[Blog] Asymmetrical warfare and asymmetrical coverage by the MBC

By Azize Bankur

Many experts and analysts have termed the war between Iran, on one hand, and Israel and the USA, on the other, as asymmetrical warfare. They put forward a number of arguments to substantiate their claim.

Firstly, it is pointed out that on one side, that is the USA and Israel, there is reliance on conventional high-tech air and naval assets to establish superiority and dominance. They use advanced platforms such as F-35 stealth fighters, B-52 bombers and integrated defence systems like Iron Dome and Arrow. The latter are deemed impenetrable and are meant to provide guaranteed protection against attacks from all sorts of missiles. To counter such overwhelming naval and air power, Iran proceeds with progressive attrition.

It makes use of large volumes of low-cost ballistic missiles and swarms of drones to saturate and overpower the high-tech defence systems of its enemies. While the majority of its missiles and drones are intercepted, the few that happen to bypass the sophisticated defence systems cause a lot of damage.

Secondly, there is economic asymmetry. For the Israelis and Americans, the cost to defend against an attack is often hundreds of times higher than the attack itself. For example, to intercept an Iranian Shahed drone costing only $20,000, the Iron Dome has to expend an interceptor worth $50,000. If it fails, then the Patriot PAC-3 worth $3m comes into play, and if that also is unsuccessful, the THAAD interceptor costing $10m comes into action. Looking into the maths of it all, we have the following situation: if Iran launches 100 Shahed drones costing around $3m and the USA/Israel intercept them by using Patriot missiles, the defensive costs could exceed $300m. The operating cost of a $100m F-35 fighter jet is around $40,000 per flight hour, while Iranian missiles like Emad and Ghadr are estimated well below $1m.

With the injection of such massive sums in the war and by using high-tech weaponry, it is not a surprise that the USA and Israel have caused inordinate damage to Iran.

At the very beginning of the war itself, part of the Iranian leadership was wiped out. Kinetic damage has been colossal. Iran’s air defence architecture has reportedly been wiped out. Its naval assets have been degraded, with the destruction of two vessels considered as the flagship of the IRGC navy. Many refineries and oil depots have been bombed out of function, and nuclear facilities have reportedly been obliterated. Damage to civilian infrastructure is severe. According to the Red Crescent, more than 6,600 civilian structures like schools, hospitals and residential buildings have been blown to smithereens.

But Iran has not been knocked out. It has not remained arms folded and just endured the losses. On the contrary, it has retaliated strongly by inflicting heavy damage on Israel. In less than forty minutes after the attack, it began raining missiles on Israel and American bases in the Gulf. 
While Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow systems manage to intercept the majority of the missiles, the sheer volume of the Iranian retaliatory strikes inevitably results in documented damage that is often filtered in Western media. On March 1, for example, the city of Beit Shemesh was targeted. A public bomb shelter collapsed, causing the death of nine persons and injuries to several others, with eleven still missing. On March 3, a residential neighbourhood was damaged at Petah Tikva.
On the same day, shrapnel caused destruction to airbases and military installations in Tel Aviv. On March 3 again, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) sustained significant losses at the hands of the Iranian ally, Hezbollah, at Kafr Kila. A Kornet anti-tank missile hit a Merkava tank reputed to be indestructible. As three other tanks moved in to recover the immobilised tank, Hezbollah launched additional missiles and destroyed all of them. On the same day, a high-altitude Hermes drone costing $30 million was downed. 

From March 4-7, multiple residential buildings and businesses were levelled at Metula and Kiryat Shmona. On March 10, Iranian missiles hit oil and gas facilities and fuel storage depots in Haifa in a tit-for-tat response to Israeli strikes on Iranian oil depots in Tehran. Naval bases, intelligence and military hubs have also been targete.

As from March 10, the barrage of missiles, especially those with cluster warheads, is so heavy on Tel Aviv that millions of people are forced to live in bunkers.

Braj Mohan Singh, a reputed Indian journalist who just returned from Israel, reported that even underground bunkers were not completely safe and people were dying in them. He stressed on the “security umbrella failure” and added that “the sheer velocity and payload of the missiles (Iranian) represent a level of destructive power that challenges the very limits of modern survival strategies”. He also decried the “wall of silence” imposed by Israeli military censorship by banning visits to impact sites and hospitals to prevent a true assessment of the damage caused and casualties suffered.

However, regarding the local coverage of the war, any impartial observer watching the MBC would have noted the lop-sided coverage carried out by the TV station. A simple auditing of the 7.30 news bulletins reveals that every day the emphasis is on the “battering” that Iran is receiving, focusing almost exclusively on how the country is being pounded and pummeled by the Israelo-American forces. Footage after footage shows pictures of doom and destruction in Iran with commentaries about imminent collapse and deflagration. No doubt, this is the reality. But there is also the other side of the coin, the other reality, the one which vehiculates the Iranian retaliation and the severe damage it is causing to Israel.

This is blacked out almost completely on MBC. This is known as “selective omission” or lack of “visual parity” or “visual equilibrium”. 

One wonders what is the cause of this partiality in the coverage of this particular event. Is it because the state broadcaster simply “rips” headlines from major Western news agencies without ensuring a balance, or is it that the “editorial gatekeepers” operate a deliberate editorial policy aiming at amplifying the “dominant narrative” and silencing the “subaltern”? Whatever the cause, such lop-sided coverage helps to reinforce the myth of invincibility on one side and magnifies the impression of victimhood and eternal loser on the other. 

This asymmetrical coverage is not coterminous with the provisions of the MBC Act, which, inter alia, stipulates that the MBC shall “ensure, to the best of its ability, that the news bulletins are accurate and presented in an impartial manner”.

Unfortunately, in this particular case, it is not doing so. Compare it with the coverage in the media of the Global South, especially in Indian news outlets. Whether it is India Today, Times of India, Aaj Tak, WION or News18, the balance is there.