Media: variances
By Richard North - June 19, 2025
Throughout the history of this blog, I have endeavoured to give my best assessment of the issues I write about, relying on the best sources I can find and, where possible, using original source material – or as close as I can get to it. All this, over a period of 21 years now, has been done on a shoe string, with minimal resources.
These last few days have been no different, with my coverage of the Iran-Israel war and the Casey report on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. On both issues, however, I have been at such variance with many of the reports in the legacy media that, were it not my faith in my own research skills – and the forbearance of my readers – I would be seriously doubting my own sanity.
As regards the first of the issues, I have been taking the view that the Israeli attack on Iran is a well-planned operation with the primary intention of destroying the Iranian capability to build nuclear weapons, a task that requires knocking out a number of facilities, the toughest one of which is the Fordow enrichment plant, buried deep in a mountainside to the south of Tehran.
For this, it was quite evident a successful attack would need an effective “bunker buster” munition and while the IAF was not equipped with the ultimate weapon – the 30,000 lb GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) – nor the means of delivery, open source reports suggested that a capable alternative existed in the GBU-72A and there was good reason to believe that the IAF has acquired it – having had a hand in its development.
Moreover, as I sought to explain, the specific type of weapon was only part of the equation – the decisive factor, even with the GBU-57, was how the weapons were used. Here, we became acquainted with a technique tested and honed by the IAF in Lebanon against Hezbollah bunkers, the so-called “drilling strategy”, where multiple bombs are used in succession, each one penetrating further than it predecessor until the bunker is breached.
Actually, there are several techniques which can be used. Another is to launch multiple bombs at the same time and, with a high degree of accuracy, to detonate them simultaneously. That way, the shock waves of each bomb are combined and, while careful positioning can create a lens effect, directing the force of the blast towards the target. In the event, both techniques will probably be required.
With that as the technical background, there is the operational logic to consider. All the indications are that the Israelis have been planning this attack for some years, and they have been explicit about their objective of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability. Many analysts agree that this is the only tenable objective,
Given that that is the case, it stretches credulity to breaking point to assert that the Israelis have embarked on a complex, high-risk operation without the means to carry it through, then halfway through the operation to turn to the Americans, headed by the unpredictable and volatile president Trump, and expect them to finish the attack for them. This simply does not make sense.
Yet, for the past few days, that is exactly the narrative that the legacy media have been running, with the likes of the BBC employing its huge resources to run breathless and self-important “Verify” reports telling us that there is only one weapon that can do the job at Fordow – the GBU-57 – and only the Americans have it and the means of delivery.
As usual, they rely on the same limited set of “experts”, this time relying on an old favourite, Justin Bronk, “a senior analyst with the Royal United Services Institute(Rusi) think tank”. Prestige is everything, and he is allowed to comment on recent USAF aircraft movements, saying that the deployments were “highly suggestive” that the US was putting in place contingency plans to “support intensive combat operations” in the region in the coming weeks.
The BBC is by no means on its own here, with the Economic Times running a profile on the GBU-57, asserting that the US would have to take a direct hand in the conflict, then to report that Israel was actively seeking US assistance, relying on another journalistic source which acknowledged that the claim had already been denied.
However, by that time, the meme of a United States poised to join the war, to help out an Israel that couldn’t finish the job, had become the common narrative, and most of the media – domestic and international – were running it. Almost universally, they were ignoring the availability of the GBU-72.
This was despite papers such as the Telegraph had actually profiled the weapon. Written last year, David Axe argued that a token force of GBU-57-armed B-2s might be too small to dent the underground infrastructure of Iranian facilities, while a larger force of fighters carrying the lighter GBU-28s might be powerless to penetrate the deeper targets. The GBU-72, he wrote, “should address this dilemma”.
One wonders whether journalists actually read their own newspapers, much less the copy of their competitors. And right up to press, this question applies in spades to the Washington Post which is currently running a pompous opinion piece by Max Booot, knowingly asserting that “Israel simply does not have the munitions necessary to take out Fordow from the air. Only the United States can do that with those 30,000-pound “bunker busters” carried by B-2 Stealth Bombers”.
Of today’s domestic media, even the all-knowing Financial Times is running a technically illiterate piece headed: “Can an American bunker-buster destroy Iran’s nuclear mountain?”, with the sub-head asserting: “Israel hopes the US would deploy the GBU-57 E/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, but success would not be guaranteed”.
The Times proper has similar fare on offer, telling us “, “How US military could destroy Iran’s Fordow nuclear site”, relying on its own favourite expert, Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at Rusi, to opine that: “One [Mop] probably wouldn’t do it – you want several – and to launch them in one go”. Several waves would be more like, probably exhausting the US inventory which only runs to 20 bombs.
In the US, the Wall Street Journal was playing the same speculative game with a piece talking up the GBU-57 under the heading: “This ‘Bunker Buster’ U.S. Bomb Could Cripple Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions”, the sub-head claiming: “The 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator is considered by analysts to be the best chance at getting through to deeply buried targets”.
And yet, buried in this piece – almost as deeply as the Fordow site – are a couple of short paragraphs, leading with a statement that “Israel has a plan for Fordow and the ability to carry it out on its own, a senior Israeli military official said without elaborating”.
We then have Ehud Eilam, a former researcher for Israel’s Ministry of Defence, who says Israel could send a large number of its own, smaller penetrator bombs to dig their way into Fordow, as Israel did when it killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a bunker under Beirut.
Halleluiah! That is what I’ve been writing all along, yet even when the Israelis come out openly and repeat it, it is largely ignored by the popular media – which probably don’t have the technical background to understand what is being said.
Ignoring the fluff though, this revelation was quickly picked up by the specialist press, which can be accessed via the search engines, thereby making it invisible to “mainstream” journalists”.
Appreciation of this statement, though, alters the entire perception of the current conflict. Whether or not the US needs to become directly involved has massive implications but if Israel can do the job – which it says it can – this helps contain the conflict which retains regional rather than high-level global dimensions.
To that extent, we need to be kept properly informed, something that the Guardian was keen to point out in one of its self-important “explainers”.
“After Israel’s surprise attack on Iran on Friday, there have been days of escalating strikes between the two longstanding enemies”, it told us, adding: “Understanding what is happening in the Middle East is more important than ever”.
With a chutzpah in which the media excel, it then declares: “It’s the Guardian’s job to decipher this, and with reporters sharing live updates around the clock, we’re well-placed to provide comprehensive, fact-checked reporting, to help us all make sense of the events reshaping global politics”.
Yet, from a solo garret in an unfashionable suburb of Bradford, an unassuming blog – unread by the mighty – manages to do precisely what the Guardian and all the rest manifestly fail to do.
The same, at a different level, applies to the Casey report but, short of space, I must leave an evaluation of that for another day.
