Iran’s IRGC Addresses The American People In Unprecedented Open Letter

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued an open letter to Americans on Tuesday addressing a range of allegations made against the Islamic Republic, as well as leveling a number of its own against the Trump administration.

The 26-page letter claims victory on behalf of Iran in the ongoing conflict initiated Feb. 28, 2026, by U.S. President Donald Trump. Notably, the letter is explicitly addressed to “the honorable people of the United States of America — the scholars, the students, and the members of the media.”

Despite the Trump administration’s assertion that the U.S. military has singled out Iranian government infrastructure and military installations, the IRGC claims that the country has experienced significant civilian casualties.

“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,” the letter states, before going on to claim, “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.” (RELATED: Republicans Getting Fed Up With Trump’s Iran Project, Poll Shows)

The IRGC takes a direct jab at Trump, declaring that the American military failed to achieve its core objective, writing, “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.”

Further, the IRGC asserts its animosity is not reserved for the American people, arguing, “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.”

The letter continues, “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.”

When reached for comment, the White House directed the Daily Caller to an X post from Communications Director Steven Cheung.

“This garbage ‘letter’ is a farcical and laughable attempt by a desperate group of people (IRGC) who know they have no other options left because they have failed their own people, so they resort to telling the American people to ‘vote Democrat,’” Cheung wrote. “People are smarter than that and they know supporting extreme liberal Democrats means supporting groups like the IRGC.”

In the same section of its letter, the IRGC goes on to emphasize a number of talking points that dominated American media during the Black Lives Matter protests more than half a decade ago, including asserting that the U.S. “has four percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of its prisoners” and that “[e]very 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.” (RELATED: Most Americans Think BLM Movement Did Nothing For Black People, Poll Shows)

The IRGC also repeats its assertion that public rallies held by the Islamic Republic where Iranians chant “Death to America” are misunderstood, insisting the phrase is directed at American political leadership and not the American people at large. This is followed by a lengthy explanation, from the IRGC’s perspective, of hostile actions by the U.S. government over the past 73 years — beginning with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government under Mohammad Mosaddegh and in favor of a dictatorship under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The IRGC also takes issue with its designation as a foreign terrorist organization — a label that it has received from 24 countries plus the European Union. “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 IRGC contends, adding, “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.” This designation, the IRGC asserts, has been used as an excuse by foreign governments — namely the U.S. and Israel — to assassinate “hundreds of prominent political, religious, and scientific figures from countries in West Asia.”

The IRGC has been implicated in a number of attacks on Americans over the decades. An IRGC captain was charged with the death of Stephen Troell, an American aid worker and English-language teacher who was killed in Baghdad in November 2022. Additionally, IRGC-linked attacks were responsible for the deaths of 17 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. Two more Americans were killed when the embassy was attacked in 1984.

One of the most grisly acts of the IRGC — and its Hezbollah proxies — was the abduction and brutal torture of the CIA station chief in Lebanon, William Francis Buckley. Buckley was taken in 1984 and subsequently held in captivity for 15 months and subjected to severe, prolonged physical and psychological torture. His corpse was later dumped along a roadside.

Moving beyond the grievances the IRGC has raised over the past several decades, the Iranian paramilitary force lays out a case for what it argues is American decline. “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,” the IRGC states. “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.’” (RELATED: Israeli Airstrike Takes Out Top Iranian Intel Chief, Officials Say)

During anti-Islamic Republic protests this past January, the IRGC and other government-aligned paramilitary forces were allegedly responsible for at least 3,000 Iranian deaths — though Time magazine reported that the death toll could have been as high as 30,000.

The IRGC further contends that “[t]yranny, 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 have studied history and politics as indications of a state’s decline. The United States government today exemplifies all of these flaws.”

While the IRGC’s claims break little new ground on its grievances against the U.S. — and often repeat tropes the Islamic Republic has asserted for decades — the letter’s direct message to the American people marks an evolution in Iran’s strategy. It may also signal an ongoing attempt by the IRGC to assert involvement in, and control over, the country’s on-again, off-again negotiations with the Trump administration to bring the war to a close.

The Daily Caller also reached out to the Pentagon for a response to the IRGC letter but has not received a response as of publication.