During military conflicts, media not only represent developments on the battlefield but also produce meanings concerning how conflicts may continue, cease, or ultimately end. From this perspective, “conflict termination” is not necessarily synonymous with “peace,” since the cessation of hostilities may be represented through such frameworks as ceasefire, negotiation, deterrence, victory, surrender, or the establishment of sustainable peace arrangements. The present study examines how conflict termination was represented in Iranian news media during the 40-day war between Iran and the United States and Israel in 2026. The main research question is: through what concepts, mechanisms, and patterns of meaning did these media represent the end of the conflict? The study employs a qualitative approach and thematic analysis. Its data consist of 20 items published by Iranian news agencies and news websites, selected and coded through purposive sampling. The findings indicate that the representation of conflict termination was not uniform and was primarily structured around two major logics: first, ending the conflict through superiority, deterrence, resistance, and the imposition of costs on the opposing side; and second, ending the conflict through ceasefire, de-escalation, dialogue, diplomacy, and a return to stability. The study therefore concludes that, within the analyzed media content, the “end of war” was not represented as a single and uncontested concept, but rather as a contested notion articulated through different and sometimes competing frameworks.

Introduction
Media do not merely report military conflicts; they also participate in producing meaning about how wars continue, how they may be stopped, and what constitutes an acceptable end to conflict. From this perspective, the end of conflict should not be equated automatically with peace. A conflict may be represented as ending through military victory, deterrence, resistance, the imposition of costs on the adversary, ceasefire, negotiation, de-escalation, or the establishment of more durable arrangements of peace. This study examines how Iranian news media represented the end of conflict during the 40-day war between Iran and the United States and Israel in 2026. The central question is: through what concepts, mechanisms, and meaning-making patterns did Iranian media construct the possible pathways toward ending the conflict? The theoretical framework is based primarily on Johan Galtung’s peace journalism approach, particularly the distinction between war journalism and peace journalism, as well as the concepts of negative peace, positive peace, and cultural violence. In this framework, media discourse is treated not as a neutral reflection of events but as an active site in which war, resistance, ceasefire, diplomacy, deterrence, and peace are framed and contested.
Materials and Methods
The study adopts a qualitative, descriptive-analytical design and uses thematic analysis as its principal method of data analysis. The research corpus consists of 20 news and analytical texts published by Iranian news agencies and media outlets. These texts were selected through purposive sampling on the basis of their direct relevance to the representation of conflict termination. Selection criteria included explicit references to ceasefire, ending the war, negotiation, de-escalation, stability, resistance, deterrence, retaliation, and possible pathways out of the conflict. The materials included news reports, interviews, commentaries, and official statements from a diverse range of Iranian media. The analytical process involved repeated reading, initial coding, clustering of related codes, and the development of broader themes. Major themes included resistance and retaliation, ceasefire and de-escalation, diplomacy and political settlement, religious representation of war, collective identity and social mobilization, and the humanitarian and economic consequences of conflict. The final thematic structure was then interpreted through the framework of peace journalism.
Discussion
The findings indicate that Iranian media did not produce a uniform representation of conflict termination. Instead, two broad and competing logics emerged. The first framed the end of conflict through resistance, deterrence, retaliation, military superiority, and the imposition of costs on the adversary. Within this logic, terms such as victory, destruction of the enemy, decisive response, revenge, and continued resistance were prominent. Some reports also linked this framing to religious symbols, sacred narratives, collective identity, and social mobilization. The second logic represented the end of conflict through ceasefire, de-escalation, diplomacy, negotiation, regional stability, and the prevention of further escalation. In these texts, war was framed as a costly and manageable crisis rather than as a confrontation that necessarily had to continue until total victory. The coding process therefore revealed a media field oscillating between war-oriented and peace-oriented narratives rather than conforming fully to either one.
Conclusion
The study concludes that “ending the war” was not represented as a single or consensual concept in the Iranian media sample. Rather, it functioned as a contested category shaped by different understandings of security, resistance, diplomacy, legitimacy, and peace. Some media texts presented deterrence, endurance, and military pressure as the necessary route to ending the conflict, whereas others emphasized ceasefire, dialogue, de-escalation, and political management. The findings therefore suggest a hybrid media environment in which the logics of war journalism and peace journalism coexist. The significance of this finding is that media representations of conflict termination do not merely describe possible outcomes; they also help define which outcomes appear legitimate, realistic, or desirable. Accordingly, the study shows that understanding media discourse on war requires attention not only to how conflict is narrated, but also to how its possible ending is imagined and framed.
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