Al Jazeera English Has Become a US-Gulf Propaganda Arm

The channel’s Iran war coverage is flipping from truth-telling to empire cheerleading

I have been watching Al Jazeera English for years now. Amidst the thousands of news channels that have popped up in recent years, I preferred it over others for a simple reason: wider network coverage on issues that pertain to the Global South – unlike Western news channels, which have largely become propaganda arms of Western empires.

However, I must admit I’ve seen a shift in Al Jazeera English’s news coverage over the last two to three weeks. Unlike its handling of the Gaza-Israel conflict, or for that matter the Lebanon-Israel one, its coverage of the Iran war has been dismal at best and propagandist at worst.

The images and videos it has been airing in this war are meant to showcase the power of Israel and the United States – how effectively they can destroy Iranian targets. Compare that to what they did during the Gaza war: a constant feed showing the suffering of Gazans (and I still commend them for doing such a good job when, for most networks, Gaza was just a footnote). But here, there’s almost no suffering shown of Iranian civilians. We aren’t shown the horrors of war on the ground in Iran – instead, it’s a continuous barrage of Israeli and American war footage highlighting how efficiently these killing machines work.

Back in June 2025, or even prior to that, Al Jazeera wasn’t allowed to broadcast from Israeli territory or the West Bank – their cameras were fixed on Israeli cities, showing Iranian missiles raining down. But in this war – even though their correspondents are present, at least in the West Bank – we see almost nothing. All at the excuse that the Israeli war censor prohibits showing these images, as if they didn’t do exactly that earlier.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. But lately, Al Jazeera airs a lot of programs from midnight to early mornings in West and South Asia, where much of the news coverage and discussions come straight out of the Washington studio. In all these programs, the tone is biased, painting a sympathetic picture of the US as if it’s bravely fighting evil. For example, in today’s show titled ‘This is America,’ broadcast from Washington DC, the program opened like this: “Hello, this is America, a friend to many Gulf nations…” – asserting just how vital the US is to the Gulf. This is happening at a particular moment when conversations in the Global South are shifting, and many people in the Gulf are openly questioning the presence of American forces in their countries. These nations are mostly run by families loyal to the US, so they’re fearful that their populations might revolt against them – especially as their governments tilt toward Israel, a country not looked upon positively in the Muslim world. In this period, Al Jazeera seems to be doing that job: reminding Gulf populations how important America is to them.

And in another program where the host began by noting that Gulf states have invested billions in the US and asking where the relationship between the Gulf and US goes from here, she introduced her two guests: a former CIA official and a US ambassador to Bahrain. Their conversation was solely meant to degrade Iran and show the world how evil it is. What struck me most was how the CIA official went at length to argue that Gulf Arab nations have no real alternative but to stay dependent on the United States. He trashed the options the host threw at him – China and Russia – and argued at length how the US is indispensable to the Gulf, and how Gulf states should not even think about breaking this relationship.

Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of my friends who express disbelief at Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Iran war. In fact, a friend suggested a few days ago that Indian media has better coverage of the Iran war than Al Jazeera. But it’s not just the coverage itself that interests me. I think – and I believe – that Gulf nations, in conjunction with the US, are using Al Jazeera as a propaganda arm, knowing full well that a huge audience in this region still trusts and watches the channel. I will update this article as and when I find more examples from their coverage.