AP standards editors decided to use the word “war” for the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and for Iran’s retaliatory attacks, the Associated Press said in a standards discussion published March 1.
AP said it is applying the term because the scope and intensity of the fighting meet the dictionary definition of war, even though the countries involved have not officially declared war. The AP said that Merriam-Webster defines war as “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations,” and also as “a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism.”
In AP’s description of the conflict, the United States and Israel attacked key military targets and killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other government leaders. The AP said Iran then responded by launching missiles and drones at Israel and at several Gulf Arab states that host U.S. armed forces.
AP also said that leaders who remain in Iran have vowed revenge over Khamenei’s death, adding that the strikes and counterattacks indicate that the killing and U.S. President Donald Trump’s calls for the overthrow of the decades-old Islamic Republic could lead to prolonged conflict that could envelop the broader Middle East.
AP’s standards discussion also addressed the question of capitalization, saying it capitalizes “war” only when it is part of a formal name, and that no such formal name exists “as of now.”
The AP said it has used the same approach in other conflicts, including its guidance after Israel’s June 2025 attacks on Iran. AP said it used “war” in the days after the initial attacks and Iran’s retaliation, and that that war lasted 12 days, with Israeli and American strikes, in AP’s description, greatly weakening Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program.
AP said it also started using the term “war” for conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas in the days and weeks after fighting began, noting that editors in those cases considered casualties, the intensity of fighting, the involvement of each party, and what each country was calling the conflict.
AP said its language decision-making happens in real time and that news leaders and standards editors will keep monitoring developments to determine whether changes are necessary. At the time of the guidance, AP said the level of fighting constitutes the countries being at war, “no matter what happens next,” adding that if fighting ended soon AP would continue saying the countries had been at war.