Parizad Nobaht
BBC Persian Service
In recent days, many Iranians - both at home and abroad - have taken to social media to express their displeasure over the striking contrast in the world media's reporting of two very similar tragedies.
Bombing of the hospital in Beersheba, in Israel, received immediate and extensive attention from major international media outlets.
Meanwhile, just a few days earlier, a hospital in Kermanshah, in western Iran, was also hit in an attack, but it was barely reported in the world media.
This growing impression of inequality in the recognition of suffering has caused many to feel ignored and devalued.
An important question was also raised: why does the world see some tragedies and not others?
The answer lies not only in geopolitics, but also in access, visibility, and strategic information management.
Israel understands the media well.
Its government and military institutions have developed a well-established system of engaging the foreign press.
When a major incident occurs, foreign correspondents, most of whom are already stationed in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, are immediately transferred to the scene.
There they are allowed to film, ask questions and talk to victims or officials.
Everything is fast, transparent, and designed to feed the global news cycle.
The same is not true for the Gaza Strip, where Israel restricts movement within the territory and foreign news crews are not allowed to enter to report on the situation on the ground.
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Information vacuum
Iran, on the other hand, remains almost completely closed to foreign journalists.
Even now, BBC journalists have not been granted visas to report from Tehran.
And even for Iranian reporters inside the country, restrictions are strict and censorship is pervasive.
After the bombing of Kermanshah, the first images to emerge were a handful of blurry, dark photos taken on mobile phones.
There were no press conferences, no coordinated approach to the media, and certainly no live reporting from the scene.
This problem goes deeper than that.
In Israel, 24-hour satellite imagery, drone footage, and live reporting from the skies of Tel Aviv are commonplace.
Iran, by contrast, lives in an information vacuum, where most footage from inside the country is taken secretly by civilians on their phones, posted over unstable internet connections, and then quickly found and removed.
And there is also the issue of official figures.
When the Beersheba hospital was hit, Israeli authorities quickly announced the number of injured, provided updates on the condition of patients, and offered details of the circumstances of the attack.
In Iran, almost two days after the first wave of Israeli attacks, the Ministry of Health announced an initial nationwide death toll of 224 victims.
Since then, there has been no detailed breakdown or reliable updated information on specific locations, including the hospital in Kermanshah.
In the absence of clear official versions, the only new information came from grieving families posting photos of children, mothers, and other civilians online - all personal confessions filling the gap left by the state's silence.
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At the time of writing, the internet in Iran was practically shut down.
News agencies that were once accessible abroad now load incompletely, if at all.
Images and videos on websites linked to the state often do not open abroad.
In many cases, even their main page doesn't open.
The result is a striking imbalance in reporting on the same type of event, such as a hospital bombing, depending on where it occurs.
Iran's strict control over the media and its heavily filtered internet environment make it difficult for foreign journalists to report from the field and for domestic media to operate freely.
In such circumstances, seeing the complete picture of an event, its human victims, context and consequences, becomes almost impossible.
This, in turn, puts Iran at a disadvantage in the global debate.
In a war where narratives are as important as missiles, Iran has effectively silenced itself.
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