Judging by how corporate media covered the US’s assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani earlier this year, one would expect US journalists to portray Fakhrizadeh as some kind of nebulous “national security threat,” even if there is little evidence to support that accusation. Corporate media in January laundered Trump administration talking points of Soleimani “actively planning” several “imminent attacks” across the Middle East when he was killed, though it was later revealed that he had actually been traveling to attend regional peace talks with Saudi Arabia in Iraq.

Although Iran’s account of how Fakhrizadeh was killed has changed significantly since the assassination—first reporting an ambush and gunfight between Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards and several gunmen, to Iran now accusing Israel of using a “remote-controlled weapon” to carry out the killing—what hasn’t changed is multiple Western media covering the event in the context of Iran’s nonexistent “nuclear weapons program.”

Western corporate media contradict each other, with some claiming Fakhrizadeh had participated in a now-defunct Iranian weapons program, while others suggest that a covert program to develop nuclear weapons is still ongoing. Some reports acknowledged that existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, present or past, is only an allegation from US/Israeli intelligence agencies, while others treated those allegations as factual.