By Fatemeh Kavand

‘Who can solve Iran’s many problems?’; created the fire, claims the hose

A recent New York Times’ report on Iran , titled “who can solve Iran’s many problems? Not I, says the president”, is not an attempt to grapple with the country’s complex economic and political realities. It is a carefully constructed narrative exercise—one that deliberately removes decisive external factors in order to assign responsibility for Iran’s challenges in a narrowly defined, politically convenient way. What emerges is not journalism in the classical sense, but narrative warfare by other means.