TEHRAN - The role of media is greatest during military wars, but this doesn’t mean the mass media plays any lesser role other times. The nature of media warfare seems soft; though it has destructive impact so much so that even the citizens of the countries involved in the war won’t realize the effect of that war on their mind and spirit.

In the twentieth century wars, many countries have taken advantage of the media as a psychological warfare and propaganda.

The United States also exploited the media in the Vietnam War; however, the free media outlined the American crimes in Vietnam and immensely affected the public opinion. Eventually, shocking images released in 1972 led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops in the following year.

Learned from the previous mistake in the Vietnam War, when the United States occupied Granada in 1983, it revised its media policies and prevented journalists from entering the war zones. In 1991, during the first Persian Gulf War, Western media did not allow entry into the battlefield. In the Kosovo war, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) hosted a press conference every day and provided made up images to the media with a specific framework. In the Afghanistan war, the forces involved in the war took vow of silence and didn’t release much information on the war.

In 2003, during the Second Persian Gulf War, media outlets emerged from the monopoly of BBC and CNN, and appeared as emerging networks in the war scene. In this war, the internet acted as a rival to the print media and news agencies, and in the United States and Europe, internet users rose to over 70%.
Now, let’s discuss the role of media in the Yemeni war. The media in the Saudi-led coalition plays round the clock, using all efforts to psychologically defeat the other side.

The anti-Yemeni coalition follows Hitler's propaganda minister’s theory

A big lie (German: groBe Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler. Later, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister expressed this theory with a slight change, saying that the Great Lie is one of the methods used by the United Kingdom to tell a Big Lie and insisting on it.

The world's largest media companies and corporations use the anti-Yemeni coalition lies in the global marketplace, relying on Goebbels, Germany's Propaganda Minister in the World War II. The principle is to lie so much that others believe it.

In 2003, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the theory of media psychological warfare was implemented. The U.S. Army prepared sculptures and the statues of Saddam Hussein shot down in Kuwait, and then they displayed as images inside the city of Umm Qasr and Al-Basra. However, after 2003, it became clear that this was a fake advertisement campaign to break the Iraqis’ spirit.

Their affiliated media are lying around the clock to break the Yemenis’ spirit.

Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, military strategist, who considered the highest level of skill to break the enemy's resistance. The goal is to persuade the other party that the resistance is useless and must surrender and give up. Media warfare is one of the tools for that. If the defeat and the uselessness of the resistance are accepted, the goal is met.

The anti-Yemeni media and psychological warfare are the midst of a soft war in its heaviest form. According to sociologists and psychologists, the situation that prevails in Arab countries is, is the result of planting seeds, an intruder and a gap in Arab societies. In a way that is a disregard for the risks of occupation and disintegration in line with the American plan in which Arabs are targeted. The American plan is particularly visible in Yemen.

The United States is an army of psychological and media experts aimed at pushing the Yemeni citizen out of the state of ill-fated beliefs into U.S.-led coalition plans to describe, for example, the Yemeni war to restore what is called legitimacy. While the legitimacy of a mere evil scheme to divide Yemen and plunder its resources are not in the interest of the United States and Britain. The United States succeeded in deceiving many Yemenis and pretending to be a Yemeni-Yemeni war, and that friends have come to help Yemen just as they have helped Iraq and Afghanistan before!

Large volume of false news aimed at influencing Yemen's public opinion

The tactics used by the American-Saudi coalition are a huge amount of false news that Yemeni citizens receive in audio, video and electronic media, alongside social networks. In the eyes of this coalition, war and victory is a commodity that needs to be widely advertised. There is a lot of news about the occupation of al-Hudaydah airport or whether this coalition is at the gates of Sanaa, while at the end it turns out that they all were lies. A lot of lies have already been reported, including the battle held near the city of Saada.

It is regrettable that some Yemenis, willing or unwilling, believe these lies, while they should not listen to the rumors of the Saudi- coalition.

Western channels and media networks promote coalition lies and psychological warfare. For example, Reuters had a mission to convince the Yemeni people and the world that Al-Hudaydah airport had been captured by anti-Yemeni coalition forces on June 18.

In the absence of any accountability for the coalition due to media propaganda, the role of Ansarullah's war media is well-respected.

It was the very highlight of the the Sanaa-Ansalullah media that led the U.S.-Saudi coalition to retreat from its positions, declaring that they are not inside the airport.