Dear America,
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would like to have a word or two with you. First, they’d like you to “wake up.”
On September 29, only five weeks before the U.S. midterm elections, the IRGC published an open letter addressed directly to the American people. It says Donald Trump is lying to us, our government doesn’t represent us, American support for Israel is hurting us, our political system is weak, and our leaders are corrupt. Americans, the Revolutionary Guards say, need to “wrest control back from corrupt politicians.”
The letter says Americans empower the government with our votes and therefore have the power to change who leads it. It urges Americans to oppose Trump’s policies, pressure Washington to end its support for Israel, and reject American military involvement abroad. The IRGC spokesman who presented the letter said he hoped better-informed Americans might “think differently and take other decisions.”
This came from the actual, real-life Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They put their name on pages of political propaganda directed at American voters and sent it to us before an election.
My opinion? That should scare the hell out of us. The IRGC believes there are enough Americans angry, gullible, or vulnerable to propaganda to make the effort worthwhile.
Iran already had an army when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. The new Islamic Republic created another armed force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to protect the revolution and the Islamic political system that came out of it.
The IRGC answers directly to Iran’s supreme leader. It has ground, naval, aerospace, intelligence, and cyber capabilities. The Basij paramilitary force operates under it, along with the Quds Force responsible for much of Iran’s work with armed groups outside the country. Over the decades, the Guards also built extensive economic interests in construction, energy, telecommunications, transportation, manufacturing, and other industries.
The IRGC has been woven into Iran’s political, military, economic, and security structure for nearly half a century. It protects the Islamic Republic abroad and helps protect the regime from its opponents at home.
Iranians learned exactly what that meant again this year.
Protests erupted across Iran in December 2025 and January 2026. Security forces responded with lethal force. Thousands of protesters and bystanders were believed killed during the January crackdown, while many thousands more were detained. Human-rights investigators documented shootings, beatings, arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, coerced confessions, and prisoners denied basic due-process protections.
The punishment continued after the streets emptied. Between March 18 and the end of August, Iranian authorities executed at least 59 men on politically motivated national-security charges following proceedings Human Rights Watch described as grossly unfair. At least 29 had been arrested in connection with the recent protests. Several were only 18 or 19 years old, and five executions were carried out publicly.
Iran has even prosecuted people for publicly opposing the executions.
The IRGC’s September letter has a different version of events. It says there isn’t “a single verifiable instance” of the Guards committing violence against civilians and tells Americans we’ve been lied to about Iran being a dictatorship and about the government massacring its people.
The people telling Americans that our government is deceiving us are denying what happened to Iranians who challenged theirs.
President Donald Trump’s administration designated the entire IRGC, including its Quds Force, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April 2019. It was the first time the United States had put part of another country’s government on the FTO list.
The State Department cited the IRGC’s involvement in terrorist plotting, the killing of American citizens, hostage-taking, wrongful detention, and its support for terrorist and militant organizations. Through the Quds Force, Iran had spent years providing money, weapons, equipment, training, and logistical support to armed groups across the Middle East.
Hezbollah in Lebanon has long been one of Iran’s closest partners. Iran has also supported Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, armed groups in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen. Those relationships vary, but they have allowed Iran to project force far beyond its borders through organizations capable of attacking Israel, American forces, commercial shipping, and other targets across the region.
The Trump administration also attributed the deaths of at least 603 American service members in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 to attacks by Iran-backed forces.
The Revolutionary Guards have their own explanation for why America put them on the terrorist list. According to the letter, Washington designated the IRGC because it defeated American and Israeli plots against Iran. The Guards portray themselves as a force fighting terrorism and tell Americans that the terrorist label is part of a campaign to deceive us about who they really are.
Trump left office in January 2021. Joe Biden became president, and the IRGC stayed on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list. Iran pushed for its removal during negotiations over the nuclear deal. The Biden administration didn’t remove it.
A Republican president designated the IRGC. A Democratic president kept the designation. Whatever else those two administrations disagreed about, neither treated the Revolutionary Guards as some misunderstood Iranian civic organization.
And now they want to explain American politics to Americans.
The Revolutionary Guards know Americans have heard Iranians chanting “Death to America” for decades. According to the letter, we’ve misunderstood that too.
They don’t mean you, silly.
The IRGC says “Death to America” is directed at America’s political leadership, which the letter describes as a “diabolical ruling elite” seated in the White House. It calls America the “Greater Satan” while explaining that Iranians who burn American flags aren’t expressing hostility toward ordinary Americans. Their problem is with our government.
Then the poor, poor misunderstood IRGC tells Americans, “We share the same pain.”
No. No, in fact...we really don’t. Not at all.
An American can stand outside the White House and call Donald Trump every filthy name in the English language. Americans can publish articles demanding his removal, organize protests against him, donate money to his opponents, march in a No Kings rally, campaign against every Republican running for Congress, and walk into a voting booth in November and vote accordingly.
Iranian protesters challenging their government have been shot in the streets, tortured in custody, disappeared into prisons, and hanged after grossly unfair trials. Those aren’t even a little bit similar circumstances.
Yet the IRGC is lecturing Americans about oppression.
The letter tells Americans to pressure our government to close military bases around the world and end aid to Israel. It praises Americans who joined protests over Gaza and the No Kings demonstrations, along with academics who refused to participate in military-related research. The Guards present these as signs of an American “moral awakening” and tell us that people around the world are looking to Americans to stop our government.
The letter also tells Americans what kind of leadership we should choose. And buried inside all that concern for the American people is one of the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theories on the planet.
The IRGC claims American political leaders serve powerful “Zionist capitalists.” Elsewhere it invokes “Zionist masters of global finance.” According to this story, Americans are being betrayed by political leaders beholden to a shadowy network of Zionist money and power.
So there it is. Jews control the money. Zionists control the politicians. Your government doesn’t really work for you.
The organization that helps enforce Iran’s Islamic system also brings religion into its appeal. The letter quotes the Quran and the Bible, invokes Jesus Christ and the Imam Mahdi, and eventually tells Americans where it hopes we end up: standing beside Iran.
“We would like to see you, the people of America, standing by our side as we are led toward final victory.”
That request is coming from an organization whose Basij forces have been used against Iranian dissent, whose Quds Force has spent decades supporting armed groups and terrorist organizations, and whose terrorist designation survived both the Trump and Biden administrations. While Iran is executing people arrested in connection with protests against its government, the Revolutionary Guards are writing to Americans about the importance of challenging ours.
Somebody inside the IRGC decided the American public was worth addressing directly. There was no fake American Facebook page, anonymous social-media account, or attempt to disguise where the message came from. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps signed it.
And the pitch doesn’t even sound foreign anymore.
Trump lies. Zionists control American policy. Your government is corrupt. America is collapsing. The United States is the aggressor. Iran isn’t your enemy. Your leaders are. American support for Israel needs to end. Even “Death to America” has been misunderstood.
Those ideas have been circulating in American political discourse for years. The IRGC packaged its versions together, added instructions for what Americans should demand from their government, and delivered them directly to American voters shortly before an election.
There will be Americans who agree with parts of it. Some hate Trump. Some oppose Israel. Some believe American foreign policy has caused tremendous harm around the world. Americans are free to believe every one of those things and vote however they choose.
The IRGC has decided American political division gives it an audience.
Pages directly from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps telling Americans what is wrong with our country, what is wrong with our government, which foreign policy needs to change, and what Americans should do about the people running it.
Propaganda doesn’t need someone to join the IRGC or wave an Iranian flag. A person can despise Iran and still repeat a message Iran wants repeated. They can believe they reached every conclusion themselves. They can even believe they’re fighting the system while helping a foreign government push the exact argument it wants circulating inside the United States.
Treadstone 71 (outside intelligence) analyzed the letter. It checked 115 claims and found that many were true or partly true. That's part of what makes propaganda work. Mix verifiable facts about American debt, wars, military losses, and other failures with distortions, conspiracy theories, and outright falsehoods, and the lies arrive carrying the credibility of the facts sitting beside them. Treadstone called the letter “a true half welded to a false half.” The IRGC didn't need Americans to believe everything. It only needed enough of the letter to sound familiar.
That is what makes a useful idiot useful.
The letter also arrives while the Trump administration is putting new military and economic pressure on Iran. On October 1, the United States expanded sanctions into Iran’s automotive and rail sectors as part of an effort to cut revenue available for warfare, missile development, cyber operations, and the IRGC. Iran has been seeking relief from American sanctions and other forms of pressure during negotiations over the ongoing conflict.
And talk about the ultimate gaslighting. The IRGC presents this letter as concern for Americans, our economy, our freedoms, our soldiers, and our future while asking us to make political changes that would directly benefit Iran. End the pressure on Tehran. End aid to Israel. Pull back the American military. Reject the politicians pursuing policies Iran wants gone.
The Revolutionary Guards want American voters to help remove obstacles standing in Iran’s way. They wrapped those interests in concern for American families and American democracy, sprinkled in grievances millions of Americans already have, and delivered the whole thing directly to us weeks before an election.
Americans can despise Donald Trump, vote against Republicans, oppose Israel, protest American foreign policy, and say virtually anything they want about their government. They can decide for themselves whether the president is lying, whether Congress is corrupt, whether Israel receives too much American support, or whether American foreign policy is wrong.
That’s what freedom looks like here.
But if you’ve become so consumed by hatred of your country or its government that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can hand you pages of propaganda and you find yourself nodding along, here’s a novel idea.
Move to Iran.
Go stand in Tehran and call the Islamic Republic the “Greater Satan.” Announce that the supreme leader doesn’t represent the Iranian people. Accuse the government of lying. Tell Iranians to wrest control back from corrupt politicians. Organize a No Kings protest demanding that the people running the country be removed from power and tell the Revolutionary Guards you’re exercising your political rights.
Yeah...do in Iran what the IRGC is encouraging Americans to do here. Try it and see what happens to you.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has plenty to say about American democracy. Maybe it should first try democracy in Iran and then get back to us.
