A lot of media outlets have egg on their face this morning after proclaiming last night’s weak propaganda operation to be the beginnings of a new world war. To say that their credibily took a hit would be to ignore they have no credibily left to take a hit to, but still, it was pretty stunning to witness. From MSNBC repeating Iranian propaganda, to CNN hosting the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis spokeswoman, to NBC News live streaming the funeral of Soleimani, it was a banner day for media idiocy and anti-Americanism.

Enter TIME Magazine, which decided to release an explainer on the situation but conveniently yada yada yadaed over forty years of aggression in order to not implicate Barack Obama.

Holy shit look at this time gap between 1979 and 2018.https://t.co/ZNGdESyYrc pic.twitter.com/7OfJm76XzN

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) January 7, 2020

If someone is writing a piece on “why the U.S. and Iran don’t get along,” but they only cite 1979 and 2018, that’s a good sign their partisanship has fried their brain. Even under Obama, Iran killed hundreds of U.S. troops and lashed out with proxy wars. In another incident, the Iranian navy took American sailors hostage, releasing pictures of our service members being embarrassingly made to kneel before drawn weapons.

Further, the idea that the 2015 nuclear deal was some kind of silver bullet which calmed Iran’s aggression and brought up a new peace in the Middle East is nonsense. It was Obama’s administration that helped prop up the already failing Iranian regime. From the moment it was signed, Soleimani and his militias caused havoc across the region, including helping kill 500,000 people in Syria, while also waging a deadly war in Yemen that is ongoing. Even before Trump pulled out of the deal, Iran had made several moves that strained the United States’ patience.

History did not start in 2016. Trump is no responsible for Iranian malfeasance, he is simply reacting to a dumpster fire of a situation handed to him by the last administration. Still, Trump has managed to show restraint (he’s more of an isolationist at heart) until last week. The Mullahs finally pushed the wrong button, i.e. killing an American, so a response had to be undertaken. It would be nice if our media could manage to report honestly on the history behind this and the situation currently at hand. But that’s way too much to ask these days.