WASHINGTON — Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) accused US media of engaging in “selective coverage” that has downplayed the successes of Operation Epic Fury — and instead benefited Iran during the first 30 days of the war.
“I read the entire political spectrum on Epic Fury. Iran now loves and learns from the media,” Fetterman told The Post Tuesday.
“The media’s selective coverage rewards and reinforces Iran’s strategy,” he said. “Media amplifies the 1% chaos Iran creates, while ignoring the 99% of Iran’s beatdown.”
Much of that coverage has been focused on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint through which around one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil passes — and which Tehran closed down after the US and Israel started military strikes against the regime on Feb. 28.
That’s caused global energy prices to surge, with oil increasing to $100 per barrel by mid-March.
Fetterman noted that coverage depicts the global economy “spiraling” by “citing the cost of a gallon” domestically in the US, but that “omits the perspective it was much higher just a few years ago.”
Inflation hit a 40-year high under former President Joe Biden in 2022, with the price of one barrel of oil reaching $119 in June of that year.
The price for gas peaked at $5 per gallon the same month in the US, though the average cost for a gallon is now around $4 domestically.
US news articles and op-eds have also suggested President Trump unconstitutionally launched a war without obtaining congressional authorization, failed to provide clear reasons for it to the American public or even fully prepare for contingencies.
Trump told The Post in a phone interview Tuesday that American forces were not going to be in Iran “too much longer,” that the strait will “automatically open” once troops depart and that US allies like the UK should “go and open it.”
Congressional Democrats besides Fetterman have criticized Trump and his administration for the increase in energy prices, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) posting on X a screenshot of a New York Times article and saying that the “White House failed to prepare for rising oil prices from his reckless war.”
“How did Donald Trump not see the crisis with the Strait of Hormuz coming?” the Democratic leader balked six days later in another post that shared a Bloomberg News headline.
The coverage has also failed to judge the conflict on the Trump administration’s stated goals, Fetterman added, which Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had rattled off during a Pentagon press briefing Tuesday.
The US intended to destroy Tehran’s missile and drone capacity, its navy and ability to project power beyond its borders — as well as to thwart any nuclear weapon ambitions, Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said in the briefing.
In total, the US has hit 11,000 targets in the first 30 days of war, decimating 90% of Tehran’s missiles and 95% of its drones.
Airstrikes also took out the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials, which the Trump administration has said helped bring about negotiations with “new” and “more reasonable” regime leaders.
Hegseth trumpeted the bombing campaigns most recent strikes on an ammo depot at Isfahan — one of three nuclear site locations struck in June 2025 — that erupted into a mushroom cloud-shaped inferno.
“Democrats used to demand ‘Iran can’t ever acquire a nuclear weapon.’ But by any metrics on historical warfare, Epic Fury has been wildly successful,” Fetterman said.
“If Iran had abandoned its nuclear ambitions and vow of ‘Death to America and Israel’ there would be no Epic Fury. No 10/7. No Gazan War,” he added, referring to the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack by Hamas that slaughtered 1,200 people — including 46 Americans — in Israel.
The Pennsylvania Democratic senator asked why the joint US-Israeli decision “to hold Iran fully accountable” by prosecuting the war has been ignored in most press coverage.
Three days after the bombs started falling, for example, the White House had noted in a fact sheet that “more Americans have been killed by Iran than any other terrorist regime on Earth,” citing hundreds slaughtered by Tehran and its terror proxies.
