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In the Name of God,
the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful
An Open Letter to the Honorable People
of the United States of America
Indeed, God does not alter the affairs of a people until they alter their
own affairs.
—The Holy Qur’an 13:11
To the honorable people of the United States of America—the scholars, the
students, and the members of the media,
We begin this letter by saluting the noble souls of God’s greatest prophets—Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, may His peace and blessings be upon them all.
Seven months ago, the U.S. military, launched a war, in violation of international law, against Iran
by attacking an elementary school in Minab, murdering 168 innocent schoolchildren along with
their teachers. Simultaneously, they attacked the offices of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, martyring His Eminence and several members of
his family, including his 14-month-old granddaughter.
To date, the war has claimed the lives of more than 3600 Iranians, the vast majority of them
civilians, including 400 children. Eight universities, three hospitals, and eight schools have been
bombed. Yet, despite the unprecedented acts of cruelty and violence suffered by the Iranian nation
during this war, the United States and Israel have suffered a crushing defeat, while the Islamic
Republic of Iran has achieved a decisive victory.
As the first casualty of the endless wars waged by the U.S. government has without exception been
the truth, with the American people perpetually receiving the greatest harm as the result of the U.S.
government’s campaign of deception, we wish to highlight some of the facts that are being
withheld from the American public. After all, it is the American taxpayers who will have to bear
the cost of America’s unjust wars, and so they deserve to know the truth.
Let’s start by considering a few questions. Why has Iran prevailed in its conflict with the U.S.,
whose military enjoys an annual budget one hundred times that of Iran’s armed forces and
possesses a stockpile of weapons and munitions that dwarfs what is available to the Iranian military
by an enormously lopsided ratio?
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Why do Iranians chant, “Death to America”? Are they hostile to the American people?
The U.S. government claims that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is a terrorist
organization. Is this true?
Why have the vast and extensive efforts of the U.S. government over the past nearly five decades
to restore its domination over the Iranian people continually failed?
Why is the U.S., if the present course continues, rapidly heading toward decline?
How will the present war between Iran and the U.S. unfold and end? How can the American
people protect themselves from the consequences of their government’s unjust aggression and
shield themselves against the worst harms of the impending collapse?
These are the questions we wish to consider in this letter. We will be candid and forthright. Should
you doubt the honesty in the answers we provide to the foregoing questions, you can make a short
trip to any part of Iran you wish—possibly even the Strait of Hormuz—and personally ascertain
for yourselves the verity of our assertions.
Why Is Iran the Victor?
Why has Iran won the war despite having a defense budget only one percent that of the United
States? Perhaps, the first reaction you may have to this question is credulity: “On what grounds do
you claim that Iran is the victor?” To determine which side has won the war, we need to see which
side has achieved its objectives. American and Israeli officials initially stated that the objectives of
their assault on Iran were regime change and partition of Iran. However, after failing to achieve
either objective, they started blurting out a changing list of objectives, announcing a new objective
with every passing week, and this betrayed the absence of a coherent strategy in prosecuting the
war.
The U.S. President has expressed thirteen different targets for the war once the failure of the first
two objectives was clear: Iran’s unconditional surrender; seizing Kharg Island and taking control
of Iran’s oil; a ground invasion and occupation of Iranian territory; the destruction of all industrial
infrastructure; the destruction of all energy infrastructure and returning Iran to the Stone Age; the
destruction of Iranian civilization; launching Operation Freedom and taking control of the Strait
of Hormuz; debilitating Iran’s economy by preventing all exports and imports; destroying Iran’s
nuclear industry; destroying Iran’s missile and drone capabilities; annexing the Strait of Hormuz
to U.S. territory and imposing a 20 percent toll; destroying Iran’s air defenses and taking control
of Iranian airspace; and ending Iran’s support for Islamic resistance groups in the region.
The United States and Israel expended thousands of bombs and missiles, striking government and
residential buildings, dozens of less-advanced and lower-tier weapons-manufacturing facilities, and
a number of decommissioned military installations. Yet, aside from damaging several buildings
tied to Iran’s nuclear industry and a limited number of air-defense sites, they failed to achieve any
of their declared objectives.
Now, nearly seven months into this unjust war, the U.S. military—the largest and costliest military
in the history of the world—has scored no wins, and that is all the more humiliating when we
consider that it fought the war in collaboration with the Israeli military, which claims to be the
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world’s fourth-largest military power. Additionally, Israel and U.S. have failed to realize one of
their ulterior motives in instigating this war—diverting the world’s attention from Israel’s horrific
crimes against Palestinians. The issue of Israel’s genocide in Gaza remains at the forefront of global
public concern.
Concrete Evidence of Iran’s Victory
Iran’s victory is not limited to thwarting the enemy in achieving its objectives. The armed forces
of the Islamic Republic of Iran decimated American bases located in the Persian Gulf region.
Iranian strikes neutralized a significant number of advanced American military assets—including
more than 200 expensive strategic drones, 12 tanker and transport aircraft, 30 fighter jets, at least
one AWACS aircraft, dozens of helicopters, and dozens of high-value radar and air-defense
batteries—and substantially degraded the infrastructure at U.S. bases in the region, destroying
more than 350 primary facilities and structures, while the operational capability of 18 U.S. bases
was reduced to nearly zero. Arguably, however, the greatest consequence of this war has been the
damage it has done to America’s reputation as the world’s sole superpower and the irreparable and
gaping cracks it has created in the edifice of U.S. global hegemony. The U.S. can no longer boast
of its status as the world’s hegemon. The points we will cover below make this truth sufficiently
clear.
More important than all of these, however, are Iran’s remarkable strategic wins.
1. The gains the US government had made in its decades-long cognitive and cultural warfare in
weakening Iran’s national and religious values and alienating Iranian youth from their cultural
heritage were largely neutralized. America’s heinous attack on the Minab Elementary School and
its grave miscalculation in aligning itself with the deeply unpopular Israeli regime and martyring
the Supreme Leader made the criminal nature of America’s ruling class tangible to the younger
generations of Iranians. By strengthening the determination of the Iranian youth to resist and
oppose the tyranny of global hegemony, the American-Israeli war reinvigorated the Islamic
Republic and ensured that it will thrive for at least several decades to come.
2. The media campaign by the U.S. government designed to mislead the American public by
stoking hatred against Iran has considerably weakened. Contrary to the best efforts of the U.S.
government, Iran’s standing in American public opinion is actually improving, while Americans’
awareness of—and hostility toward—the principal force behind the war, Israel, is visibly
increasing.
3. National solidarity in Iran has grown significantly stronger as a result of the war. The efforts of
the U.S. government at laying the groundwork for the partition of Iran over the past five decades
have been foiled, its various ethnic groups being ever prouder of their national identity.
4. For the first time in history, Iran has exerted, and retained, operational control over the Strait
of Hormuz. Consequently, American warships were forced to flee deep into the Indian Ocean.
Not a single U.S. vessel can now dock at the vaunted U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
5. Not only did Iran retain its missile and drone stockpiles largely intact; it ramped up production
of weapons and munitions and, amazingly, developed more advanced iterations even as the war
raged on.
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6. With each passing day of the war, Iran’s air-defense capabilities became more mature and
powerful. Iran successfully shot down the most advanced American and Israeli aircraft, including
some equipped with the latest stealth technology.
7. At the beginning of the war, people in the streets of Manama and Doha witnessed American
military personnel fleeing their bases. They were reportedly running around in their underwear,
looking for places to hide. In the following days and weeks, official U.S. military statements
announced the withdrawal of successively larger numbers of American forces from the region.
American bases have come to resemble ghost towns, and there is now serious discussion in the
corridors of American power about the dissolution of these bases.
8. The war led to a substantial growth in Iran’s support for the Resistance Front. In the Islamabad
Memorandum of Understanding between the Presidents of Iran and the U.S., American officials
begrudgingly acknowledged the inseparable alliance of the various resistance groups within the
region.
9. Trump did not and could not destroy the Iranian civilization, which now, thanks to the war,
shines brighter than ever before. Iran has gained a far higher standing in the eyes of people around
the world. The cultural influence and standing of Iranian civilization are far greater than they were
before the war. To verify this, you can travel to a few countries and pose as an Iranian, and the
admiring welcome you will receive from people of different faith and nationalities will speak
volumes.
10. Iran’s victory has endowed people all around the world with a heightened degree of political
consciousness and a revitalized sense of self-confidence. This will in time serve as a powerful
source of change, leading to seismic transformation in how people exercise their will to self
determination and stand up to oppression and injustice.
11. The illegal move by the U.S. military to halt the free movement of ships in the Indian Ocean—
which the Trump administration misleadingly calls “a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz”—
has in fact led to greater growth in Iran’s domestic production and a sharp boost in its economic
engagement with its neighbors.
12. The martyrdom of Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei has shone a spotlight on the concept of wilayat
al-faqih (“the rule of the jurisprudent”) in the global arena, introducing the reality of this
religiopolitical office to the world and debunking the lies that try to falsely portray wilayat al-faqih
as a form of dictatorship. The historic funeral procession of the martyred Supreme Leader, which
saw the participation of over 40 million mourners in Iran and Iraq, served as a globally
reverberating vindication of the superior moral and political legitimacy of the system of governance
at the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Though painful, the martyrdom of Iran’s Supreme
Leader did not lead, as American and Israeli politicians had hoped, to the disintegration of the
Islamic Republic, and this was a testament to the resilience of a political system rooted in the will
of the people.
The martyrdom of Imam Khamenei demonstrated to the whole world that wilayat al-faqih is not an
ordinary political office but is one founded on mutual affection and trust between a leader and his
people. Wilayat al-faqih is the embodiment of all godly virtues in the political sphere. It was wilayat
al-faqih that empowered Iran to stand firm against diabolical powers with incomparably greater
firepower by enabling the country’s armed forces to fight successfully using only domestically
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produced weapons and munitions; that succeeded in winning the hearts of people around the
world despite overwhelming hostility from thousands of media outlets with virtually limitless
resources affiliated with the world’s superpower; that ensured that not a single store shelf has been
left empty in spite of 47 years of “crippling” sanctions; that facilitated the fastest rate of scientific
progress in the world in the face of the most severe scientific and technological constraints; and
that makes a leader who is capable of ruling for 37 years while maintaining a lifestyle resembling
that of the lower echelons of the society and refraining from allocating any special privileges to
himself or his loved ones.
The Main Factors Underpinning Iran’s Victory
The main factor behind Iran’s victory is not drones and missiles. The United States and Israel
possess more powerful and more advanced missiles and drones, plus a variety of other forms of
weaponry that Iran lacks. The principal reason for Iran’s victory is threefold:
1. The Quran’s superior doctrine and worldview
2. The Iranian nation’s faith in and unity around the tenets of the Quran
3. The competent and righteous leadership of a man of God
1. The Quran’s Superior Doctrine and Worldview
Iran is the birthplace of the most controversial and, at the same time, the most misunderstood
political revolution in the modern era—a revolution founded on the Quran and the teachings of
the most noble of divine guides. In a word, the underlying foundation of the Islamic Revolution
of Iran is the Quran’s divinely revealed doctrine and worldview.
Honesty, liberty, equality, social equity, respect for the rights of others, political discernment,
compassion, and the priority of human values over personal desires are among the basic social
principles that stem from this Quranic doctrine.
The Quran proclaims all human beings brothers and sisters and servants of God. No race, color,
ethnicity, or nation is given pride of place in Islam. Humanity is of one cloth, and an assault on a
single human being is an assault on all of humanity.
The political philosophy upon which the intellectual foundations of the Islamic Republic are
founded is informed by the central elements of the divine mandate of God’s prophets, especially
an unqualified trust in God and an uncompromising struggle for justice. The Quran teaches us to
neither oppress nor succumb to oppression.
In this light, one of the principal missions pursued by the leadership of the Islamic Republic has
been a tireless effort to strengthen Iran, empowering it to protect and promote the Quranic values
enshrined in Iran’s constitution and safeguard the integrity and autonomy of the nation against the
unrelenting attacks of the forces of evil. Iran’s leaders feel personally obligated to fight ignorance
and injustice and defend truth, justice, and freedom.
To surrender to the enemies of truth and justice would mean nothing less than resigning ourselves
to the evisceration of the sacred values of the Quran and is therefore out of the question. It is this
resolute determination to fight for truth and justice that constitutes the inexhaustible source of the
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power that fuels the Iranian nation in its decades-long refusal to surrender, despite the persistent
hostility of the world’s mightiest powers.
2. The Iranian Nation’s Faith in and Unity around the Tenets of
the Quran
The incredible spirit of resistance and struggle that permeates the nation of Iran stems from a deep
faith in the Quran. The Iranian psyche is fundamentally shaped by real historical role models who
personified the tenets of the Quran—towering figures of godliness who are revered in Iran as
legends worthy of devotion and imitation. Any nation that looks up to these role models will
undoubtedly be invincible.
Therefore, if you want to know the secret to Iran’s invincibility, you must read about the tragedy
of Karbala and come to know Imam Husayn (peace be upon him), the archetypal exemplification
of standing up for justice and welcoming death with open arms in defense of the truth. He bravely
fought a fierce battle despite his thirst, continuing to fight even after witnessing all his men slain
before his eyes, and never succumbing to the forces of evil.
If you want to understand why the Iranians are not intimidated by the extreme brutality of the
American war machine after witnessing the mass killing of the children of Minab Elementary
School and the assassination of their leader, you must read the tragedy of Karbala. Read how Imam
Husayn’s adolescent nephew, Abdullah, rushed to protect his uncle with his bare hands and died
in his uncle’s arms. Read how Imam Husayn’s infant son, Ali al-Asghar, had his throat rent by an
enemy arrow, dying in his father’s embrace.
You wonder why Iranians—the people and the leadership alike—do not yield to the alluring
promises the U.S. government dangles before them? Find the secret in the story of Hazrat Abbas,
Imam Husayn’s devoted and loyal brother who, the day before Ashura, rebuffed a proposal by an
enemy commander to give him amnesty if he agreed to leave his brother and who on the Day of
Ashura lost both arms and then his life attempting to deliver some water to the parched children
of his brother’s camp.
You wish to know how, against all odds, the Iranian nation has successfully withstood 47 years of
severe economic hardship and endless plots and is not only surviving but is thriving? The answer
is to be found in the account of Lady Zaynab’s epic endurance. Lady Zaynab, Imam Husayn’s
beloved sister, patiently managed Imam Husayn’s camp and lovingly tended to the children in the
midst of a siege in which water was scarce or unavailable. Lady Zaynab, who is revered in the Shia
faith alongside such noble women as the Virgin Mary and Lady Fatimah, shaped and safeguarded
Imam Husayn’s legacy by delivering fiery speeches in captivity and while facing her ruthless captors
that rivaled in eloquence those of any Arab orator, by protecting Imam Husayn’s surviving son,
and by competently leading the caravan of the captives of Karbala.
Such are the stories that Iranians imbibe and internalize as they grow up.
3. The Competent and Righteous Leadership of a Man of God
Arguably, the primary factor responsible for Iran’s victory in its clash with two armies that enjoy
almost limitless resources is having a leader who is carefully chosen in accordance with a set of
criteria inspired by the tenets of the Quran, a leader whose virtue, justness, and competence must
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be ascertained beyond any reasonable doubt by a body of independent and learned jurists
appointed directly by the people.
Imam Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei is Iran’s third supreme leader. Appointed as the new supreme
leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran following his father’s brutal assassination, he is a respected
jurisprudent and seminary professor with a taste for poetry and the arts who spent months on the
warfront when he was a teenager. He has considerable experience in political, military, and security
matters, having served for years as a special representative and adviser for the late Supreme Leader.
Ayatollah Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei has, in the few months he has assumed the role, proven his
mettle by steering the country through perhaps what is one of the most turbulent times in its
history and has commanded the Iranian armed forces so competently as to decisively push back
two of the world’s mightiest armies and bring two of the world’s most technologically advanced
powers to their knees.
Imam Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei, as those who have known him for more than two decades will
tell you, is a God-fearing, compassionate, and kind man, a deeply spiritual ascetic, a courageous
leader, and a deeply knowledgeable and wise scholar. Only a leader with such a personality and
such virtues can lead a nation of believers to victory against the most powerful armies in the world.
This is the type of leadership that the U.S. lacks.
According to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the position of “Leader” (rahbar)—
Iran’s head of state and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces—must be filled by a wali al
faqih, a “jurisprudent ruler,” who is selected by a body of jurists, or “experts,” who are in turn
appointed by the Iranian people in direct popular elections. The Constitution specifies five
characteristics that the Leader must possess. The Leader must be (1) a faqih, an expert in Islamic
scholarship, (2) “just,” who invariably prefers the greater good of the people over all other
considerations, (3) pious, that is, careful to avoid sin and vice, (4) aware of the political and social
currents and circumstances of the time, and (5) brave. Today the person who verifiably possesses
all five virtues is Imam Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei.
Wali al-faqih is a unique form of governance that is designed on the model of leadership personified
by Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali—the wisest, most compassionate, and most courageous
leaders in human history. In occupying the office of wali al-faqih, Imam Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei
has an apt role model that he can look up to and emulate—the martyred supreme leader, Imam
Sayyid Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a cowardly assassination mission ordered by the Trump
administration. Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei ruled for 37 years with justice and compassion. Thus,
despite the numerous hardships the country has experienced and the decades-long psychological
campaigns that successive U.S. administrations have orchestrated to tarnish his image and drive a
wedge between Iran’s people and its leadership, the late Supreme Leader acquired such a place in
the hearts of the Iranian people that throngs of mourners, comfortably numbering in the tens of
millions, poured into the streets of Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad to participate in his days-long
funeral ceremony and bid him farewell.
But Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei was beloved not just by Iranians but by people all around the
world. In Iraq, a country that fought an eight-year war with Iran under the dictatorship of Saddam
Hussein, an estimated 12 million mourners accompanied his body in a 23-hour procession
stretching along an 80-kilometer route. The Iraqi mourners wept as though they were grieving the
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loss of a dearly loved old friend. And it is certain that, if a funeral procession had also been held
in London or New York, similar scenes would have unfolded.
The Main Cause Responsible for the Defeat of the
U.S. and Israel
The defeat of a military comprised of forces that suffer from low morale and lack a strong sense
of purpose and is led by arrogant commanders who are blinded by a complacent sense of self
assurance stemming from their confidence in their vast arsenal and abundant resources should
come as no surprise to anyone. The U.S. military has been continuously engaged in pointless and
fruitless wars for 70 years, with the consequence that American service members have grown
increasingly disillusioned over the decades, as evidenced by the high suicide and drug-abuse rates
among veterans.
The main problem afflicting the U.S. military is that its forces have no clear idea why they are
asked over and over to fight for causes that are utterly meaningless and irrelevant to them.
American service members cannot fathom why their leaders deploy them to far-flung regions
throughout the world to participate in confrontations that have not produced a favorable or
beneficial outcome. Why should underprivileged American men and women risk their lives for
opaque objectives that seem to mean nothing to anyone except the ruling elite, who seem to have
no qualms blithely sacrificing the lives of their fellow countrymen and -women while they go on
with their ordinary lives pursuing their personal interests at the expense of ordinary Americans?
Why should the U.S. military throw its weight around for Israel, a racist and murderous regime
that is not constrained by any moral boundaries and has no commitment to human rights?
The U.S. military is governed by a crooked ethos that condones cruelty, violence, and the killing
of innocent children, an ethos that has no truly inspiring models in the real world. It is for this
reason that American officials have to resort to fictional movies and computer games to motivate
the rank-and-file of the armed forces. In other words, American forces are intellectually and
morally hollow, and consequently, when the U.S. military is confronted by an able opponent, it is
shamefully incompetent—a paper tiger, if you will. Little wonder, then, that Iran defeated the
mighty U.S. military.
If we were to boil down all of the problems that have caused the defeat of the American military,
we would have to point to one glaring deficiency—a deficiency in competent leadership. If you
wish to assess the validity of this statement, one quick and easy comparison would suffice: Gauge
the current commander-in-chief of the United States against the same criteria on the basis of which
Iran’s commander-in-chief is selected—knowledge, justness, piety, social and political insight, and
courage. The result that such comparison yields is, without any exaggeration, jarring: Not only is
the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces lacking in these virtues; he embodies their
polar opposites.
America’s national security and the lives of its servicemembers are entrusted to someone who is
not only an inveterate liar but is also an insanely avaricious man whose only motivation in life is
the accumulation of greater wealth. He conducts American foreign policy in accordance with his
personal interests, flaunting the bribes he takes from the heads of wealthy nations. Rather than
managing international relations through official government institutions, he appoints members
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of his family and his business partners to function as his representatives on the international stage.
He calibrates the pace of war not on the basis of American national interests but in line with factors
conducive to compounding his personal wealth, making announcements and publishing social
media posts pertaining to the war that are intended solely to make his purchase and sale of stocks
more lucrative.
It is perfectly clear which of the two leaders God supports. And it is equally clear that in a
confrontation between oppressed believers who seek nothing more than justice and an overbearing
and oppressive power, the United States, which does not hesitate to murder innocent women and
children, God will not stand by the oppressor’s side.
The president of the United States constantly boasts of commanding the mightiest military in the
history of the world. He fails to understand that this very fact is the greatest proof of his
incompetence and that of all his predecessors, because despite possessing such a mighty military,
the U.S. has time and time again been defeated. In Vietnam, American forces left behind an
enduring legacy of disgrace; in Afghanistan, they were forced to flee; in Iraq, they were practically
expelled; in Yemen, they had to back out before being bogged down in another “forever war”; and
today, they have suffered their greatest defeat at the hands of the beleaguered but resilient and
faithful forces of Iran.
Victory does not result from superior material capabilities. God is more powerful than any and all
worldly powers, and whichever side He supports is undoubtedly victorious. It was God’s power
that enabled Noah to prevail over the oppressors by means of the Deluge, that rescued Abraham
from Nimrod’s fire, that delivered Joseph from the depths of the well and made him ruler of
Egypt, and that led Moses and his people across the sea while drowning Pharaoh and his mighty
army. The same God who empowered Jesus to bring the dead back to life now wishes to drown
the Pharaoh of our age, and He will.
The Common Pain That Iranians and
Americans Share
Are Iranians Hostile to the American people?
The nations of Iran and America are both, each in their own way, victims of the oppression of the
occupants of the White House—which should, if names were to reflect reality, aptly be named
“the House of Oppression.” The root of the pain the two nations share is that the evil occupants
of the White House, who come to power in elections that are dominated by misleading propaganda
campaigns, do not truly represent the American people. They only represent the interests of an
elite cohort of powerful Zionist capitalists. To win over this cohort, American leaders violate not
only the rights of other nations but also those of the American people, and they consistently place
the interests of this small but powerful cohort above the interests of their own people.
The injustice that the occupants of the White House subject the American people to is no less
than that to which they subject other nations. In fact, one could argue that in some respects the
injustice that Americans are made to suffer by their leaders is even greater. There are numerous
factors that clearly demonstrate this truth.
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• The United States has four percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of its
prisoners. This is despite the fact that many acts considered crimes in other countries are
not crimes in the United States.
• Every year, more than 1,300 Americans are shot and killed by police in the streets—a figure
that is unmatched anywhere else in the world, not even in China or India, although each
has a population of about 1.5 billion.
• The occupants of the White House have long employed the age-old strategy of “divide
and conquer” not only to maintain their coercive domination over other nations so as to
plunder their resources but also in relation to the American people. If Americans only
opened their eyes and looked around, they would visibly behold the deep divisions and
factions that their rulers have created in American society. The polarization and factional
anger that pervade American society today are at levels not seen since the Civil War.
• The occupants of the White House have for over five decades now sacrificed the interests
of the American people, as well as those of all other nations, for securing the diabolical
ambitions of Israel. This perverse devotion to Israel has become even more pronounced
in the past decade. As the U.S. marches headlong toward the precipice of a major economic
crisis, with tens of millions of Americans living below the poverty line and the
overwhelming portion of the national wealth accumulated at the top one percent of the
population, the government is providing billions of dollars every year in grants paid by
hardworking American taxpayers to Israel to fund its ravenous, genocidal military.
• By imposing ungodly levels of taxes on Americans in order to finance the trillions of dollars
needed for the endless wars the military-industrial complex ignites in regions thousands of
miles away, U.S. leaders exacerbate their country’s inflation, unemployment, and poverty
and cause the deaths of American servicemembers while inflicting death and devastation
on the people of other nations.
These factors, deliberately planned and executed by U.S. administrations over many decades, have
significantly weakened the U.S. Home to a large concentration of the world’s top scientists,
intellectuals, artists, and athletes, the United States of America could be the most beloved country
in the world. Yet because of the nefarious actions perpetrated by its corrupt politicians, America
is today viewed across the globe as a disgraced, despised, and debilitated behemoth. The U.S.
government has long oppressed and impoverished both its own people and the people of other
countries. Therefore, we genuinely mean it when we say that Iranians and Americans have been
wronged by the same cohort of elite actors. We share the same pain.
The Meaning of “Death to America”
In light of what has been said, it should be fairly obvious that the phrase “Death to America,”
which Iranians have been chanting since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, does not in any
way express any ill will toward the American people, who have themselves suffered from the same
oppression. “Death to America” is a prayer for the eradication of the diabolical ruling elite whose
seat of power is the White House. It is a cry born of the pain of oppression. Do the oppressed not
have the right to wish death upon the evil oppressors responsible for killing their brothers, sisters,
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parents, and children, for plundering their natural resources, and for denigrating their millennia
old cultural heritage?
The men enthroned at the White House oppress both Iranians and Americans. The difference
between the two nations is that, as Iranians, we have made up our mind to free ourselves from
their oppression, and we are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices, because Islam requires
believers to stand up to tyrants who only understand the language of power, whose first inclination
is to bully and humiliate those weaker than them, and who—for all their disingenuous talk of
human rights and human dignity—are more than willing to resort to oppression, repression, and
ethnic, racial, and financial discrimination. Iran, in a word, is determined to confront with force
any tyrannical power that is hostile to the elevating and liberating tenets of Islam and seeks to
oppress the noble people of Iran. But toward the people of other nations—including the
hardworking and honest people of America—Iran not only harbors no ill-will but is ready to offer
any help they may need to liberate themselves from the tyranny of oppressive powers.
No genuinely popular revolution in history has escaped the hostility of the powers that be.
Nevertheless, the hostility that the American government has directed at the people of Iran in the
course of the last 47 years is of a scope and ferocity that has rarely been witnessed in human
history. The countless instances of American hostility toward Iran can fill volumes, and so a
complete review of the long list of crimes and wrongs committed by successive U.S.
administrations against the people of Iran is obviously beyond what we can consider here.
Nonetheless, recounting a few examples of these crimes and wrongs would be enough to convince
any unbiased American that Iranians should not be faulted for chanting “Death to America.”
A Brief List of America’s Wrongs and Crimes in Its
73-Year History of Meddling in Iran
“The Den of Espionage”
The war that the U.S. initiated on February 28, 2026, by blatantly killing Iran’s Supreme Leader
(which any historian would tell you is a truly unprecedented act of aggression), was not the
beginning of hostilities between Iran and the U.S. This war is only the latest chapter in a well
documented history of wrongs and crimes that stretches 73 years back. The beginning of America’s
hostility toward Iranians was in 1953, the year in which the CIA aided and abetted the Shah’s
regime to stage a coup and topple the legitimate and popular government of Iran, headed by the
Americanophile prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. As a result of this coup, the Shah, who
had cowardly fled the country, returned with a restored sense of confidence, ruling for the next
several decades with an iron fist. The Shah’s newly formed security agency, SAVAK, which the
CIA and Mossad helped shape, brutally tortured and murdered anyone who dared to raise a
dissenting voice.
The 1953 coup marked the beginning of America’s involvement in Iran, and over the decades the
U.S. government exploited Iran’s natural resources and utilized its strategic geopolitical location
to exert greater control over the entire region. Meanwhile, American officials and military
personnel—numbering in the tens of thousands—roamed Iran freely, denigrating Iranians’ sense
of national pride by shamelessly committing blatant crimes with absolute impunity.
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Frustrated with all the oppression and corruption, Iranians overthrew the Shah in the 1979 Islamic
Revolution, ending 25 years of U.S.-backed brutality. When the Iranian people undertook the
revolution, they had no animus toward any other nation—not even the U.S. They simply wanted
to be free, to control their own resources, and to preserve and practice their national and religious
values. But immediately after the fall of the Shah’s dictatorship, the U.S. embassy in Tehran—
which historical records show housed a very large CIA station and thus came to be known in Iran
as “the Den of Espionage”—actively undertook efforts to undermine and overthrow the newly
formed Islamic Republic.
Utilizing its embassy as a command-and-control center, the U.S. government armed and organized
insurgent factions within Iran’s numerous minority ethnic groups, which are generally
concentrated along the borders, encouraging them to fight Iran’s fledgling government by stirring
up unrest and perpetrating heinous mass killings. Simultaneously, the U.S. embassy was
coordinating with monarchist elements within Iran’s military ranks to stage a military coup. In the
first couple of years after the Islamic Revolution, several attempted coups were foiled. It was only
natural, then, that Iranians deemed it necessary to shut down the American embassy—“the Den
of Espionage”—and put an end to its subversive activities.
Domestic Terrorism
Violent domestic terrorism was another form that America’s hostility toward Iran took in the
aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. The organizations, which were backed by the U.S.
government, established a large terror network that claimed the lives of many thousands of
civilians. These terrorist groups wreaked havoc in Iran, committing all sorts of heinous crimes—
individual and mass assassinations, devastating bombings, hijackings, kidnappings, and torture—
all with America’s knowing support. These inhuman acts of domestic terrorism claimed the lives
of 20,000 Iranians—a president, a prime minister, a head of the judiciary, a number of government
ministers, several dozen members of the Parliament, scientists, and ordinary citizens from all walks
of life.
Eight Long Years of Devastating War
When the U.S. realized that acts of domestic terrorism were not enough to destroy the Islamic
Republic, as the terrorist groups lacked any popular support, it took an even more deadly approach.
Spurred and supported by the U.S. government, Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s bloodthirsty dictator,
launched an unprovoked war on Iran in 1980 that lasted eight years, claiming the lives of over
200,000 Iranians.
Several years into the war, when it was becoming increasingly clear that the Baathist military of
Iraq was incapable of achieving any meaningful victory, the U.S. military established a joint
operations command center with the Baathist military and brought warships into the region in an
effort to open another front in the war on Iran and, in this way, save Saddam’s military from a
disgraceful defeat. The U.S. effectively entered the war directly, attacking Iranian ships and oil
platforms. Moreover, ramping up its hostility toward the Iranian people to new heights, the U.S.,
together with its European allies, armed Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons, which it then
used to kill Iranian and Iraqi civilians.
In another instance of its crimes against humanity, the U.S. military directly and deliberately
attacked an Iranian passenger airplane over the Persian Gulf. On July 3, 1988, two missiles fired
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from an American warship struck an Airbus 300 passenger airplane, Flight IR655, killing all 290
men, women, and children aboard. Adding insult to injury, the warship’s captain was later awarded
a medal of honor for his service for the period of time that included the downing of the Iranian
passenger airplane.
Economic Sanctions, Psychological Warfare and Support for
Terrorist Groups
Having failed to bring Iran to heel by imposing eight years of brutal war on the Iranian people, the
American government—which had already stolen billions of dollars of Iranian assets held in U.S.
banks and imposed some sanctions on Iran—tried a new approach. The U.S. government
implemented an unprecedented package of economic sanctions on Iran to stifle the country’s
economy.
At the same time, the U.S. intensified its policy of psychological warfare against the Iranian
people—a policy that had been adopted under the Carter administration as part of a broader effort
to overthrow the Islamic Republic and promote the establishment of an alternative pro-Western
government. Recruiting members of the terrorist groups that had failed miserably, despite their
brutal acts, to undermine the Islamic Republic, the American government supported the founding
of dozens of anti-Iranian satellite television networks based in the U.S. and Europe. These
television networks, which operated under the supervision of American and European intelligence
agencies, unleashed a broad onslaught of toxic propaganda campaigns designed to destabilize Iran
and weaken the Islamic Republic.
Moreover, turning to an old tactic in its regime-change playbook, the U.S. government armed and
funded terrorist groups and recruited violent thugs to incite unrest and sow fear in Iran. But this
strategy, despite costing many Iranian lives and causing enormous emotional and financial pain to
numerous families and communities throughout Iran, also ended in failure.
Birthing ISIS
All its previous attempts having failed in achieving their intended goal, the U.S. government
unveiled a much more sinister and destructive strategy—creating an ostensibly indigenous ruthless
regional terror group, ISIS, that carried out untold atrocities, slaughtering thousands of civilians in
Syria, Iraq, and Iran. But to America’s disappointment, the terror and death caused by ISIS served
to shape and solidify “the Resistance Front,” a coalition of groups allied with Iran around their
shared objective of defeating terror and opposing its creator, the United States of America. The
central figure who in a short time succeeded in designing and constructing the Resistance Front
was none other than the highly spiritual and incredibly brave commander—the legendary General
Qasem Soleimani. In a highly innovative and effective campaign that baffled the most experienced
Western military analysts, the coalition he formed succeeded in eradicating ISIS within a few short
years, in spite of all the clandestine support the terror group was receiving from Israel and
successive U.S. administrations. Consequently, in a final act of revenge, the U.S. military, acting on
President Trump’s order, killed General Soleimani in a cowardly attack while he was on an official
visit to Iraq. How telling that any fleeting success that the American military has had in recent
decades has come in the form of one-off cowardly assassinations and abductions.
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America’s Continued Hostility and the 12-Day War
These were only some of the more prominent acts of hostility committed by the U.S. government
against the Iranian people. But U.S. hostility in the past several decades has also been manifested
in more subtle and less noticeable forms. There has not been a day that has gone by in which Iran
has not suffered—directly or indirectly—from America’s villainous acts.
• The occupation of Afghanistan resulted in a steep increase in drug production there—a
development actively supported by American military leadership—and this in turn
facilitated the widespread distribution of cheap illegal drugs among Iranian youth.
• By promoting pornography and extramarital sexual relationships through a deliberate and
intensifying cyberspace campaign, the U.S. has tried to undermine the traditional values
underpinning Iranian culture and thereby weakening the institution of the family.
• The numerous terror cells that have emerged in and around Iran, with American support
and funding, have carried out atrocious acts of violence—bombing or setting fire to
religious institutions, mosques, and libraries and assassinating eminent religious and
cultural figures as well as numerous ordinary Iranians.
• The pharmaceutical sanctions the American government has imposed on Iran have led to
the deaths of people affected by butterfly skin disease (epidermolysis bullosa).
These, and numerous other plots, were all foiled by the Iranian nation. After seeing all the plots it
had executed through proxies and third parties effectively neutralized, the American government
had only one option left—direct military conflict. In June 2025, the United States of America,
joined by the Zionist regime of Israel, started an intense air campaign attacking, in a “shock and
awe” assault, a large number of critical Iranian military and civilian targets. Yet this war, which
lasted 12 days, also ended in America’s defeat. Though the assault resulted in the martyrdom of
more than 1,000 Iranians, including 120 children and dozens of scientists and university students,
it showed that Iran could take on the U.S. and Israel at once and come out triumphant.
Armed Insurgency
The United States and Israel attributed their defeat in the 12-Day War to Iran’s internal stability,
believing that creating internal turmoil prior to an attack would guarantee victory. Accordingly, in
January 2026, they instigated unrest by deploying operatives, funneling large quantities of weapons,
and waging coordinated psychological and media campaigns. CIA and Mossad agents infiltrated
peaceful demonstrations—sparked by economic hardship resulting largely from the inhumane
sanctions imposed by the U.S.—and turned them into violent clashes, resulting in the martyrdom
of more than 2,300 innocent Iranians. Their objective was to pin the blame on the Iranian
government, polarizing society and providing a pretext for the U.S. to intervene under the guise
of supporting the protestors. However, this highly orchestrated conspiracy, like all previous
American plots, collapsed. Recognizing the enemy’s hostile intent, the Iranian people maintained
their solidarity, and this allowed law-enforcement forces to swiftly restore order.
The Last War
Instead of learning from its failures and putting an earnest effort into understanding the root causes
of being rebuffed, thwarted, and defeated by the Islamic Republic for 47 years, the foolish
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government of the U.S. once again decided to double down and push ahead with its strategically
flawed approach to Iran. Thus, on February 28, 2026, the American military, once again in
collaboration with Israel, launched a new war against Iran. This is the war that, as we are writing
this piece, is still ongoing. With every passing day, more and more indications of Iran’s victory
come to light, while America’s position grows increasingly precarious. We have no doubt, given
the righteousness of Iran’s cause and the enormous number of God-fearing and pious souls
brutally murdered in American and Israeli strikes, that the U.S. will experience the bitter taste of
ultimate defeat.
No Feeling of Hostility toward the American People
The foregoing list of acts of hostility committed by the U.S. government against Iran is in no way
an indictment of the American people. It is, rather, the shameful record of the inhuman crimes of
America’s political leaders. In this light, the true meaning of “Death to America” is “Death to the
crimes perpetrated by the American elite.” It is, in a word, not an expression of ill will toward the
American people. And we are certain that if the American people truly understood the reality of
the evil their leaders commit in their name, they would disavow their leaders—as they gradually
are doing—and would stand by the people of Iran in indicting their common oppressor.
Little wonder, then, that over the past 47 years, no U.S. president has been willing to sit across
from an Iranian1 journalist and answer his or her questions in a free and fair interview that would
be broadcast on American media. American presidents are perfectly aware that if such an interview
were to take place, they could not convince their fellow Americans of the legitimacy of America’s
incurably belligerent and rapacious foreign policy, especially toward Iran. They know that
Americans would agree with the people of Iran in condemning American leaders.
The IRGC and Accusations of Terrorism
Throughout history, hegemons have always been insincere in how they manipulate concepts to
suit their nefarious ends. They offer skewed definitions and misguided applications of concepts
that are important to public opinion in order to justify their evil agendas. In the contemporary
world, terrorism and human rights are two concepts that have been tortured and abused by the U.S.
and its allies in their attempt to secure their predatory domination over the world and their own
people.
One of the most duplicitous political games the U.S. has engaged in in recent decades is to impute
the universally loathed concept of terrorism mainly to those countries and groups that are the
primary victims of terrorism, while the U.S. is by far the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism.
Those who rise against oppression and injustice are labeled terrorists, while those who participate
in the crimes undertaken by the U.S. government and are in its thrall remain untarnished by this
label, no matter how much death and terror they actually foment. And, occasionally, when a truly
terrorist entity is actually designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, they can be readily and
immediately cleared of the designation and freed of all its ramifications, should they decide to
1 By Iranian, here, we mean true, honest Iranians, not those who, having sold their soul to the devil, do every act of
treachery in their power to aid and abet Iran’s enemies.
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collude with the U.S. and do its bidding. In reality, the only criterion that truly determines who is
or is not deemed a terrorist by the U.S. is opposition to or alignment with the Zionist elite.
One of the entities the U.S. hypocritically designates as a terrorist organization is the Islamic
Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), which is a multi-service military force independent of the
country’s traditional army that was established with the explicit mandate to protect and promote
the Islamic Revolution, the animating soul of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic Revolution
that took shape in 1979 and brought about the Islamic Republic was entirely a grassroots popular
movement. The revolution was not steered by an armed guerrilla group, a splinter group within
the military, or a well-formed political party. In other words, the entities that historically have
carried out revolutions in other countries were nonexistent in Iran. The Islamic Revolution is
perhaps the only revolution in the history of the world that was fought and won exclusively by the
people—a people unarmed and unaided by a foreign government. The weapons that enabled them
to succeed in vanquishing a regime that was buttressed by the world’s superpower and supported
by all world powers consisted of their faith, their determination, and their willingness to shed
blood. The Islamic Revolution in Iran was the triumph of blood over sword.
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the newly drafted constitution of Iran demanded that
a military force independent of the traditional army be established with a popular and grassroots
approach to power. The mandate defined by the Constitution for this new force consisted in
safeguarding Iran’s integrity, independence, and sovereignty and protecting the values that
informed the Islamic Revolution and the institutions that took form as a result of the revolution.
Hence, this new force was named the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). “The Guards” were
expected to execute their mandate by relying on and empowering the Iranian people.
In this light, the reason that the U.S. and its allies call the IRGC a terrorist organization is that in
the past close to five decades, it has thwarted countless attempts by the U.S. to instigate coups,
secession, and popular unrest, vanquished the U.S. in all the wars it has directly or indirectly
imposed on Iran, and foiled all the plots the U.S. government and Israel have undertaken to
undermine the Islamic Republic. The one overarching crime for which the IRGC has been deemed
a terrorist organization is that it is the principal force behind the enemy’s defeat.
In the past few decades, hundreds of prominent political, religious, and scientific figures from
countries in West Asia have been assassinated by the U.S., Israel, and their allies. However, there
is not a single verifiable instance where the IRGC has committed an act of violence against
civilians. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to assert that the Guards are the world’s most
effective organization in combating terrorism.
Why Is the U.S. Government in Decline?
The Current State of American Governance
Tyranny, an excessive tendency to behave violently and murderously, relying on and promoting
falsehoods, giving precedence to the vulgar elements of society over the wiser elements in
occupying positions of power, and an inordinate preoccupation with inessential matters at the
expense of society’s essential affairs are telltale signs flagged by scholars and philosophers who
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have studied history and politics as indications of a state’s decline. The United States government
today exemplifies all of these flaws.
America’s History of Aggression and Violence
Iran is not the only country that has suffered from the heinous crimes perpetrated by the U.S.
government. Since the middle of the twentieth century, when the United States emerged as a
superpower following the Second World War, at least 70 countries, on our count, have experienced
some form of American aggression—be it direct involvement by the U.S. military, coups instigated
by the U.S. government, or other manners of subversive interference. There are numerous
countries—including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Libya, Sudan,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—that have seen the killing of hundreds of thousands of their people
and, in some instances, genocides claiming millions of lives perpetrated by the U.S. military.
Dozens of countries around the world—including Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Panama,
Chile, Brazil, Lebanon, and Palestine, among others—bear fresh economic and societal wounds
as a direct consequence of the hostile actions taken by the American government.
Where American power is exerted in a country or region, it is not for the benefit of the people of
that country nor for the benefit of the American people, for that matter: it is to further the interests
of America’s ruling elite. That is why most dictatorships and monarchies around the world are
among America’s strongest allies, while the hostility of the American government is directed
principally at countries with the most robust democratic governments. Wherever in the world a
coup is staged or a popular government is overthrown, the hand of the CIA is unmistakably
evident. It is telling that the U.S. is the only government, besides the Israeli regime, whose leaders
are denounced as “child-killers.”
Thus, members of the American ruling elite are among the most despised political figures
throughout the globe. And in consequence of the actions of this ruling elite, the U.S. is widely
regarded by people around the world as the world’s menace—or, as Iranians like to put it, “the
Greater Satan.” This is evidenced by the fact that, in demonstrations held by people seeking justice
and freedom across the globe, the burning of the American flag is a common act of protest. The
people who burn the American flag are not hostile to the American people; it is the oppression
and aggression of the American government that they are denouncing.
The world has for 80 years now been witnessing the oppression under which Palestinians suffer
at the hands of the Israeli occupiers, who have been enabled to continue their atrocities by the
political, military, and economic support they are afforded by the White House, receiving billions
of dollars of American taxpayer money every year. Israel’s aggression reached a new height of
inhumanity three years ago, when in October 2023 the Israeli army launched an offensive against
Gaza that resulted in a genocide that left 73,900 Palestinians dead, 21,700 of them children, and
destroyed more than 315,000 homes. Another 8,000 people remain missing under the rubble.
Israel struck all of Gaza’s hospitals and medical centers, causing substantial damage to all of them
and making the majority of them inoperable—all with weapons and missiles provided by the U.S.
Israeli soldiers perpetrated atrocities shamelessly—cutting off the oxygen supply of newborn
babies, killing dozens of them in an act of genocidal brutality recorded on CCTV. Palestinian
doctors and nurses were arrested on false charges, and some are still in Israeli prisons. Eleven
universities and 560 schools were reduced to rubble. Two million Gazans are now living in brutally
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inhospitable conditions, striving to continue their lives in tents or damaged buildings that may
collapse at any moment, with food, water, and other necessities being strictly restricted by Israel.
The scale of these crimes is so great that no one with even the slightest conscience would view
them as anything but appalling and inexcusable acts of genocide. Israel’s crimes are so disturbing
that we are compelled, contrary to what our common response would be, to applaud the act of
self-immolation that Aaron Bushnell, an American Air Force serviceman, carried out in front of
the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. as an incredibly brave defense of Palestinians’ human
rights.
Empire of Lies
The decision-making at the While House has long been, especially in consequential matters, based
on falsehoods. The White House is a nonstop factory of lies—lies that have for decades wreaked
havoc on the world and destroyed communities, countries, and regions. What is incredible—
perhaps more incredible than the lies they tell—is how unfazed the occupants of the White House
are by the disgraceful ramifications of their lies when the truth about their actions comes to light.
They lied about the connection of Afghanistan to the September 11 attack on New York’s Twin
Towers (which a significant number of very smart experts have characterized as a false-flag
operation orchestrated by American intelligence agencies), and over two decades after the start of
the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, American forces had to flee in disgrace; they lied about Iraq’s
unconventional weapons program, and the American invasion of Iraq became a quagmire from
which the U.S. extricated itself at great expense.
The Lie of Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program
The brutal actions and crimes committed by American forces during the invasion pushed Iraq
solidly into Iran’s sphere of influence; and they lied—and are still lying—about Iran’s nuclear
weapons program, and the U.S. is now suffering the painful consequences of this lie, as the U.S.
government is at a loss as to how it can find as escape route after being roundly defeated and
disgraced by Iran’s resilient and faithful armed forces.
For 25 years now, the White House (across multiple administrations) has claimed that Iran is only
a few months or weeks away from building a nuclear bomb. Well, if this claim were true, why has
Iran not yet gone through with its plan to build the bomb? If Iran was only a little while away from
making the bomb 25 years ago, when it was far less technologically advanced than what it is today,
it should possess dozens of nuclear bombs today, and yet America’s intelligence reports have
repeatedly confirmed that Iran has no nuclear weapons. They make up laughable scenarios every
couple of years and claim that they have successfully thwarted Iran’s advance toward nuclear
bombs. It’s almost unbelievable how American officials can get away with these childish lies and
not be held to account by the American people.
Trump is one spectacular specimen in this connection. He attacked Iran in 2025 under the
threadbare pretense of stopping its nuclear weapons program, despite the repeated assertion of
U.S. intelligence agencies that the Iranian government was not developing a nuclear bomb. After
the futile attacks, he boasted that he had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. But then, one year
later, Trump again attacked Iran with the same hollow excuse. The U.S. was again going to destroy
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Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which Trump had insisted over and over was already obliterated.
And now, after repeatedly—but falsely—claiming that he has won the war and achieved all his
objectives, Trump is, amazingly, still pointing to Iran’s ostensible nuclear weapons program as the
reason the war needs to go on. How long can you beat a dead horse?
The tragic irony of this latest war is that Trump began the American assault by senselessly
murdering Iran’s Supreme Leader—a highly respected religious authority who had famously issued
a religious decree declaring the use of nuclear weapons inhuman and therefore impermissible.
If Americans could only come on a short trip to Iran, they would immediately realize that their
officials and their media are lying to them about Iran. Almost everything Americans are told about
Iran—that it’s a dictatorship, that the government is massacring its own people, that Iran is
scientifically backward and economically bankrupt, that the people have given up on their
government, etc.—is a lie. After all, how can a scientifically backward and economically bankrupt
dictatorship hated by its people stand up to and fight back against the world’s superpower, destroy
all its bases in the region, force it to withdraw all its warships hundreds of miles away from the
Strait of Hormuz? You do not need to be a geopolitical expert to see through this lie. Common
sense is enough to realize how egregious the lies Trump and other American officials say are.
The Biggest Lie
But the biggest lies that American officials tell their people are not about Iran or other countries.
The biggest lies that come out of the White House are about America itself. Sit for a moment and
consider all the false promises made by president after president. And Trump is in a league of his
own when it comes to lying. He can look you straight in the face and blurt out an egregious lie that
you know is a lie, and he says it as if it were gospel. Trump said he would end all wars, he would
end U.S. intervention in the world, he would drain the Washington swamp, he would stand up to
the billionaires. He not only intensified the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon and
resumed the war in Yemen but also started the Iran war, the most disastrous war in U.S. history,
one that will spell the end of U.S. hegemony; he ramped up American intervention in the world,
threatening to annex Canada, take Greenland, and attack Cuba; he worsened political corruption
in the American government; he surrounded himself with billionaires; and finally he enriched
himself and his family in ways that are truly baffling.
They deliberately falsify the figures for human casualties, military losses, and the costs of the war,
presenting them as many times lower than they actually are. But more than anything else, Trump
is lying to Americans about the state of the U.S. economy. The U.S. economy is on the precipice
of collapse, and yet he keeps on telling Americans that the economy is booming and the prices will
soon start coming down. This is, perhaps, his biggest lie. Countries around the world have lost
their faith in the U.S. economy. Demand for American bonds has plummeted. In fact, countries
are starting to offload their U.S. bonds. Soon, the dam will break, and the economy will implode,
causing, unfortunately, great pain for Americans for many many years.
Americans need to wake up. They need to wrest control back from corrupt politicians. Now is the
time, as the American political system is at its weakest.
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The Vulgar Elements of Society in Positions of
Power
Today, the most critical positions of power in the U.S. are occupied by individuals who are
incredibly crass and ignorant. In other words, the vulgar elements of society have been given
precedence over its wise and qualified elements. Driven by a myopic instinct that seeks nothing
but greater wealth and power, American leaders pursue misguided goals and policies whose
consequences are devastating to the future of the United States. Even if they were to change course
right now, they would have to spend decades to clean up the mess they have already made. But
there is no indication that American leaders intend to mend their ways. They are doubling down
and making America’s prospects far more dire. And the tragedy is that it is the American people
who will be left holding the bag. The ultrarich have already made all the necessary arrangements
for the impending collapse of the American system.
The ignorance of American leaders leads to a cascade of problems—a vicious cycle creating a
whirlpool of catastrophe. They spend billions of dollars interfering in and destabilizing
independent countries—countries that wish to preserve their self-autonomy and national values—
to plunder their natural resources. As a result, a flood of homeless people from those countries
pours into the United States. Then they spend billions more to control illegal immigration and
return immigrants to their countries. The plundered riches end up in the pockets of the elite, while
all the costs of this vicious cycle are borne by the American taxpayers.
Driven by the ambition to dominate the world economy, they put in place policies to facilitate
economic globalization without considering the long-term consequences. They sing the praises of
free trade and rant against the evils of tariffs. Then, after two decades, when they realize that the
United States has lost great swathes of its manufacturing landscape to developing countries, they
once again shift gears abruptly and—again without considering the long-term consequences—go
into knee-jerk-reaction mode and start indiscriminately smacking tariffs on all sorts of countries,
making matters even worse. And it’s the American people who are left holding the bag.
The same ignorance is evident in how the U.S. pulled out of its international environmental
commitments to allow the government more leeway to pursue growth in the hope that it could
boost its manufacturing sector. Then, when they have to deal with the costs of mitigating the
consequences of pollution, they again lay all the economic burden at the feet of the American
taxpayers. The rich keep getting richer, and the poor poorer. It’s the American taxpayers that
always pay the price of their leaders’ incompetence. The leaders themselves are never held
accountable.
Preoccupation with Inessential Matters at the
Expense of Society’s Essential Affairs
One of the characteristics of American leaders, which is especially pronounced in the personality
of President Trump, is preoccupation with inessential matters. Recently, we have seen countless
instances of this tendency in Trump: going full steam ahead with the construction of the White
House ballroom; fighting for the inclusion of his name on the signage of the Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C.; changing the names of Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico; repainting the
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Reflecting Pool; the so-called “Arc de Trump”; and so on and so forth. The media are consumed
with rapidly changing developments regarding these inessential matters—all while America’s main
problems—the rapidly rising inflation, the cost of housing, the pandemic of mental health
problems, etc.—are left unresolved.
Another inessential matter on which Trump has wasted precious American resources is the war
on Iran. Giving his ear to the misinformation provided by Netanyahu and a number of former
members of the Shah’s autocratic regime who fled Iran, Trump rushed into a war with Iran. In an
effort to sow chaos in Iran and encourage Iranians to rise up against their government, the U.S.
military fired thousands of missiles, each costing millions of dollars, against thousands of targets
worth only thousands of dollars each—such as police stations, Basij bases, security checkpoints,
and evacuated military installations—in the hope of removing the barriers preventing the rebels
from operating freely. The U.S. military thus squandered its missile stockpiles on targets of very
little value. But, more importantly, the tactic backfired: rather than encouraging Iranians to revolt
against the Islamic Republic, these missile attacks heightened Iranians’ sense of national pride and
solidarity, compelling millions of people to take to the streets every night to express their rage at
the U.S. and show their devotion to their country. These nightly communal vigils of patriotism
have now continued for more than 210 consecutive nights.
One of the consequential upshots of this tendency of the American government to get sidetracked
by inessential matters is that China now surpasses the U.S. in almost every metric of progress. Just
in the last six months in which the U.S. has been preoccupied with the war with Iran, China has
made considerable headway in, among other things, AI and quantum technology.
Another salient example of America’s preoccupation with inessential matters is the war on terror
that President George W. Bush waged on an imaginary enemy. The costly and decades-long wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq in no way benefited the American people and certainly not the people of
Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. occupied these two countries with the stated—but disingenuous—
goal of freeing their people and replacing despotic rule with democracy. However, in both
countries, the people had already started to rise up against their tyrannical rulers and had in fact
succeeded in freeing parts of their countries. If the U.S. was honest in its intention to help the
people, it could have just chosen to support and fund them. Yet, due to its sinister ulterior motives,
American leaders chose to invade the two countries—with disastrous consequences for the
occupied countries and for the U.S. The crimes and offenses perpetrated by the occupying
American forces ultimately caused the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to turn against their
“liberators.” Seeing the true color of American domination, Afghans and Iraqis were now
determined to fight and expel the occupiers.
The occupation of Afghanistan lasted 20 years, came at an economic cost of three trillion dollars
(according to official U.S. figures, with the actual cost likely being much higher) to American
taxpayers and a human cost of 2,354 American fatalities and 168,000 Afghan casualties. And,
finally, the occupation ended in a disgraceful retreat, with the U.S. military leaving behind 85 billion
dollars’ worth of weapons and equipment. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul was closed, all Americans
were expelled, and the government fell into the hands of the Taliban, the same people that the
U.S. ostensibly invaded the country to remove from power.
If American leaders had exercised a modicum of rationality, the occupation of Afghanistan could
have turned out to be much more favorable to the occupiers. With less than three percent of the
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total cost of the war—that is, less than the cost of the weapons and equipment left behind by the
U.S. military—the Americans could have built a home for every Afghan family and in this way
won the people over. That way the American flag would have flown high across Afghan cities for
many generations to come, whereas today it is trampled underfoot by Afghans as a symbol of their
erstwhile occupiers. The problem is that the priority of the leaders who head the U.S. military is
to enrich themselves and their partners in the military-industrial complex. Consequently, they can’t
even manage imperialism correctly.
The story of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is fundamentally similar. The invasion of Iraq lasted eight
years and eight months, with a cost of four trillion dollars to American taxpayers (again, these are
official figures, the real figures likely being much higher). The casualties of America’s military
involvement in Iraq are even more staggering compared to Afghanistan. The invasion claimed the
lives of 4,800 American service members and 265,000 Iraqis. What is worse, from the standpoint
of the American taxpayer, is that not only did the involvement in Iraq not benefit the U.S.; it
actually weakened the U.S. position in the region and its standing throughout the world. The
American military ousted Saddam Hussein—long a reliable ally of the U.S.—only to see Iraq fall
into the hands of Iranian-allied groups. And in a move that captured the national mood in Iraq, in
2020 Iraqi parliamentarians, incensed by what they saw as America’s disrespect for their country’s
sovereignty, passed a resolution calling for the expulsion of all American forces. Since then, all
American military bases except for one have been dismantled, and today the U.S. Embassy in
Baghdad and the one remaining American military base, in Erbil, are targets of daily attacks by the
people of Iraq, as the U.S. prepares to pull all its forces out of Iraq in the near future.
Today, the U.S. government is widely and profoundly hated in both Afghanistan and Iraq, to the
extent that no American official dares to walk the streets of Kabul or Baghdad, not even with a
security detail. The appalling treatment that the American military displayed at such notorious sites
as Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo created worldwide revulsion toward the U.S.
The costly and fruitless wars the U.S. has waged over the past several decades have brought
nothing but misery to the U.S. economy and the American people. The U.S. share of global gross
domestic product has fallen from 23.5 percent in 2000 to around 14 percent today. The wanton
and wasteful expenditures the American government has made in prosecuting its wars and
executing its aggressive posture in West Asia—including the hundreds of billions spent funding
hostile media outlets, supporting anti-Iranian groups, and fomenting regional unrest—have come
with an estimated price tag surpassing eight trillion dollars. As a result, the United States is saddled
with an astronomical national debt exceeding 40 trillion dollars, which has made it the most
indebted country in history, with no meaningful benefits to its people. This exponentially growing
debt is consuming America’s economy at an accelerating pace.
The U.S. has gone from being a country whose main source of revenue was the export of advanced
technologies to being a Third World country that needs to sell its natural resources in order to
survive. In recent years, the U.S. has become one of the world’s major exporters of coal and crude
oil. U.S. crude oil exports grew from less than 500 thousand barrels a day in 2015 to more than
four million. To keep the American economy afloat, the U.S. must sell raw materials to other
countries and import finished products. This is the current reality of the U.S. economy.
In an attempt to save its declining economy, the U.S. government, headed by Trump, hastily
abandoned the essential features of liberal capitalism, economic globalization, and free trade, and
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resorted to an unreasonable tariff regime. This sudden about-face, together with Trump’s
combative approach, has unnerved America’s traditional allies, pushing Canada—long considered
America’s closest partner—toward Europe and China.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise to anyone that 40 million Americans live below the
poverty line. The population of homeless Americans in towns and cities across the country has
exploded in recent years. And—not to be dramatic—this is just the beginning. The situation is
going to get far worse before it gets any better. So, the question that any American of sane mind
should consider is whether they wish to continue entrusting the reins of power to the same
miserably incompetent leaders—leaders who, for the sake of their own personal interest, have
chosen to curry favor with the Zionist masters of global finance by enraging two billion Muslims
and obsequiously pandering to a few million Zionists worldwide, seriously jeopardizing the future
of the American people.
Throughout history, global hegemons have generally maintained their unrivaled power for a
century or more. The only superpower that is an exception to this is the U.S. America’s period of
unrivaled global dominance lasted less than 30 years. And this is due to the exceptional
incompetence of its leaders.
How Can the U.S. Be Saved?
How can these trends that are driving the U.S. toward ruin be stopped? More importantly, how
can the American people be saved from the grim fate that will result from the collapse of the U.S.
government? God has provided the answer to this question in different scriptures He has
conferred to His prophets.
One answer is to be found in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah 18:7–10:
If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down
and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent
and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if, at another time, I
announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does
evil in My sight and does not obey Me, then I will reconsider the good I had
intended to do for it.
The same answer is expressed in the Qur’an (13:11): “Indeed, God does not alter the affairs of a
people until they alter their own affairs.”
God will come to the aid of the American people if they decide to change course. Thankfully,
Americans are waking up to the truth. Over the past two years, Americans have participated in
numerous demonstrations in cities across the U.S. to express their outrage at Israel’s genocidal
actions in Gaza. Moreover, the “No Kings” rallies that swept across the U.S. last year were a
nationwide repudiation of the burgeoning autocratic tendencies within the American government.
These powerful manifestations of collective action are evidence of a national awakening spreading
through the U.S.
The objections that university professors and students have made against research projects related
to military objectives funded by organizations suspected of having ties to the U.S. military and the
unwillingness of these academicians to participate in these projects constitute another promising
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sign of a moral awakening in America. If an academic realizes that the results of their research will
be used not for the benefit of improving the wellbeing of their fellow Americans but for the
murder of innocent men, women, and children and the destruction of schools and hospitals, they
should—if they wish to stop America’s rapid move toward ruin—definitely listen to the voice of
their conscience and refrain from participating.
Polls show that the majority of Americans, especially younger Americans, no longer wish to be
complicit in their government’s crimes against other nations, particularly its crimes against the
oppressed but resilient people of Palestine. Another positive trend that polls are indicating is that
even many of the Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 are now regretting their choice. Seeing
the Trump administration’s disastrous policies and actions, they are deeply skeptical of the path
their country is on and wish to see a fundamental change of direction. This change of heart is
especially pronounced regarding Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran.
People all around the world are looking to Americans to stop their government. Now is the time.
Americans need to rise up and put an end to this miserable situation that their country, and the
world at large, is facing. Do not allow your government to continue its shameful hegemonic
practice of using the might of the American military or the manipulative tactics of the American
intelligence agencies to install dictators who would allow the ruling elite of the U.S. to plunder
their countries' resources. Put an end to your government’s tendency to assassinate those
independent world leaders whose only crime is that they wish to safeguard their country’s
sovereignty and allow their people to profit from their natural resources. Plundering other
countries and assassinating their leaders will only intensify the hatred that people around the world
feel toward the U.S. American prosperity will be of no avail to the American people if it is
nourished by the blood of the oppressed.
One of the measures that Americans can demand of their government for revitalizing the
American economy is shutting down the 800 costly and useless American bases that are scattered
throughout the world and bringing all American service members back home. Pressure your
government to the put an end to the endless aid Israel has been receiving from you; to avoid
entering endless wars of aggression; to shut down the hundreds of costly media outlets and
intelligence networks used to instigate coups, support dictators, and sow unrest; and to redirect
the trillions of dollars spent on these subversive activities to advance scientific research high-tech
industrial manufacturing in the U.S. There is no doubt that if the American government heeds
these demands, the U.S. will once again take its place as the world’s leading economy and American
will once again enjoy a prosperous life.
It is shameful that the economy of a great country like the United States should be sustained by
stealing the wealth of other nations and at the cost of impoverishing other countries. Although
there are dark episodes in America’s history—the conduct of America’s founding generations
toward its indigenous people and its history of slavery and racism—the fact is that the U.S. has the
necessary resources to offer prosperity to all the people who call it home: It possesses a very rich
land, vast underground resources, enormous reserves of energy, abundant water sources, and
copious fertile soil, as well as extensive coastlines and rivers. Therefore, if the American people
choose leaders that partake of the right characteristics—knowledge, integrity, and honesty—the
U.S. can build a prosperous future for its people without having to plunder the resources of other
nations, and it can also make amends for its past wrongs, especially the wrongs it committed
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toward the people of America—the Native Americans, the black Americans, and the
underprivileged Americans.
Heed the native human conscience that God has placed in all people, and do not allow crooked
politicians into positions of power—politicians that call the legitimate resistance of the people of
Palestine and Lebanon, who are only defending their lands against occupiers and terrorists;
politicians that turn a blind eye to genocide when it is carried out against Palestinians; politicians
that shamelessly call the killing of more than 21,000 children in Gaza, including one-day-old
infants, legitimate self-defense. Make sure that the congresspeople you elect will hold the
government accountable for the massacre of 400 innocent Iranian schoolchildren.
In shaping your government’s future relations with other nations, demand that American
politicians promise to abide by the Golden Rule, which all world religions and schools of thought
hold up as the epitome of human virtue: “Do to others that which you wish to be done to you.”
All three Abrahamic faiths affirm this principle. The Jewish Talmud says, “Do not do to your
neighbor what you yourself hate.” Likewise, the Gospel says, “So in everything, do to others what
you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12) and
“Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).
Look to your conscience. Would any of you like to see 300,000 homes in American cities reduced
to rubble, as Israel has done in Gaza and Jenin? How would you feel if dozens of American villages
were bombed into oblivion, as Israel has done in southern Lebanon? How would you react if an
enemy attacked an elementary school in the U.S. and killed all the schoolchildren, as the U.S.
military did to a school in Minab?
Without doubt, if not for America’s blind support and endless aid to Israel, the Zionist regime
would be incapable of committing its crimes against the people of Palestine and Lebanon. The
genocide in Palestine and Lebanon and the endless wars in other parts of the world are carried out
with your tax dollars, and so the people of the world expect you to act to stop the American
government.
Your response may be that you do not accept these atrocious actions but are powerless to do
anything about them. This answer, however, is not acceptable. You are the ones who empower,
with your votes, the government and allow it to do what it does. Although American politicians
often win your votes through deception and false promises, as Trump did, you can change the
makeup of the government if you apply the criteria for good leadership in choosing the people
you vote into office.
The United States of America is a great nation. To allow vulgar and immoral individuals to
continue steering your politics and policies will only further humiliate and undermine the U.S. Any
politician who thinks they can buy your vote for 5,000 dollars is unworthy to lead you. Take back
control.
How Will This War End?
Our martyred leader had warned that an American attack on Iran would ignite a wide-scale war
engulfing the entire region. The American government did not believe him. So, when Iran did in
fact attack American military bases all across the region, U.S. officials were dumbfounded. The
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martyred leader affirmed, “If something happens, the Iranian people will rise and finish the job.”
That prediction, too, came true, and for seven months now, millions of Iranians have shown up
on the streets every night to call for avenging their martyred leader.
The warnings of the late Supreme Leader must now be taken seriously. America’s excessive crimes
and injustices have filled human society with rage, turning the world into a powder keg that is
ready to explode. If the U.S. continues its crimes, people all around the world will rise, and the
explosion of popular anger will, without a doubt, set fire to all of America’s interests and assets
throughout the world. The U.S. economy will be hit by a massive economic earthquake that will
affect the lives of all Americans.
You, the American people, have the power to forestall this grim fate. You need to force your
government to distance itself from Israel, as the occupiers of Palestine will, sooner or later, have
to leave the land they occupy and return to their countries of origin.
We can live together in peaceful coexistence. Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent
politicians who are responsible for America’s current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not
the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed.
The people all around the world have awakened. The era when the U.S. could plunder the wealth
of nations through military might has come to an end. This century is the century when the will of
the people will triumph. If the U.S. chooses to continue on its evil path, a painful fate awaits it. As
Imam Ali states in Nahj al-Balaghah, “The day when the oppressed triumph over the tyrant shall be
far more dreadful than the day the tyrant prevailed.”
Despite all the hardships that our enemies impose on us, we will continue fighting, as we have
done for the past 47 years, for the liberation of humanity from tyranny and ignorance. Soon,
Palestine will be liberated. We await the return of Jesus Christ along with Imam Mahdi, the final
successor of the Prophet Muhammad—God’s peace and blessings be upon them. Together, they
will usher in the Kingdom of God and lead humanity toward liberation from all forms of
oppression.
Mahdi and Christ will stand with the oppressed seekers of justice and against the oppressors. We,
the people of Iran, would like to see you, the people of America, standing by our side as we are
led by Mahdi and Christ toward final victory.
We pray for an imminent end to oppression and aggression, for the liberation of all nations from
the grip of tyrants, for a life of loving fellowship and universal peace.
“Assuredly, We wrote in [David’s] Psalms…that the world will be
inherited by My virtuous servants.”
—The Holy Qur’an 21:105
