Oct. 4—Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Sept. 29 released “An Open Letter to the Honorable People of the United States of America,” in a surprising and welcome intervention. The document is explicitly addressed to “scholars, the students, and the members of the media,” as well as to the American people generally.
The opening premise of the 26-page letter is that the current U.S. warfare against Iran is a continuation of decades of foreign incursions, damaging the United States as well as targeted nations.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder, noted this point in her mention of Iran’s letter the day after its release, on her weekly Schiller Institute webcast: “I have not yet read the full letter, but the portions I read were basically saying that the American people should consider that all the many foreign wars of the last several decades only brought economic harm and misery to the American people.”
The IRGC held a press conference announcing the letter, at which IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi said that the initiative goes beyond publicity. Iran, he said, wants to lay out its reasoning in an “honest, logical and genuine” way. Referencing the thick narrative that the U.S. media maintains, Mohebbi noted that while the United States runs hundreds of TV and radio networks that reach other nations around the clock, Iran has little media presence inside America. A letter, he said, was the practical solution. He urged journalists to relay it “in full and faithfully,” and for Americans to read it “at least once.”
The content of the letter goes through a sequence of topics, including explaining the religious faith of Iran, in order to clarify some central questions regarding the Islamic Republic and its relationship with the United States. This includes the following: “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?” The letter refutes more than a dozen of the prevalent, lying narratives about Iran.
In the course of addressing this, the letter speaks in some depth about the history of the United States over the past three-quarters of a century, regarding the decline in its economy, leadership, and foreign policy. The letter starts from the 1953 coup d’etat against the elected Iranian government 73 years ago—a crucial moment in the history of Iran’s relationship with the West. The letter does, however, omit the central role of the British as the key instigator in this history.
On the specific historical point in question, the letter explains: “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.” But while it is true that the CIA played a crucial role in the coup, the plot was completely British in origin. This has been confirmed by secret 1952 documents declassified in 2017. Two declassified U.S. State Department memoranda were published by the National Security Archive in 2017. The two transmissions, dated November 26, 1952 and December 3, 1952, show that the “British Foreign Office approached the Truman administration on more than one occasion in late 1952 to propose a coup to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.”
Thus, the letter from Iran fulfils its intention of serving the truth by, in this instance, provoking attention to the facts of history. This is especially timely, given the current 250th anniversary year of the founding of America, when it is appropriate and urgent for Americans to renew their understanding and rejection of the British Empire, then and now.
Another striking section of the letter is its discussion of the low cultural level of those in offices of the U.S. government. Its two sections on this are titled, “The Vulgar Elements of Society in Positions of Power,” and, “Preoccupation with Inessential Matters at the Expense of Society’s Essential Affairs.”
All this is put in perspective right at the beginning of the letter, when it reviews the U.S. and Israeli warfare this year:
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.
That establishes the purpose and theme of the entire 26-page paper: to counter the narrative that Iran is an evil, terrorist-supporting, religious dictatorship that has been at war with civilization for the last 47 years.
While this news service cannot endorse the letter in full, it highly recommends that Americans and all others read this important contribution to a dialogue that can lead to a true peace.
