Objective: This study critically analyzes the coverage of the U.S.–Israel–Iran war on the Instagram pages of 33 French publications (national dailies, regional newspapers, and weeklies) during the first three days of the conflict. It investigates whether these publications merely reflected events or constructed specific narratives serving particular interests, and what hidden ideological layers and discursive strategies their coverage contained.

Method: A mixed-methods approach was employed. Quantitatively, content analysis described frequencies of framing patterns across 63 posts (20 from national dailies, 36 from regional newspapers, and 6 from weeklies). Qualitatively, Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analysis and semiotics were utilized to uncover ideological layers, with "thick description" employed to identify the dominant discourse.

Findings: Right-leaning national dailies (e.g., Le Figaro) employed 80% securitization framing, portraying Iran as a "threat," while left-leaning dailies (e.g., L'Humanité) used 75% crisis-mongering framing, depicting the war as a "catastrophe." Regional newspapers adopted a moderate approach with 47.2% crisis-mongering and 36% localization framing. Weeklies (Valeurs Actuelles, Le Point) demonstrated the most radical stances with 83.3% Orientalist nominalization. The dominant discourse constructed Iran as an "Oriental threat" and the war as an "inevitable natural disaster." Four discursive paradoxes were identified: neutrality through agency elimination (passive verbs), professional caution with rumor-mongering (conditional verbs), localization for war globalization, and critiquing war through war instruments.

Conclusion: French publications functioned not as neutral reflectors but as constructors of a narrative that systematically erased Iran's voice, framed Iran as an Oriental threat, exonerated war initiators, and justified Western military intervention. This confirms Hallin and Mancini's theory of media polarization within the French media system.