Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, told The Post on Tuesday that the American press has functionally become an asset to the Iranian regime. His charge is specific: that media coverage of Operation Epic Fury has systematically amplified Iran's limited disruptions while burying the overwhelming military success of the US-led campaign.
It is not every day that a Democratic senator accuses his own side's preferred outlets of carrying water for a hostile foreign power. But Fetterman did not hedge.
"The media's selective coverage rewards and reinforces Iran's strategy."
His argument is straightforward, and the numbers from the Pentagon briefing on Tuesday make it hard to dismiss. In the first 30 days of Operation Epic Fury, which began on February 28, the United States has struck 11,000 targets. Ninety percent of Tehran's missile capacity has been destroyed. Ninety-five percent of its drone capacity has been destroyed. Dozens of senior Iranian officials have been killed in airstrikes, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself. Three nuclear sites were struck, including the facility at Isfahan.
By any honest accounting, that is a devastating campaign. Fetterman said as much.
"Democrats used to demand 'Iran can't ever acquire a nuclear weapon.' But by any metrics on historical warfare, Epic Fury has been wildly successful."
Fetterman's complaint is not that journalists should become cheerleaders. It's that the ratio of attention is inverted. Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, oil climbs to $100 a barrel by mid-March, and every front page treats the conflict as an economic catastrophe. Meanwhile, the near-total destruction of Iran's offensive military capability barely registers, as New York Post reports.
"Media amplifies the 1% chaos Iran creates, while ignoring the 99% of Iran's beatdown."
He pointed specifically to domestic energy price coverage, noting that outlets depict the global economy "spiraling" by citing the cost of a gallon of gas, which now sits around $4. What they omit, Fetterman argued, is perspective. Gas peaked at $5 per gallon in June 2022. Oil hit $119 a barrel that same month. Inflation reached a 40-year high under President Biden. The current prices are elevated, but they are not unprecedented, and last time there was no military campaign dismantling a terrorist regime's nuclear ambitions to show for it.
The selective framing extends beyond economics. Fetterman noted that the joint US-Israeli decision to hold Iran accountable has been largely ignored in press coverage, as has the broader context that made the operation necessary.
"If Iran had abandoned its nuclear ambitions and vow of 'Death to America and Israel' there would be no Epic Fury. No 10/7. No Gaza War."
That line deserves a moment. The October 7, 2023 terror attack slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel, including 46 Americans. A White House fact sheet released three days after the war began noted that more Americans have been killed by Iran than any other terrorist regime on Earth. These are not abstract policy debates. They are body counts.
While Fetterman breaks ranks, the rest of his party has settled into a familiar posture. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to X to share a screenshot of a New York Times article, claiming the "White House failed to prepare for rising oil prices from his reckless war." Six days later, he posted a Bloomberg News headline asking how Trump failed to see the Strait of Hormuz crisis coming.
The pattern is notable. Schumer did not engage with the campaign's military objectives. He did not address Iran's decimated missile and drone arsenals. He did not mention the nuclear sites. He did not acknowledge the killing of Khamenei. He found a negative economic headline and posted it. Then he found another one and posted that too.
Other congressional Democrats have criticized the increase in energy prices. Some US news articles and op-eds have suggested Trump unconstitutionally launched the war without congressional authorization, though no formal legal challenges have been cited.
The critique amounts to this: the war costs too much, and maybe it's illegal. What it never addresses is whether Iran with a nuclear weapon would cost more.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine held the Tuesday briefing and laid out the campaign's stated goals:
Against those benchmarks, the first 30 days have been remarkably efficient. Hegseth highlighted the most recent strikes on an ammunition depot at Isfahan, one of the three nuclear site locations struck. The Trump administration has described new Iranian regime leaders emerging in the wake of Khamenei's death as "new" and "more reasonable," suggesting negotiations may follow.
President Trump told The Post in a phone interview Tuesday that American forces would not be in Iran "too much longer," that the Strait of Hormuz will "automatically open" once troops depart, and that US allies like the United Kingdom should "go and open it."
That is confidence rooted in leverage. When you have destroyed 90% of a regime's missiles and 95% of its drones, killed its supreme leader, and struck its nuclear facilities, the negotiating position is not theoretical.
Fetterman's most cutting observation was also his simplest. He told The Post that he reads "the entire political spectrum on Epic Fury," and his conclusion is blunt:
"Iran now loves and learns from the media."
This is the core problem. Iran's strategy after the Strait of Hormuz closure was never primarily military. It was informational. Create enough economic disruption to turn American public opinion against the campaign before the campaign finishes the job. Around one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil passes through that strait. Tehran knew closing it would generate the only kind of coverage that matters in Washington: the kind that makes voters angry at the president.
And the American press obliged. Not because editors in New York are secret Iranian sympathizers, but because bad economic news generates clicks, and military success in a war many outlets opposed from day one does not fit the narrative. The incentive structure does the work that ideology doesn't need to.
The result is a coverage landscape where a $4 gallon of gas gets more ink than the elimination of a nuclear threat. Where Schumer's recycled Bloomberg headlines get amplified and 11,000 struck targets get a paragraph on page A14.
Fetterman sees it. He is one of the very few Democrats willing to say it out loud. That itself tells you something about the state of his party. When the most clear-eyed voice on a Democratic senator's side of the aisle is the guy from Braddock, Pennsylvania, the establishment has a credibility problem that goes well beyond media criticism.
The press does not have to love this war. But it does have to cover it honestly. Right now, Iran's strategy depends on the assumption that it won't.