S-300PMU-2 “Favorit” on display. (Image via enemyforces.net)

In one of the most remarkable thematic misdirections I can remember, the West’s mainstream media reported on 28 August that Iran has now deployed “long-range missiles” to the Fordo uranium enrichment site in northern Iran, near Qom.

If you don’t look past the headline, you may think vaguely that Iran has put some launchers for an intermediate-range ballistic missile in at Fordo.  That would be interestingly odd – food for thought, certainly, if only for wonks – but not terribly informative.  The average reader has no way of putting such information in context.

The real headline

But what Iran actually did was deploy the first S-300 air defense system equipment to Fordo. 

The average consumer of such news has heard of the S-300, and knows it’s a big deal.

Since the MSM stories acknowledge within the first few sentences that the missile system is the S-300, and since their previous stories about the long saga of Russia’s S-300 sale to Iran have invariably called it the S-300 in the headlines, there is no legitimate reason why this latest headline would merely refer to the items deployed as “long-range missiles.”

It’s not just sloppy to do that.  It’s obscurantist.  No one refers to the S-300 in a professional context as a “long-range missile.”  It’s an air defense missile system.  That’s what matters about it.  That’s the first thing you say about it.