Iran Letter to America: You Lost War Because of Arrogant, Incompetent Leadership

In an open letter to Americans published today, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has declared victory in the war President Trump began on behalf of Israel, explained the meaning of “Death to America,” and said Iranians and Americans share the “pain” of the latter being led by oppressors beholden to Israel.

Iran’s semi-official Mehr News agency posted the nearly 15,000-word screed in its entirety.

The letter surfaced hours after Axios reported that Trump had offered Iran economic relief if it surrendered to U.S. demands on its nuclear program. Trump denied the claim.

The Letter

The letter opens with the IRGC’s detailing the war’s beginning, which included “murdering 168 innocent schoolchildren along with their teachers” and killing Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and family members, “including his 14-month-old granddaughter.”

More than 3,600 Iranians are dead, the letter says, the “vast majority” civilians, “including 400 children.”

“Eight universities, three hospitals, and eight schools have been bombed,” the letter claims:

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.

The letter then asks and answers a number of questions, the first of which is who won the war. And should an American doubt what follows, he can visit Iran, including, perhaps even the Strait of Hormuz, to see for “yourselves the verity of our assertions.”

“To determine which side has won the war, we need to see which side has achieved its objectives,” the letter says:

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.

Thus has Trump “expressed thirteen different targets for the war once the failure of the first two objectives was clear,” the letter continues:

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 US 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.

Objectives Not Met

Despite using a significant part of their weapons inventory, the United States and Israel have not achieved any of those objectives. 

The U.S. military “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 world’s fourth-largest military power.”

The letter also notes that the Iranian military has wrecked U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf and “neutralized a significant number of advanced American military assets. As well, “the operational capability of 18 US bases was reduced to nearly zero.”

The war, the letter says, “has greatly damaged U.S. prestige as the only superpower abroad, and exposed gaping cracks … in the edifice of U.S. global hegemony. The U.S. can no longer boast of its status as the world’s hegemon.”

The letter claims Iran has achieved “remarkable strategic wins,” not least “national solidarity in Iran.” Iran also has “operational control over the Strait of Hormuz.” The letter credits the Koran and Iran’s leader Ayatollah Sayyid Mujtaba Khamenei with the putative triumph. 

Arrogant Leadership

Low morale, no “strong sense of purpose,” and incompetent, “arrogant” U.S. and Israeli military leadership also help explain Iran’s victory, the letter continues:

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.…

The U.S. military is governed by a crooked ethos that condones cruelty, violence, and the killing of innocent children.

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.

And U.S. servicemen and national security, the letter avers, are now “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.”

Americans and Iranians share a “common pain” as “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 letter says:

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.

“Death to America,” the letter says, is not a wish to kill Americans. Instead it 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.”

The letter also details years of U.S. interference in Iran’s internal affairs, not the least CIA-backed coup that overthrew “the Americanophile prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh” and installed the shah.

Trump: No Offer of Relief

Yesterday, Axios reported that Trump offered sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian assets in return for a deal on the country’s nuclear program.

“At the moment, the two sides are far apart on key issues,” the website reported:

Iran wants talks to focus on the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. naval blockade, while the Trump administration is demanding that Iran agree to nuclear concessions.

But the offer provides a glimmer of hope for a diplomatic breakthrough after Trump rejected Iran’s most recent offer.…

Mediators are meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in New York today to discuss a Qatari proposal that the parties have been negotiating the last few days.

Qatari mediators are expected to meet with Trump administration officials later Monday or Tuesday to try to reach a breakthrough.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the indirect talks called them “positive and constructive” and said Iran “has indicated they are flexible on the nuclear issues.”

Still, the official said, the nuclear issue must be addressed.

Trump denied the report. “Axios just released a story that ‘Trump’ offered Sanctions Relief and Frozen Funds to Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“This is untrue. I offered them NOTHING! Axios’ story, like most others, is a HOAX, used only for purposes of satisfying their Trump Derangement Syndrome. They should withdraw this fake story, IMMEDIATELY!”