Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has published an open letter addressed directly to the American people, urging them to look beyond what he called a flood of distortion and ask a simple question: whose interests does this war actually serve?
It is, of course, a piece of propaganda. Iran’s government is not a disinterested party. Pezeshkian is a wartime leader fighting for the survival of his government, and his letter should be read with that context firmly in mind.
But propaganda can contain truth. And the question he poses is one that deserves an honest answer.
In the letter, Pezeshkian appeals to ordinary Americans — the workers, the families, the taxpayers — to consider who benefits from the conflict. Not the Iranian people, who are being bombed. Not the American people, who are paying for it. Not the sailors stranded in the Persian Gulf, or the Lebanese civilians caught in the regional conflagration.
The letter is modeled on a long tradition of wartime appeals to enemy publics — from Ho Chi Minh’s letters during Vietnam to various addresses during the Gulf Wars. The genre is familiar. The intent is transparent: drive a wedge between the American government and its citizens.
And yet the question lingers. Because it is a good question.
Trump’s prime-time address this week offered no exit strategy, no definition of victory, and no accounting of costs. He promised to hit Iran extremely hard and threatened to bring the country back to the Stone Ages. Oil prices have surged. Markets have tumbled. Defense industry stock prices have — predictably — soared.
Who benefits? Follow the money. Lockheed Martin. Raytheon. Northrop Grumman. The same corporations that profited from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and every other military adventure of the past quarter-century.
But Pezeshkian’s hands are not clean either. Reports have emerged that Iran has been deploying children in security and paramilitary roles as the conflict intensifies. If true, this is an unconscionable violation of international law, and no open letter can excuse it.
Iran has also denied seeking any truce, maintaining a posture of defiance and continuing counterattacks against American and Israeli targets. Pezeshkian’s letter calls for peace while his military continues fighting.
Both sides are spinning. Washington says it is fighting for security while it destabilizes an entire region. Tehran says it wants peace while it mobilizes children. Neither side is interested in truth — only in winning the information war that accompanies the shooting war.
For the Global South — for Africa, for South Asia, for Latin America — the relevant question is not whose propaganda is more convincing. It is whose interests are being sacrificed. African nations are already feeling the impact. Oil prices are devastating import-dependent economies. Shipping disruptions are delaying critical supplies.
When an adversary asks who benefits from this war, and the response is not a clear answer but an attack on the questioner, that tells you something. It tells you there is no good answer.
