TEHRAN — As the world’s attention turned to Tehran and Tel Aviv after the regime imposed a war on Iran in the early hours of June 13, a parallel battle began to rage in the shadows: a war against truth. 

Faced with the devastating blow of Operation True Promise III—launched in self-defense after Tel Aviv martyred over 330 Iranians, including senior officials and scientists, and wounded more than 1,800—the Israeli regime has activated an unprecedented censorship machine. 

Designed to conceal battlefield losses and fabricate the illusion of control, this apparatus wages war on facts before they reach the global stage. 

This orchestrated suppression—stretching from gag orders in the occupied territories to algorithmic censorship in Silicon Valley—exposes more than a transparency crisis. 

It reveals a regime gripped by fear that the world might witness, in real time, the magnitude of its unraveling on the battlefield. 

The architecture of silence

The foundation of this deception is evident in Brigadier-General Kobi Mandelblit’s “Rising Lion” directive, issued on June 17. 

In this sweeping order, any reporting on impact sites near military facilities—including drone footage of strike zones or precise addresses of hits close to security installations—is explicitly deemed criminal. 

At the same time, the directive outlaws any mention of interceptor launches or footage of missile impacts, extending its reach even to social media posts unless prior state approval is granted. 

Enforcement of these restrictions has been nothing short of draconian. 

On June 19, police in Haifa descended on foreign news crews documenting strikes on the city’s oil refinery and power grid, confiscating cameras, memory cards, and other equipment. 

Officers were instructed to move “against news agencies utilized by Al Jazeera,” a network already banned in Israel since 2024. 

Far more chilling is what lies hidden beneath this veil of censorship. In the basement morgues of Israeli military hospitals, wards reportedly overflow with casualties kept far from public view. 

Fars News cited Iranian security sources as saying scores of soldiers wounded in Iran’s missile strikes are packed into subterranean corridors, their identities and injuries classified as “state secrets.” 

Even Western media outlets with a well-documented pro-Israel bias have found themselves similarly constrained. 

The BBC publicly acknowledged being barred from covering the devastation at the Weizmann Research Institute—a site linked to military and intelligence operations that now lies in ruins. 

As Egyptian analyst Bashir Abdelfatah observes, “Rocket strikes have created Gaza-like scenes in Israel. We are seeing secrecy and censorship over casualties exceeding 1,000.” 

In censoring the very evidence of failure, the state ensures that reality itself becomes a casualty of this clandestine campaign. 

The deception playbook 

Israel has supplemented its stringent censorship measures with a full-throttle disinformation campaign that draws on a deep doctrinal well. 

At the heart of this effort lies the Mossad’s own guiding principle—“By way of deception thou shalt wage war,” a tenet lifted from Proverbs 24:6 and operationalized through specialized units such as Team Jorge. 

These teams have orchestrated sprawling troll farms that populate social networks with AI-generated personas, all designed to drown out unapproved narratives and shape the global conversation in Israel’s favor. 

One of the most revealing examples of this strategy came in the form of recycled footage purporting to show successive strikes on Iranian transporter erector launchers. 

By tweaking contrast levels and camera angles, analysts later demonstrated that what appeared to be multiple, precision attacks was in fact a single minor hit repackaged as a widescale campaign.

Additionally, Iranian analysts have noted that the regime releases footage portraying strikes on decoy launchers as if they were genuine targets. 

This state-backed spin machine extends well beyond tactical video edits. 

During critical phases of the Israeli-imposed war on Iran, the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, restricted the account of former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif. 

He had written a post calling the Israeli regime’s Premier Netanyahu a "genocidal coward" and that while Iran did not begin the war, it will certainly "decide how it ends." 

Zarif himself demanded to know why his verification check mark was removed, why his tweets had been shadow-banned, and insisted that “the world needs to know all the facts.” 

On the parallel front, Meta reportedly processed some ninety thousand Israeli takedown requests in just twenty-four hours, purging anti-Israel content while algorithmically boosting official Israeli military posts. 

Underlying these modern tactics is an ancient license to deceive. 

Radical rabbinical authorities have pointed to passages in Baba Metzia 23b-24a to justify lying to “gentiles” in moments of existential peril. 

This religious sanction fuels today’s so-called Hazbara 2.0, a state-funded network of online trolls who swarm any critic with accusations of antisemitism. 

Additionally, Israeli firms such as Percepto International have deployed AI bots that masquerade as concerned citizens, all in a bid to sway Western public opinion and preempt awkward questions about the very real human cost of these conflicts. 

Amid its sweeping censorship and disinformation campaign, Israel has also resorted to the deliberate fabrication of battlefield “victories” through carefully orchestrated media leaks. 

Major international outlets such as Reuters, Axios, and The Wall Street Journal have been fed exclusive briefings by pro-Israel reporters, including former Unit 8200 officers working from within newsroom ranks. 

Iran’s successes Israel fears you’ll see 

Behind the enforced information blackout, Iran’s self-defense operation has systematically dismantled Israel’s long-cherished image of invulnerability. 

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has conducted seventeen waves of Operation True Promise III as of June 20. 

The subsequent waves featured fewer missiles but demonstrated greater precision and effectiveness, resulting in a higher success rate. 

The most intense phase included advanced missiles that penetrated Israel’s multi-layered air defenses (Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome). 

For example, in Wave 16, a single Iranian missile destroyed a target in Be'er Sheva, demonstrating evasion capabilities that rendered Israeli interceptors ineffective. 

Another attack struck an oil refinery in Haifa and damaged central Israel’s power grid, exacerbating economic strain. Israeli interceptors reportedly cost $200 million daily to operate.
  
IRGC Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Iman Tajik declared Israel’s airspace "completely undefended" and warned of impending "economic blows." 

A precision strike against the Gav-Yam Technology Park, initially misreported as hitting a civilian hospital, obliterated intelligence servers and left key laboratories in ruins. 

Meanwhile, Haifa’s port facilities sustained such extensive damage that they remain largely inoperable, constricting some forty percent of Israel’s maritime imports and bringing much of the country’s supply chain to a standstill.