<![CDATA[As the most prominent and frequently consumed component of online news discourse, headlines play a vital role in shaping readers’ initial understanding of complex geopolitical events. This study aims to investigate the manner in which The New York Times online news headlines portray the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict during March-April 2026. It examines the representations of political actors as well as the linguistic construction of their actions, with attention to discursive strategies that shape these representations and influence audience interpretation. The study therefore adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis framework supported by Systemic Functional Linguistics to analyze key linguistic features such as Theme-Rheme organization, transitivity patterns, and lexicalization. The dataset comprises 71 online news headlines systematically collected and analyzed within a defined time frame. Each headline was also examined to identify dominant process types and patterns of information structuring, with the aim of uncovering how agency, responsibility, and evaluation are constructed. The findings show a tendency to foreground specific political actors, particularly through the repeated focus on a central figure, whose actions are highlighted and often framed through conflict-oriented processes, evaluative language, and ideologically loaded lexical choices. Material processes accounted for 53.8% of the dataset, constructing the conflict as action-driven and emphasizing responsibility. Verbal processes represented 23.1%, which highlights how political discourse is used to shape and reinforce particular narratives. This study demonstrates that online news headlines are not neutral summaries but discursive tools that actively shape public perception and help construct ideological meaning.]]>
