only serve to increase costs and ensure we get less bang for our buck. After all, the U.S. is far more advanced militarily, and its defence industries have significant economies of scale.

If Carney doesn’t want to rely on American defence contractors, we will likely end up paying more than we otherwise would have. And it is Canadian taxpayers who will end up footing this lofty bill. Many of them, unlike the Liberal faithful, know that money doesn’t grow on trees.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is reportedly

going to propose

that the target increase to five per cent of GDP at this week’s NATO summit. If Carney intends to meet this new target, his spending will surely go through the roof.

While Carney may think differently than Trudeau when it comes to Canada’s safety and security, talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. The current prime minister talks a good game on defence, but is not willing to get his hands dirty to clean up the fiscal mess his predecessor left behind.

National Post

• Michel Maisonneuve: Canada’s military can’t be fixed with cash alone
• John Ivison: Carney now has billions of reasons to buy fighter planes other than F-35s

There are few modern orthodoxies as smug and self-congratulatory as the belief that war is never the answer. It is repeated like a secular prayer at academic conferences and political summits, on protest placards and by Twitter pundits.

The idea that diplomacy, if only conducted earnestly enough, can avert all conflict, that violence is a failure of imagination and that all wars are pointless, cynical and avoidable is not wisdom. It’s wishful thinking posing as moral clarity. And it collapses under the weight of history.

The truth is far less comforting: sometimes, war is the answer. Sometimes it is not merely unavoidable but necessary — not merely tragic but clarifying. In a world where power, not goodwill, organizes human affairs, war has often been the final arbiter of irreconcilable claims.

As philosopher and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz taught us, war is not a failure of politics, but its continuation — not because peace is undesirable, but because peace is so often impossible until force has settled the matter.

To pretend otherwise is to substitute sentimentality for statecraft, and self-indulgence for memory.

We are governed now by a generation of people who think that history began in 2003. To them, all wars are Iraq. Their moral foundations are built on YouTube clips, Netflix documentaries and college professors who mistake cynicism for insight.

They imagine that all conflict stems from misunderstanding, and that the path to peace runs through feelings. They are, in truth, not serious people. They are children of comfort, playing at geopolitics from the safety of a world built by better men.

They mock the very idea of war while sipping lattes in cities secured by generations who stormed beaches, flew bombing raids, manned artillery and gave their lives for a peace that is now mistaken for a birthright. Their worldview is not peace-loving, it’s parasitic. It exists because someone else picked up a rifle so they wouldn’t have to.

The western world, luxuriating in the long peace bought by sacrifice, has grown dangerously forgetful of this fact. For many, the word “Iraq” is invoked like a talisman to discredit any use of force, regardless of circumstance.

But Iraq is not the archetype of war. It is the archetype of poorly waged war, devoid of strategic clarity, political coherence or cultural understanding. Universalizing its failures is as absurd as declaring all medicine fraudulent because of one misdiagnosis.

History is the rebuttal. The American Revolution did not occur because the colonists failed to write one more petition to the Crown. It occurred because liberty and imperial dominion could not share a continent.

The American Civil War was not the result of insufficient compromise. It was the inevitable clash between two incompatible moral orders. No committee could reconcile slavery with freedom. The matter had to be settled by force.

And the 20th century speaks even louder. The Second World War resulted from the failure to confront aggression when it was in its infancy. Peace in our time gave us war in our streets. Hitler was not appeased, he was emboldened. And when the reckoning finally came, it did not arrive through dialogue. It arrived through tanks, fleets and firebombs. It arrived because it had to.

Diplomacy, in truth, does not substitute for war. It follows it. Negotiation is not what ends conflict. Victory is. The treaties of Westphalia, Versailles and Camp David did not avert war, they formalized its outcome. Even today, peace agreements only work when enforced by the fear of what happens if they collapse. As Machiavelli warned, “War cannot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

We may prefer the language of compromise, but the world often speaks another tongue. As Thucydides wrote, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That is not an endorsement, it’s a warning. Those who forget it do not abolish war, they only ensure that when it comes, it comes on someone else’s terms.

Even now, the pattern repeats. The rise of revanchist powers — Russia, Iran, China — was not provoked by the West being too forceful. It was enabled by the West being too timid. Russia did not invade Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine because NATO expanded. It did so because the West shrank.

Iran did not radicalize because it was cornered, but because we left its ambitions unchecked. And China threatens Taiwan not because it’s afraid of war, but because it no longer believes the West is willing to fight one.

Israel’s recent campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah offers a current, unmistakable example. For years, western commentators wrung their hands about the risks of escalation. But a low-intensity, perpetual and asymmetric war was already being fought. Iran had been waging it with drones, rockets and proxies.

It was only when Israel struck back with precision and force, eliminating key Iranian military leaders and humiliating Hezbollah’s command structure, that the region began to shift.

Suddenly, even hostile actors started co-operating, allowing Israel to use their airspace and shooting down Iranian missiles, to contain further escalation. Why? Because war, judiciously applied, imposed clarity where diplomacy had only bought delay.

War, in such cases, is not madness. It is realism. It is not cruelty. It is consequence. And those who think it’s obsolete are not pacifists — they are amateurs.

The anti-war camp today is full of high-minded rhetoric and low-grade intellect. Its adherents conflate comfort with virtue, safety with wisdom. But the iron law of history is simple: peace must be secured, not assumed. And where irreconcilable visions of power and order collide, war is not a detour, it is the road itself.

War is not always the answer. But sometimes, it is the only answer. And those who are too delicate to face that fact will be ruled by those who are not.

National Post

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As the sun shines over the ghost town of Metula which abuts the Israel-Lebanon border, blue jacaranda petals softly fall from their trees to blanket its missile-torn streets in a vibrant lavender hue. It is a scene of heartbreaking juxtaposition — nature’s relentless beauty blooming against the backdrop of human devastation, where time stands still in an eerie dance between lush abundance and complete war-torn destruction.

“Most of them will return,” David Azoulay, the mayor of Metula, told our group on our recent tour — speaking of his 2,000 evacuated residents — “because this is our home. We will rebuild and pull through.” These words come from a man who slept on the floor of his tiny subterranean office for months after October 7, as his town was mercilessly shelled by Hezbollah in a devastating campaign entirely unprovoked by Israel, one that obliterated over 60 per cent of the city’s buildings and homes and forced the evacuation of an entire community.

Once-beautiful family homes now lie in piles of rubble, with all that remains of everyday life found in the charred remnants of furniture and melted appliances. Yet here, rolling up their sleeves, the people of Metula are rebuilding their city piece by piece, determined to breathe life back into what was once a vibrant community in northern Israel.

A Dubious Investigation

Amidst

rising tensions with Israel

, Canada’s premier law enforcement agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), is preparing the ground for an

investigation

into potential war crimes related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Should the target of the investigation be the state of Israel, or Israeli Canadians who served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it would expose a moral blindness so profound it borders on the obscene.

Perhaps, Ottawa needs reminding that Hamas set the region ablaze in its barbarous rampage on October 7, forcing Israel into a

seven-front

war of survival against the Iranian regime’s genocidal Islamist terror proxies. Inexplicably, the RCMP didn’t disclose any plans to prosecute Hamas for

murdering eight Canadians

. While Canada

launched a thunderous campaign

for its Ukraine investigation — complete with hotlines, dedicated webpages, airport signage, and breathless media interviews — the Israel-Hamas war probe has skulked in shadows, acknowledged only when pressed by journalists.

Treating Israel like Russia isn’t merely a false analogy or bureaucratic inconsistency. It is the manifestation of a grotesque double-standard and the weaponization of the justice system against a long-time ally, revealing how deeply the malignant mix of moral relativism and vote-bank politics has infected Canadian institutions and society.

The Forgotten Massacre

In the communities of southern Israel’s Gaza envelope, the scene is even more harrowing. Among the rubble lay children’s clothes and the toys they were playing with moments before Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians plowed through the security fences and massacred them in cold blood — for the unforgivable crime of being Jewish.

Residents walk through these ruins as the sound of bombs and artillery fire echoes in the near distance, an ongoing reminder of the Israeli nation’s unwavering determination to seek justice for these victims, and to reunite the

58 hostages

still withering in Hamas’s subterranean tunnels of horror.

This was not war. This was butchery. Systematic, premeditated, celebratory butchery that Hamas terrorists livestreamed to the world with gleeful pride. They did not merely kill — they savoured the killing, reveled in it, and made their victims’ final moments exercises in unimaginable pain and terror.

The Moral Abyss of False Equivalence

When we speak of war crimes, let us be unequivocal about what we have witnessed. Hamas has constructed the most extensive military tunnel network in the world beneath Gaza — not for civilian protection, but for predatory warfare. When 95 per cent of cement

transferred to Gaza

for humanitarian reconstruction was systematically diverted to build these tunnels of terror, there was no outrage from the international community.

The evidence of Hamas’s depravity extends beyond conventional warfare. In those underground lairs, Israeli forces discovered not only the expected arsenal of weapons, but also disturbing quantities of lubricants, Viagra and condoms — the calculated implements of systematic sexual violence.

Even Gazans are not spared from Hamas’s cold-blooded war tactics. The

use of civilians

and civilian infrastructure in Gaza is a documented human shield strategy of the terror group. Hamas doesn’t merely commit war crimes; it premeditates and executes them with methodical precision.

Urban warfare expert John Spencer has

observed

that Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history — measures that exceed what international law requires and surpass what the United States employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, Israel stands accused while Hamas, which weaponizes every hospital, school, and mosque escapes condemnation.

The Compromised Arbiters

If war crimes investigations are relying on UN statistics and testimonies, an inconvenient truth must be confronted: 12 UNRWA employees were fired for allegedly

participating

 in the October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians. Indeed, the very organization providing “neutral” assessments had personnel directly complicit in the terrorist atrocities they now claim to investigate objectively.

This isn’t a footnote to be dismissed — it is a cancer that metastasizes through pretty much every UN report, every casualty figure, every moral pronouncement. How can any investigation maintain credibility when the parent body is institutionally compromised?

The Cruel Irony of Our Times

There is a cruel irony in how major media outlets seem to have inexhaustible space for coverage of Hamas’s

fictional tales

of Israeli brutality in Gaza, while the death and destruction the terror group unleashed on innocent Israelis almost immediately disappeared into a memory hole of willful amnesia.

Israel did not want this war. It was thrust into conflict by the most savage terrorist attack in its history — an invasion of Israeli territory unseen since 1948. Its response, while necessarily devastating, has been constrained by unprecedented efforts to minimize civilian casualties while confronting an enemy that systematically maximizes them.

Those who have borne witness to the devastation wrought upon Israel on October 7th perceive a naked truth that Canada’s selective justice refuses to acknowledge: There is no moral equivalence between a democratic nation that defends its citizens and a genocidal death cult that celebrates their slaughter.

Applying different standards to different conflicts, or granting terrorists the cover of false moral equivalence, does not advance the cause of justice — it desecrates it.

The victims of the October 7 attacks deserve better. The families of Metula deserve better. If Canada’s commitment to international justice is sincere, it must call out evil by its name — without equivocation, hesitation, or the moral cowardice that masquerades as neutrality.

True justice sees all victims and names all perpetrators. Anything less is not justice — it is complicity dressed in the language of law.

Dagny Pawlak is senior communications officer at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. 
Joe Adam George is national security analyst at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Research Lead — Islamist Threats at the Middle East Forum. The authors’ trips to Israel were sponsored by Phaze 3 Associates, Exigent Foundation and the Centre for Israeli and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

National Post

• Arsen Ostrovsky: Israel did the West a favour by attacking Iran’s nuclear program
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While Iran has managed to land

some missile strikes upon Israel

, these attacks have neither crippled the country nor paralyzed Israeli life. Tehran and its supporters do not like this, though, so they are using shameless lies — including AI-generated content — to fabricate an alternative digital reality where Israeli cities lie in ruins.

I am

currently reporting

from Israel on behalf of

the News Forum

(a Canadian news channel), and can confidently say that the damage here has been relatively limited,

thanks to the Iron Dome defence system

, and that the Israelis are, at least for now, clearly winning this war.

That doesn’t mean that Israel has been immune to harm: several buildings have been damaged and destroyed, including a

major hospital in the southern city of Beersheva

, and around

24 Israelis

have been killed, with thousands more injured and

several thousand displaced

or

rendered homeless

.

However tragic these losses may be, though, they are a far cry from the cataclysm Tehran had originally hoped to inflict. The ayatollah wanted to see Tel Aviv reduced to rubble through a

retaliatory strike of 1,000 ballistic missiles

— but the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) decapitated his air force and

destroyed

over a third of his missile launchers. Now, Israeli aircraft

dominate his skies

and only a fraction of Iran’s stockpiles have been utilized, with new strikes apparently diminishing in scope.

To put things into perspective another way: a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, Miri Eisin, told

an international media outlet

earlier last week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had anticipated that Iran would kill around 5,000 civilians through its initial strike. So far, actual fatalities have amounted to less than one per cent of that figure.

Tehran and its supporters are losing, but they cannot accept this, so they are

flooding the internet

with posts that falsely claim that the damage in Israel is far more extensive than the media is reporting.

“Don’t be fooled, Israel is in worse shape (than) people think. About 1/3 of Tel Aviv has been damaged or destroyed,”

posted Douglas Macgregor

, a once-respected military expert, to X on Friday. Despite being obviously unhinged, his fan-fiction garnered millions of views and tens of thousands of likes.

Oftentimes, this kind of disinformation uses mislabelled photos and videos from other disasters or conflict zones. Missiles and explosions from

Ukraine

and Gaza are falsely presented as having occurred in Israel, for example. While this is not a new tactic — during the war against Hamas,

images of old horrors in Syria

were often misrepresented as Gazan realities — the increasing prevalence of AI-generated content has been a game-changer.

Some of these AI posts haven’t been exactly subtle. For example, a pro-China X account named America-China Watcher posted

an AI video

last Thursday that reportedly showed a “before and after” of Iran’s alleged destruction of Tel Aviv. The explosions were cheesy and obviously fake, and the video’s mise-en-scène didn’t make sense. Nonetheless, the post went viral and was viewed over 200,000 times.

On June 17, a popular far-right X account called White Ghost

posted an image

of missiles raining down like hellfire on a nighttime city. “This is not AI. This is Tel Aviv,” claimed the caption — but the BBC

quickly verified

that the image was, in fact, AI-generated and had been stolen from a digital creator’s Facebook post. Still, the post received over 230,000 likes and was viewed over 27-million times.

Even Iran’s legacy media has embraced AI forgeries: on June 15, the Tehran Times

posted a video

reportedly showing an Iranian missile hitting a building in Tel Aviv. The video was quickly debunked, as it contained a watermark indicating that it had been produced by Google’s AI video-generating system. Yet, the post was not taken down and has received almost half a million views so far.

This is just a minuscule sample of the propaganda that is being disseminated by Iran’s allies. If you can’t win in reality, you can just hallucinate a victory, apparently.

While some of this content is being shared and promoted organically, it is also being boosted by Iran’s professional disinformation agents. Last year, Radware, an Israeli cybersecurity firm,

documented

how Tehran is using AI to enhance its networks of social media bots (e.g., creating AI-generated personas and deepfakes) and influence public opinion. Last Wednesday, the firm

released an update

indicating that these networks have been deployed to support pro-Iranian narratives in the current war.

Several days ago, I

posted a video

of the beaches of Tel Aviv that debunked the “Israel is destroyed” narrative by showcasing people resiliently socializing, exercising and playing volleyball. It quickly went viral, amassing millions of views, leading to a deluge of commentators claiming it was fake, outdated or AI-generated.

Some of these people seemed to be bad actors and claimed, impossibly, that they had seen this footage months or years before. Others seemed earnestly suspicious, and had simply lost the capacity to trust online content.

But something strange happened: many commentators

asked AI chatbots

to verify whether the video was authentic. When these chatbots, being unequipped for this task, gave inconsistent, conjecture-laden answers, this was taken as evidence of forgery. So not only is AI flooding the internet with deepfakes, it is being used as a shoddy fact-checker, too, and, in this way, has found yet another means to erode reality.

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