The media hall monitors will undoubtedly boo and hiss and shout “MAGA-CODED” into their screens after watching Tony Dokoupil’s latest commentary to close out the CBS Evening News. Instead of sticking to Elitist Media narrative, Dokoupil gave viewers an honest assessment of Iran’s long history of aggression against the United States. Watch the segment in its entirety, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, March 2nd, 2026: The media hall monitors will be sorely vexed tonight: CBS's Tony Dokoupil lays out a partial timeline of Iranian hostilities, and (CORRECTLY) cites the 1979 hostage taking as the start of Iran's war against the United States. A refreshing alternative to the mindless parroting of… pic.twitter.com/Z16UJB7Goy — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 3, 2026 TONY DOKOUPIL: If you're looking for an origin point of this current war, don't look to the earliest hours of this Saturday. Look back to November 4, 1979. That was the day Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, capturing 52 Americans and parading them in blindfolds for the whole world to see. WALTER CRONKITE: A new and daring element was disclosed today in the Iran crisis. DOKOUPIL: For the next 444 days they were held captive, the tally kept nightly by Walter Cronkite. Finally, the hostages were released but that wasn't the end of the story either. Far more bloodshed was to come. In 1983, 241 U.S. service members were killed in their barracks by an Iran-backed suicide bomber in Beirut. Americans can argue, and they are, over whether this is a war of necessity. But what's clear from the history is that the fuse of this explosion is 50 years long. And has included the loss of thousands of American and Iranian lives. Every president since Carter has tried to end this conflict. In 2015, President Barack Obama announced a deal to stall Iran's nuclear ambitions, a deal that President Trump replaced with a campaign of maximum pressure, and now military might. DONALD TRUMP: Today the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran, to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime. DOKOUPIL: That history is why the president’s allies in Congress say he hasn’t started a war with Iran- he is finishing one. This recital of facts was surprisingly fair. It was a serious recital of history for the purpose of informing the viewer on the history between the Khomeinist regime and the United States. This runs counter to the media’s multi-front narrative attack, front-loaded with catchphrases meant to evoke Iraq, such as “war of choice” and “no clear plan.” It wasn’t that long ago that Dokoupil’s predecessor would deliver overbearing editorials on the short-lived CBS Evening News Plus. These were little more than self-righteous invocations of history, stuffed to the brim with pompous piety, that ultimately served little purpose beyond informing viewers that Orange Man Bad. This was thoughtful, tonally neutral, and free of narrative. The media hall monitors will shriek, as they always do. The new and, yes, improved CBS Evening News is still a work in progress. They don’t get everything right, as we often point out in this very space. But they got it right this time.