Just open a news program, a newspaper, most information sites and… you almost have to close everything again. They only talk about Iran, the Middle East, Trump. You flick, you scroll, and Iran is everywhere. Understandably, one might say: the threat of a broader conflict is (unfortunately) real and there is no shortage of implications for everyone’s lives. You just have to go and fill up to notice it.

The Iranian chaos and the debate that arose from it produced a first evident effect: “silencing” other news, which however continues to exist. In the United States, for example, internal controversies have faded into the background – from the new episodes of the Epstein dossier to the accusations, made in the public debate, that the escalation could also function as a media diversion. In Italy, meanwhile, issues that had been discussed for days and which, on paper, were destined to grow are sliding further back (even to the third or fourth floor): the referendum on the justice reform, the difficulties regarding the bill decree, the stop&gos on the security decree, in addition to the rise in energy prices. The media mechanism is a carousel that feeds itself and does not give discounts: it changes playlists without too many calculations on who, in the end, can benefit from it and who risks being crushed by the new daily soup of news and suggestions.

How is the Meloni government doing?

At first glance, the new scenario may not favor the government. Let’s take the bills decree: the provision is law decree no. 21 of 20 February 2026, therefore written and approved before the current escalation. Technical findings and profiles of European compatibility are emerging in Parliament regarding his measures: some interventions are explicitly subordinated to the authorization of the EU Commission according to the rules on state aid. It is the type of terrain on which one misstep is enough to transform a “flag decree” into a political boomerang. With a referendum just around the corner, at Palazzo Chigi every draft becomes a headwind.

Then there is the justice reform: the vote will take place on 22 and 23 March, and it is a confirmatory constitutional referendum. There is no quorum, so the turnout does not decide the validity of the vote, but it decides – indeed – the political weight of the result and the ability of the fronts in the field to bring people to the polls on a technical and divisive issue. Here too, the public agenda shifted entirely to the war does not help mobilization: the risk, for those aiming for an “opinion” push, is that the noise of the conflict drowns out everything else.

The same goes for the difficulties that the security decree passed in recent weeks is encountering. It is what has also been much discussed for the so-called “criminal shield” for the police force: in the end, rather than a real shield, the text above all contains filters and procedural lanes in the initial phases of the investigations. And after the events in Rogoredo – with an officer who admitted to having shot and with an affair still to be qualified on a judicial level – this dossier has also become more politically slippery. The parliamentary conversion has yet to come to fruition, but filings are already expected to remove from the table the parts that have suddenly become less “defensible” in the public debate.

Well, perhaps here the change of agenda can even help the government: if we talk about something else, certain issues will cool down. But it is a fragile, and temporary, advantage. Because the point, in the end, is always the same: when world news crushes the rest, the problems don’t disappear. Let’s just stop looking at them. And then, sooner or later, they come knocking again.