Seventeen years ago, while serving as an Iran desk officer in the U.S. State Department, I asked a more veteran colleague about the latest inflammatory statement by Mahmood Ahmadinejad, then the Iranian president. My colleague responded: “Stop paying attention to Ahmadinejad. Only focus on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He makes the important decisions.” He added: “But don’t worry. Change is coming. Khamenei”—who was then 69 and widely believed to have cancer—“could die at any moment.”
Oh the framing is shit for sure, but if you read past the spin, there is an acknowledgement there that the US doesn’t control escalation dominance in this war. And that is quite the admission for mainstream US media to make.