Nearly six months into the war with Iran, Americans have had less independent verification of their own military’s conduct than in any major conflict since satellite imagery and embedded journalism became staples of war coverage, according to CBS News and a growing body of reporting from outlets that have tracked the steady narrowing of public information throughout the war.
CBS’s Margaret Brennan laid out the contrast on the Aug. 2 broadcast of Face the Nation. “Unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, where reporters embedded with U.S. troops documented the conflict from the ground, the war with Iran has largely been seen through government-produced videos, presidential social media posts and limited official briefings, leaving Americans with fewer independent accounts of what their government is doing in their name,” Brennan said, according to the official transcript. She noted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not held a press briefing since May 5, and that the Pentagon barred military commanders from testifying to Congress without prior approval starting last fall.
The information gap traces back to the war’s opening days. On Feb. 28, a U.S. strike hit a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing roughly 175 people, most of them children, an incident the Pentagon initially disputed before a military investigation later concluded a U.S. Tomahawk missile was responsible, according to the Global Investigative Journalism Network. Independent open-source investigators had used commercial satellite imagery from Planet Labs, a leading Earth-imaging firm, to establish the strike’s origin.
Within days, the U.S. government moved to cut off that same tool. Planet Labs announced a 14-day delay on all new imagery of Iran and the wider Middle East in March, a restriction that expanded on April 4 into an indefinite blackout. “The U.S. government had asked all satellite imagery providers to indefinitely withhold images of the conflict region,” Planet Labs said in a notice to customers, according to Reuters reporting on the notice, adding that it expected the restriction to remain in place “until the conflict ends.” Vantor, the geospatial intelligence firm formerly known as Maxar Technologies, separately confirmed it was enforcing similar access controls, limiting both new tasking requests and purchases of archival imagery “over areas where U.S., NATO, and other allied and partner forces are actively operating.”
A Columbia Journalism Review investigation traced the legal mechanism available to the government for this kind of restriction to a 1992 licensing requirement known as “shutter control,” which allows federal officials to order a commercial satellite operator to withhold imagery in the name of national security. The CJR analysis noted the government has never formally invoked that specific authority, even during the current war, relying instead on informal requests to which the companies voluntarily agreed, an approach that leaves the restrictions largely insulated from First Amendment challenge since they are directed at corporations rather than publishers.
The practical effect of the blackout has been significant. A Washington Post investigation found Iranian missile and drone strikes damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East, identifying hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and critical radar, communications and air defense systems through satellite imagery analysis, according to a summary of the reporting that cites the Post’s findings. A separate NBC News report cited in the same summary found Iran had caused “far worse” damage to U.S. bases than had been publicly disclosed, with the imagery restrictions making independent verification of the war’s true toll difficult for journalists and researchers alike. The Post reported that Iran’s strikes had rendered some U.S. bases too dangerous for normal operations, with commanders relocating most personnel from affected sites.
Planet Labs and Vantor have said they were not formally ordered by any government agency to restrict access, telling the Washington Post in March that the restrictions were voluntary. The Pentagon has consistently declined to comment on the arrangement when asked by reporters.
The narrowing of information has extended to Congress itself. Republican Sen. John Kennedy said on the same Face the Nation broadcast that he wanted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Hegseth to hold “a speech or a long press conference to explain what’s going on in Iran, why we went in, why we’re still there.” Fellow Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said it took a “yelling match” with Trump personally to obtain information he needed. “I need to know to serve my people and my state and my country,” Cassidy said. “As it turns out, I got a briefing afterwards.” Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, told Brennan, “I don’t think anybody is satisfied with the level of information we’re receiving,” adding that both chambers of Congress have formally registered concern that the Pentagon needs to share more.
Public confidence in the information environment has eroded alongside these restrictions. CBS polling cited in the same broadcast found 63 percent of Americans believe the war is not going well, 67 percent want it ended now, and 69 percent say they are not getting a clear understanding of what is happening on a day-to-day basis.
Hegseth has publicly dismissed criticism of his approach to the press. “To the American media, I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage,” Hegseth said in remarks aired in the same segment, part of a broader pattern of restricting Pentagon press corps access that has included a since-litigated credentialing policy a federal judge ruled unconstitutional earlier this year.
The current restrictions mark a departure even from prior wartime practice around satellite imagery. During the opening of the Afghanistan war in October 2001, the Pentagon secured similar control by purchasing exclusive rights to all available tasking on the era’s only satellite capable of imaging the country at high resolution, rather than requesting a voluntary industry-wide blackout. A 2020 update to the underlying federal licensing law had narrowed the government’s formal restriction authority and acknowledged that foreign-operated satellites can often produce comparable imagery, a factor that has limited how completely any single government request can control the flow of visual information from a conflict zone.
Neither the Pentagon nor Planet Labs has indicated a timeline for when satellite imagery restrictions or the reduced briefing schedule might be revisited.