General Dan Caine and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth listen as President Donald J. Trump oversees Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, March 1, 2026. (White House photo by Daniel Torok)
[People News] As the United States and Israel continue their military operations against Iran, official Chinese Communist Party media have on the one hand described the U.S. action as a war aimed at “regime change,” while on the other hand amplifying false narratives about the “U.S. military being frustrated” and about the United States intending to deceive Iran. At the same time, senior officials in the Trump administration have recently made frequent public statements emphasizing that the objectives of this military operation are clear: the focus is on destroying Iran’s offensive capabilities and blocking its path to nuclear weapons, not, as Chinese Communist Party official media claim, on openly making the overthrow of Iran’s current regime the military objective.
According to a Voice of America report, the Global Times, which has the background of being a Chinese Communist Party Party newspaper, has in recent days published multiple reports and commentaries claiming that the real intention of the United States and Israel has all along been to push for “regime change” in Iran, and implying that previous diplomatic contacts surrounding the Iranian nuclear issue were merely cover. Such claims portray Washington as the main force seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime under the pretense of negotiations.
President Donald Trump said on Monday (March 2) at the White House, when speaking about this war, that the U.S. objective could be summarized as destroying Iran’s missiles and naval forces and preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons. Vice President JD Vance had previously also stated publicly that the United States “is not seeking regime change,” but rather hopes to end Iran’s nuclear program and create conditions for a longer-term arrangement.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Monday at a Pentagon press conference that the mission of “Operation Epic Fury” is “highly focused,” and that its objectives are “to destroy Iran’s offensive missiles, destroy Iran’s missile production capability, destroy its navy and other security infrastructure, and ensure that they can never possess nuclear weapons.” The U.S. Department of Defense website and news releases both repeated this statement.
Hegseth also clearly stated that this “is not a so-called regime change war.” He said that the current U.S. military focus is on destroying Iran’s missile capabilities and naval forces, and preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, rather than making “changing the ruling regime” the official combat objective of this operation.
In subsequent further remarks, Hegseth on Wednesday again reiterated that the goals of this operation are “highly focused,” saying that the United States seeks to “destroy Iran’s missiles and drones and their production facilities, destroy its navy and key security infrastructure, and cut off its path to nuclear weapons.”
These statements show that the Trump administration is trying to define this military action against Iran as a limited-objective operation centered on national security and the restoration of deterrence, rather than another “boundaryless war” launched by the United States in the Middle East.
This stands in sharp contrast to the core narrative of Chinese Communist Party official media. Chinese Communist Party state media are not merely calling for a ceasefire and de-escalation; they are also systematically interpreting the U.S. action as Washington’s deliberate attempt to use military means to rewrite Iran’s political order, while portraying the United States as the main party responsible for the escalation of the Middle East situation.
By contrast, the Trump administration is trying to show the international community that the logic of the U.S. action is “peace through strength,” that is, rapidly weakening Iran’s actual threat through military strikes and forcing it to lose the conditions necessary to continue advancing its nuclear capabilities and regional military projection.
In addition to the narrative war, false information surrounding this conflict has also spread massively in cyberspace, and some of this content echoes the anti-American narratives in the Chinese Communist Party’s public opinion sphere.
After the military action against Iran took place, multiple misrepresented images and videos quickly appeared online, including claims that “the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was hit by an Iranian missile,” and videos claiming that “a U.S. fighter jet was shot down inside Iran,” as well as images and videos claiming that Iranian missile strikes had caused serious damage to Israeli military facilities. But fact-checking has shown that some of the footage actually came from old videos from several years ago, or was even generated by artificial intelligence, while the supposed video of “a U.S. warplane being shot down” came from a military-themed video game and was not real battlefield footage.
In response to one of the most widely circulated claims, U.S. Central Command directly stepped forward to refute it. In material published on its official website, Central Command pointed out that the claim by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it had hit the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was entirely fabricated. Central Command’s response wrote: “Lie. The Lincoln was not hit. The launched missiles did not even come close to it.”
Independent fact-checking organizations have also pointed out that social media has been flooded with large numbers of artificial-intelligence-generated images, old videos, and unrelated videos, all packaged and circulated as “on-the-scene footage of the 2026 U.S.-Iran conflict.” One old video segment was even falsely described as footage of “an Iranian attack on a CIA facility in Dubai.”
The U.S. government and Congress have in recent years repeatedly warned that authoritarian states such as China (the Chinese Communist Party) are increasingly combining disinformation, propaganda, and censorship in an attempt to reshape the global public opinion environment. At a hearing on Chinese Communist Party influence operations, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party is advancing its global interests through “propaganda, censorship, and disinformation strategies”; committee members also warned that the Chinese Communist Party is “actively funding propaganda campaigns” around the world in order to glorify Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and the image of the Chinese Communist Party, while denigrating the democratic world.
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