Opinion: Will Donald Trump Become the Most Murderous Tyrant in History?

 

Theo Horesh

n stating that, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump just threatened to commit genocide against a nation of 90 million people. And since the only way that could happen in a night is through nuking its major cities, it would instantly make Trump the most murderous dictator in history. And just to make sure you understood the significance of his statement, and that he was indeed speaking of an instantaneous genocide, he added that this would be “…one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

Of course, Trump is an unhinged tyrant, but he is also a fascist tyrant, and this is what fascists do—they murder people en masse and brag about it. And after having watched almost every major party in the western world support the most closely observed genocide in history in Gaza, it is no longer unthinkable that he would do it, and it is no longer unthinkable that they would learn to live with it. And it is no longer unthinkable that we would all be forced to grapple with its implications in our hearts and minds.

Never mind the fact that nuking Iran would make the Persian Gulf uninhabitable by making the water its states depend upon for desalinization undrinkable. Never mind the fact that this would mean the collapse of the global economy for many years to come, and the likely deaths of hundreds of millions of people by hunger related illnesses, since no one would be able to process oil in those states for generations, and this would raise to the price of food dramatically. Never mind the fact that Iran would surely strike Israel’s nuclear reactor in the south, thereby making much of the country, along with Gaza and much of the West Bank, uninhabitable as well.

The deaths in Iran alone would place Trump in the great pantheon of the most murderous tyrants in human history, like Hitler and the Mongolian Tamerlane.

It is not inconceivable, because a dehumanizing discourse of Islamophobia, on both the left and the right, has made it possible to kill Muslims with impunity. It is not inconceivable, because the United States has already done much the same thing in large parts of Japan, Germany, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam—with the full support of both major parties. And it is not inconceivable, because even our most moral presidents like Jimmy Carter have armed genocides as a matter of course—with Carter himself having armed the genocide in East Timor and major crimes against humanity in El Salvador and Guatemala, where a genocide would occur under his predecessor, Reagan.

Trump makes the crude brutality of the American empire impossible to ignore. He makes its gangster tactics of coercion, which both parties have carried out for generations through financial means, evident for even his dumbest supporters. And he places the repulsive character of our abuses of power on display so that every leader from around the world must make a conscious decision about whether to support the empire, and all the more so because he has teamed up with the most Hitlerian leader of the world’s most murderous state in his attacks on the world. And that provides perhaps a silver lining to rule by fascist tyrants—their crimes are obvious whereas those of liberals are always well cloaked. But to threaten the extermination of a nation of 90 million people should be a step too far for all but his most sociopathic supporters.

Now, every single person around him, and every single world leader, has a legal and moral duty to remove him from power by any means necessary. Every single person lacking access to the levers of power must demand that he be removed from office, and every single person in his cabinet must take the necessary step of invoking the mental fitness of the president to hold office and remove him under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution—or else be held responsible for what could amount to precisely what he suggested: the greatest crime in history…

… and all for Israel.

Theo Horesh, author of The Holocausts We All Deny: The Crisis Before the Fascist Inferno

Ken Klippenstein: FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center

FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center

Are you on the list of domestic terrorism indicators.

Ken Klippenstein April 6 2026

FBI Director Kash Patel

Subscribed

President Trump's budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.

The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September. 

Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession.

Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:

• “anti-Americanism,”

• “anti-capitalism,”

• “anti-Christianity,”

• “support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”

• “extremism on migration,”

• extremism on “race,”

• extremism on “gender,”

• “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”

• Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and

• Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

Graphic depicting FBI budget request 

In other words, if your politics are anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI.

The new center combats these supposed threats “by integrating intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis,” the budget request says.

Its creation appears to be inspired by the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — an event that reportedly precipitated the formulation of NSPM-7 in the first place — according to the budget request, which alludes to “heinous assassinations” having “dramatically increased.”

The budget request also singles out social media as some kind of breeding ground for domestic terrorism, saying:

“Domestic terrorists exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications. They use these platforms to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials encouraging radicalization and mobilization to violence.”

Good thing millions of law-abiding Americans don’t use those!

In his testimony to Congress, FBI Director Kash Patel said that he would investigate every single person on the Discord channels used by accused killer Tyler Robinson. But leaked screenshots of those same Discord chats that I obtained, as well as interviews I conducted with its participants, made clear that these chats were about gaming, not politics. 

This was far from Patel’s only overreach. Shortly after Kirk’s death, he announced the Bureau was investigating “the possibility of accomplices,” vowing to run down all “theories and questions” about outside involvement — including a possible foreign nexus. 

Patel would later conclude that there was no evidence for any of it, but by then, baseless theories about an Israeli government role in Kirk’s death had proliferated across social media. Joe Kent, Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center director until his resignation last month, reportedly tried to investigate these claims while in government, and has since echoed them publicly.

Maybe these guys should’ve taken their own advice about the perils of social media.

It’s hard to overstate how much the FBI is focusing of domestic terrorism under Patel and the Trump administration. Yet the media have barely covered NSPM-7, let alone the FBI shift.

Shortly after Kirk’s death, FBI Director Kash Patel testified to Congress that he was overseeing a 300 percent increase in domestic terrorism investigations.

And in the first months of the administration, the FBI replaced the 9/11-inspired Terrorist Screening Center with the “Threat Screening Center.” As I reported at the time, the new mission broadened the scope to include “all national security threats,” which ostensibly was expanded to accommodate increased focus on transnational criminal organizations. Now the threat screening center oversees multiple terrorist watchlists that separate international terrorists, transnational criminals, and purely domestic “threats.”

Then there’s the fact that the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist is growing, as I reported last year.

Again, all of these developments have yielded virtually zero media attention.

The public might have won the battle of Minneapolis, but the White House hasn’t given up on its domestic terrorism fixation, even after virtually every official has walked back claims that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “domestic terrorists.”

Subscribe if you’re wondering what “extremism on migration” even means

Michael Roberts: Measuring a world rate of profit -again

Measuring a world rate of profit -again

Back in 2012, I made an initial attempt to go beyond measuring the rate of profit on capital in any one country and calculate a world rate of profit. Then, I argued that it was important to test Marx’s law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall on a world level. As capitalism had spread its tentacles to all parts of the world through the 20th century, it was necessary to find better empirical support for the law by calculating a world rate because capitalism is only a ‘closed economy’ at a global level. The rate of profit in just one country or a few would not be accurate as it would not account for profits made from trade and investments abroad and each country’s rate of profit could have different trends. 

In 2020, I updated and improved my measure for global profitability significantly.  Then, my calculations were made for the average rate of profit on capital of top 19 economies (ie G20).  My data source was the Penn World Tables 10.0 series. My results confirmed Marx’s law that there was a long-term tendency for profitability to fall.  This was important because it led to the conclusion that capitalist expansion was transient and also subject to regular and recurring crises of production and investment.  Indeed, crises were necessary to ‘cleanse’ the system of old capital and lay the basis for a period of upswing in what I called the ‘profit cycle’. The world rate of profit did not fall in a straight line, as the long-term tendency to fall was interspersed with periods when profitability rose, usually after a significant slump.  This was what my graph of 2020 looked like.

In 2020, I divided the graph into four sections: the periods 1950-66, the so-called Golden Age after WW2 when profitability was high and even rose; the profitability crisis of 1966-82 when profitability globally slumped; the neo-liberal period 1982-97 when there was a (limited) recovery in the profit rate; and finally the period that I call the Long Depression from 1997, where the profit rate fell back, leading to the Great Recession of 2008-9, followed by stagnation in the rate up to 2019, just before COVID pandemic.

Then in early 2022, I published another post entitled A world rate of profit: important new evidence. That post highlighted a new study of the global rate of profit on the stock of capital invested as calculated by Deepankur Basu and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Their data are contained on their website here.Basu et al used a different database (the Extended Penn World Tables 7.0 series) and they calculated an average global rate of profit for 25 countries. Their results supported my 2020 measurement.

Now in a new study, Pooyah Karambakhsh of Sydney University has published a comprehensive update on the measurement of a world rate of profit.  Karambakhsh explains that, while “the analysis of an individual country’s profit rate is invaluable in assessing national economic growth and crisis, I argue that assessment of the LTRFP should be done at the global level. Capitalism is in essence a global system with an intrinsic tendency toward the world market.” As Karambakhsh says, “Whatever the mechanism of value transfer, its existence indicates the possibility of discrepancies between surplus value produced and realized in each nation. A global perspective, with a “global pool of surplus value,” circumvents these discrepancies.”

Karambakhsh’ study applies multiple measures of the profit rate, including those based on the Marxian concept of productive labour. Using a sample of 32 countries, Karam also finds a downward trend in the world rate of profit between 1952 and 2019.  Most important, he shows that this decline is due to Marx’s law of profitability, namely that a rising ‘organic composition of capital’, (more investment in technology over labour) exerts a downward force on profitability over time, while a rising rate of surplus value acts as a countertendency (but only dominates in the neo-liberal recovery period 1982-97). Moreover, his data show that this falling tendency has been common among nearly all developed and developing countries. 

Karambakhsh correctly reckons that the Marxian rate of profit should incorporate the concept of productive labour. Marxian theory argues that new value and surplus value is created only in the productive sectors of the economy (eg. manufacturing, construction, transport and communications); not in unproductive sectors such as real estate, finance or government. The latter sectors merely redistribute surplus value created in productive sectors. 

So Karambakhsh tries to delineate global profitability, using four different measures: one using a detailed breakdown of productive actvities; one using a simplified measure of productive sectors; and one as an overall average of profitability including unproductive sectors; and finally one that removes the impact of depeciation (which has become an issue of controversy) and so uses gross capital stock, not net of depreciation.This measure is used by Shaikh and Tsoulfidis and Tsaliki – but only for the US, not globally. Karambakhsh weights each country’s capital stock to reach a global average profitability.

Unfortunately, data measuring the rate of profit on productive sectors has a much shorter time series and fewer countries. So in the end, Karambakhsh looks at the global average rate of profit that includes unproductive sectors. He finds that this falls over the period 1950-2019 from a peak of 11% in 1966 to 7% in 2019 – see the black line in the graph below (Figure 1a).  Moreover, he finds the same turning points in the rate as I did in my 2020 measure: 1950-66; 1966-82; 1982-97; 1997-19 (Figure 1b).  But he shows that the other measures based on productive sectors only also match closely the overall average rate (Figure 1b).  That tells me that, using the overall ‘whole economy’ measure (as I call it) of the average rate of profit is still a very good proxy for the rate a la Marx.

Figure 1. (a) Four estimates of the world rates of profit (WRP) by four definitions and (b) their normalized magnitude indexed to the year 2000.

In decomposing the components driving the rate of profit (RP), Karambakhsh finds more or less the same results as I did in 2020. He finds that the organic composition of capital (VCC), as defined by the ratio of the stock of fixed assets to the consumption of employees, rose over the period, while the rate of surplus value (RSV) varies. From 1952–1965, the world profit rate rises, and so do the rate of surplus value and the organic composition of capital. Both work toward raising the RP.  In the second period, 1965–1982, the VCC rises strongly and, supported by the fall in the RSV, lowers the RP. From 1982–1997, the neoliberal era, the RSV rises and the VCC falls slightly. As a result, the RP rises, but not enough to fully compensate for the fall of the previous period of falling profitability. In the last period 1997–2019, the RP falls, mainly driven by rising VCC, but also supported by a fall of the RSV. By 2019, the RP loses all its gains from the neoliberal period.  I found similar results in my 2020 calculations. What does this tell you?  It confirms Marx’s explanation of why the rate of profit moves. When the organic composition of capital rises faster (or falls less) than any rise (or fall) in the rate of surplus value, the rate of profit will fall and vice versa.  

Karambakhsh also shows that, although the world profit rate is a weighted average of individual countries’ profit rates, most of the countries within his sample had the same overall trend and driver as the global rate.  He concludes that “Although the studied period may not be long enough for a definitive statement about cycles, the sequence of rises and falls suggests cyclical behavior with cycles of 30–35 years.”  And he interprets Marx’s LTFRP as a “theory of the rate of profit cycle.”  Indeed,this is something that I noted and argued since I first looked at the profitability of capital (only US capital then) back as early as 2005-6 (see my book, The Great Recession) and supported by my calculations since for the world rate of profit in 2012 and 2020.

Karambakhsh uses the Penn World Tables 10.0 series, which takes his calculations only up to 2019.  We now have available the 11.0 series; this takes data up to 2023. My own calculations from the latest series show that the global rate of profit has only slightly recovered since the pandemic slump of 2020, so far.  Moreover, in my new calculations, I aggregate individual country surplus value, the stock of fixed assets and employee compensation to come up with proper global figures for Marx’s rate of profit formula, doing away with the need to weight individual country capital stocks. (I shall publish these calculations in a future paper.)

Most important for me, considering that many authors reject it, is that Karambakhsh’ results also support my view that the underlying cause of the Great Recession of 2008-9 lies with falling profitability in the decade before.  As he says “The US RP shows a clear downward trend starting in 1997, well before the latest crisis.”

Here is my own calculation for the ‘whole economy’ US rate of profit up to 2023, using the latest Penn World Tables 11.0 series and, in my case, including variable capital in the denominator.

He adds “not only did the WRP decline begin before the 2007–2009 crisis, it continued afterward. Although there was a quick bounce-back in 2010, there is no sign of overall recovery. One main driver of recoveries after crises is the destruction of capital, usually in the form of bankruptcies and devaluation of capital. Policies that prevented large-scale bankruptcies, with the aim of containing crisis contagion, likely reduced capital destruction and thereby muted post-crisis recovery in profitability.”  Exactly so – see my posts on creative destruction.

Karambakhsh interestingly brings our attention to other factors affecting the growth of profits, if not profitability. “From a Marxian perspective, productive hours are the direct producers of surplus value, and their fall indicates the decline of profitability.” He shows that the share of wages has consistently declined since 1952, while the operating surplus (profits) has remained almost constant.  Why?  Because the depreciation rate of the stock of fixed assets has increased over the decades.  If more profit has to be used just to replace depreciated capital, it will reduce new net investment and GDP growth.

Another result from Karambakhsh’ paper is that the developing world had a higher profit rate during the period than the developed capitalist economies. 

This follows Marx in that the former countries generally have less technology compared to labour (lower VCC).  But as these countries industrialise, the gap narrows in the rate of profit with the developed world.  This supports the analysis that Guglielmo Carchedi and I made in our paper on modern imperialism, where we show that the higher profit rate in the developing economies has gradually narrowed towards the global north rates particularly with the big rise in the organic composition of capital in China. Indeed, Karambakhsh shows that the rise in China’s VCC translated into a sharp 51% drop in its RP, from over 15% to less than 8%, undermining China’s role as an engine of profitability. I find a similar result using the latest Penn Tables series, with a 55% fall in the ROP since 1950 and a 2.6 times rise in the VCC.

Like other authors, Karambakhsh measures the rate of profit against only fixed assets (machinery, plant, etc), and does not include in the denominator, variable capital ie employee compensation.  Also he does not account for circulating capital (ie inventories of raw materials and components used). In my calculations, I often include variable capital.  But as Karambakhsh and other authors say, if you don’t, it does not significantly change the results, only the level of profitability, not the direction or turning points. The same applies to circulating capital, in my view – but for a different take on this, see here. 

Karambakhsh’s conclusions are pertinent. “The persistent fall in the WRP since the mid-1990s, together with the accelerating rise of depreciation from the mid-1980s and the long-run slowdown in productive hours and a growing share of hours devoted to unproductive activities, has contributed to slower capital accumulation and weaker GDP growth. These forces suggest intensified competition, higher bankruptcy risk, increased pressure on labor to extract more surplus value, and that a short-term reversal of global profitability is unlikely.”

But, he goes on: “Capitalism has strong adaptive capacities, with potential for technological and organizational shifts. In short, the evidence points to a prolonged period of constrained growth and heightened social and economic tensions, not an immediate or predetermined terminal crisis.”  I think that is right.  As I have suggested elsewhere, capitalism may yet get a new lease of life (after a slump) from the new AI technologies if they do indeed deliver higher surplus value at the expense of the shedding of labour.

To All Those that Tell Us What We already Know: Don't Like America Right Now? Don't Run, Fight Back

Richard Mellor

Celebrities are leaving the US. De Generes left for the fancy UK Cotswolds, a lovely area but she didn't like the weather and is back. Workers don't have much of a choice. I'm a dual national and I could. But only on a voluntary basis. I'm not going to leave when the going get's tough. Just like the union, we stay and we fight back to defend our interests. I'm proud to be a member of the US working -class, I'm not ashamed of that. I'm not a general. I'm not a celebrity, but most of the people that have made my life worthwhile the last 51 years are stuck here. They're working people. I ain't leaving either. If I was younger I'd be more active but as it is all I have is this, a blog and Tik Tok. When times get tough we stay and fight back.

Hegseth Forces US Army Chief of Staff to Resign. . Here's what He Should Have Done.

Richard Mellor

 

Some reports I have read say that an hour after Pete Hegseth forced him to resign, the US Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, (military officers are know to be randy)  said, "A madman is about to lead the great US military to ruin."

I cannot find any documented evidence that he said this or called Trump a madman. But If George believes this is the case and is being paraphrased in some way, rather than resign, he should have defied Hegseth and called on military personnel to do the right thing and refuse to go. Let the gangster capitalists fire him. He should call on all the remaining officers and those in leadership roles to join him in that call. If he really believes what he says, it's his duty to stop the mad man and save US and Iranian lives. Announcing what is obvious to all of us is not enough. 

It's a bit disappointing all those that have voluntarily resigned in government service due to the lunatics now running the asylum. Stay and fight. Don't make it easy for them to replace you with one of their sycophants and co-thinkers. 

Seymour Hersh: THE GROUND WAR BEGINS?

 THE GROUND WAR BEGINS?

Trump has escalated the war against Iran, heedless of the lessons of the past

Seymour Hersh April 2nd  paid

President Donald Trump arrives to address the nation from the Cross Hall of the White House last night. / Photo by Alex Brandon—Pool/Getty Images.

Who was the guy pretending to be President Donald Trump on stage last night? Surely not the man who once bragged that he could shoot somebody walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City and still get elected. He was subdued as he flawlessly read a prepared speech written by his handlers that had its moments.

In this morning’s New York Times, Edward Wong assesses whether the US has achieved the goals the president set out in a February 28 video announcing the war and finds that it has fallen short. The harsh religious government in Tehran is still in power, and Iran is continuing to limit the flow of oil, gas, fertilizer, and food through the Strait of Hormuz, creating economic havoc throughout the Western world. Iranian missiles and drones are continuing to strike Israeli and America’s oil-producing allies in the Persian Gulf.

What the president’s speech last night didn’t offer were any specifics about the US troop buildup through the region, but the threat was there. “I can say tonight,” he said, “that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly. We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”

Trump was telling the world that the ground war is on as of today, and he is in the process of sending thousands of American soldiers into the Middle East to engage on the ground, as well as in the air, against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Thousands of US Special Operations forces—Navy SEALs and Army Rangers—are either en route or soon will be to zones within striking range of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial choke points for the shipping of oil from the Middle East to the rest of the world.

Add the number of those en route to those already stationed in the region, and Trump easily could have fifty thousand US fighters ready to clear the Strait of Hormuz or even to dig out the partially enriched uranium Iran is believed to have tucked away in one or more of tunnels under the nuclear facilities the US and Israel attacked last June.

The 60 percent enriched uranium—requiring just a few days of enrichment to be weaponized, if centrifuges could be found (I have been told there is no evidence that Iran retains them)—would have to be encased in scores of lead caskets weighing two tons or more. The only rational way out would be via helicopter, and that could work, say the experts, since the US and Israel now control the skies over Iran. But who knows where among the many nuclear-related facilities and tunnels in Iran the astonishing cache may be? Perhaps “the Shadow knows,” as they said on my favorite Sunday evening radio show when I was a kid in Chicago in the years after World War II.

Here are some facts about prior American wars in the Middle East that the president, not known as a history buff, may not fully remember or have been told about: in 1991 the US fought in the Persian Gulf against Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq. As many as 700,000 American troops served in that war, which America won, expelling Saddam from Kuwait. Five hundred thousand American soldiers were in the region when the war began. More than 150,000 thousand American-led coalition soldiers were deployed to the Middle East at the start of the invasion of 2003, then called Operation Iraqi Freedom.

One would hope that Trump has been fully briefed on an earlier and successful 1999 air war, led by NATO with the full backing of the Clinton administration and the US Air Force, that bombed military and civilian targets in Belgrade and other areas of the former Yugoslavia for seventy-eight days. It took that long, amid the increasing destruction of the capital city, before Slobodan Milosevic, the brutal Serbian leader, agreed to withdraw his troops from the region of Kosovo, where the majority of the population were Albanian-speaking Muslims. After he was removed from power in 2000, Milosevic was charged with a series of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by an international tribunal at The Hague, but he died of a heart attack in prison before judgment was passed.

The president may not know that Iran, the 17th largest nation in the world, is nearly four times larger than Iraq. He may not know that Iran has one of the highest literacy rates in the Middle East, with 94 percent of adults considered to be literate. He should be aware that the disdain, fear, and worse that much or the Iranian public had for the nation’s fanatic religious leadership inevitably has been washed away by weeks of intensive US and Israeli bombing. Early promises to avoid civilian targets have evaporated and at this point there are few targets off the table.

It is known from American postwar studies that the daytime bombing of German cities by American and British warplanes enraged the German public and increased citizen support for the war to the point that surrender to the Allies was delayed by as much as six months. (One of the officers involved in the study was Army Captain Robert S. McNamara, who served as an unyielding secretary of defense during the worst years of the murderous Vietnam War.)

At this point, it is fair to say that Trump’s current war, undertaken in concert with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and largely, according to many press reports, at his bidding, is an unnecessary war that has more and more targeted cultural and educational sites as well as residential apartment buildings. The air war is also, as an Israeli insider and combat hero said to me the other day, “one of the most stupid wars ever fought by a superpower in history. There is no upside. Iran has not yet been able to build a bomb, and the war is destroying the West economically”—a reference to the ongoing Iranian blockade of Western oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Israeli added that the Revolutionary Guard and other pro-regime zealots “would love to have American troops” on the ground inside Iran. “It’s a gigantic trap.”

If that is so, he asked, “What is Trump going to do?” He had only one ready answer if the US invasion of Iran takes place and turns out badly: “He may just scapegoat Pete Hegseth,” the vulgar secretary of defense who has cheerfully promoted every aspect of Trump’s war, as all in the Cabinet must.

We are being led by an ignorant and unqualified president, who was nonetheless duly elected. When will someone inside the administration have the integrity and courage to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment?

Iranian President's Letter to the American People

Reprinted from the Meidas Touch  and On You Tube

 

BREAKING: Iran President Pezeshkian releases a lengthy public letter addressed to the American people ahead of Trump's address to the nation, defending its actions, denying it poses a threat, and blaming the U.S. for escalating conflict—while warning that continued attacks will deepen instability and resentment.

 

He warns: "Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure—including energy and industrial facilities—directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders"

 

FULL LETTER BELOW:

"To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life:

 

Iran—by this very name, character, and identity—is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination. Even after enduring occupation, invasion, and sustained pressure from global powers—and despite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbors—Iran has never initiated a war. Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it.

 

The Iranian people harbor no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness—not a temporary political stance.

 

For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful—the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.

 

Within this same framework, the United States has concentrated the largest number of its forces, bases, and military capabilities around Iran—a country that, at least since the founding of the United States, has never initiated a war. 

 

Recent American aggressions launched from these very bases have demonstrated how threatening such a military presence truly is. Naturally, no country confronted with such conditions would forgo strengthening its defensive capabilities. What Iran has done—and continues to do—is a measured response grounded in legitimate self-defense, and by no means an initiation of war or aggression.

 

Relations between Iran and the United States were not originally hostile, and early interactions between the Iranian and American people were not marred with hostility or tension. The turning point, however, was the 1953 coup d’état—an illegal American intervention aimed at preventing the nationalization of Iran’s own resources. That coup disrupted Iran’s democratic process, reinstated dictatorship, and sowed deep distrust among Iranians toward U.S. policies.

 

This distrust deepened further with America’s support for the Shah’s regime, its backing of Saddam Hussein during the imposed war of the 1980s, the imposition of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, and ultimately, unprovoked military aggression—twice, in the midst of negotiations—against Iran.

 

Yet all these pressures have failed to weaken Iran. On the contrary, the country has grown stronger in many areas: literacy rates have tripled—from roughly 30% before the Islamic Revolution to over 90% today; higher education has expanded dramatically; significant advances have been achieved in modern technology; healthcare services have improved; and infrastructure has developed at a pace and scale incomparable to the past. These are measurable, observable realities that stand independent of fabricated narratives.

 

At the same time, the destructive and inhumane impact of sanctions, war, and aggression on the lives of the resilient Iranian people must not be underestimated. The continuation of military aggression and recent bombings profoundly affect people’s lives, attitudes, and perspectives. This reflects a fundamental human truth: when war inflicts irreparable harm on lives, homes, cities, and futures, people will not remain indifferent toward those responsible.

 

This raises a fundamental question: Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war? Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behavior? Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country “back to the stone ages” serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?

 

Iran pursued negotiations, reached an agreement, and fulfilled all its commitments. The decision to withdraw from that agreement, escalate toward confrontation, and launch two acts of aggression in the midst of negotiations were destructive choices made by the U.S. government—choices that served the delusions of a foreign aggressor.

 

Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure—including energy and industrial facilities—directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders. They generate instability, increase human and economic costs, and perpetuate cycles of tension, planting seeds of resentment that will endure for years. This is not a demonstration of strength; it is a sign of strategic bewilderment and an inability to achieve a sustainable solution.

 

Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime? Is it not true that Israel, by manufacturing an Iranian threat, seeks to divert global attention away from its crimes toward the Palestinians? Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar—shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?

 

Is “America First” truly among the priorities of the U.S. government today?

 

I invite you to look beyond the machinery of misinformation—an integral part of this aggression—and instead speak with those who have visited Iran. Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants—educated in Iran—who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West. Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?

 

Today, the world stands at a crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come. Throughout its millennia of proud history, Iran has outlasted many aggressors. All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while Iran endures—resilient, dignified, and proud."