IRGC's Message To The American People | More In Common?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oYMiJ8bSEc
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Here is the pdf for the letter:
An Open Letter to the Honorable People
of the United States of America https://img9.irna.ir/d/r2/2026/09/29/0/173138753.pdf?ts=1790679102019
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Why Did the IRGC Write a Letter to the American People?https://wanaen.com/why-did-the-irgc-write-a-letter-to-the-american-people/
WANA (Sep 30) – The IRGC's letter to the American people deserves a closer look. Iran's military organization has entered the field of public diplomacy through this letter. But why the IRGC? Why not the Foreign Ministry?
The answer lies in the idea behind the letter itself: it is part of a different kind of wartime strategy.
During this war, the Islamic Republic of Iran simultaneously used the military arena, diplomacy, domestic social support and the battle over perceptions abroad. What should the outcome of such a strategy be? Deterrence.
But deterrence is not built simply by firing missiles and inflicting damage on the other side. The other side must see the cost of war, understand it and, ultimately, understand why that cost is being imposed on it.
The war launched by Trump was therefore brought, for the first time in a direct way, to the dinner tables of American households — not only through images of attacks and military losses, but through a question: Who is paying for this war?
If a shrinking household budget, rising public costs, the deployment of troops, damage to military bases and the loss of military equipment are linked to the government's decision to enter the war, the "imposition of costs" becomes an "understanding of the reason for those costs." And once the reason for the costs is understood, the issue can move from the military level to the level of political will.
That is precisely where deterrence takes on meaning. This is where the IRGC letter becomes significant.
The letter is not intended to replace the military battlefield; it is intended to explain the outcome of that battlefield to the society on the other side. That is why the choice of the IRGC as the author of the letter is significant. The organization that has responded on the military front is now speaking directly to the people of that country and explaining its own narrative of the war.
The same hand that responds on the battlefield has now picked up a pen.
The bill for the war
The 25-page IRGC letter is organized around 16 themes and is not limited to the recent war. It addresses the factors behind Iran's victory and the defeat of the United States and Israel, the damage caused by the war, the history of relations between the two countries, U.S. interventions, the economic consequences of futile wars, the future of the conflict, and ways for the American people to avoid the consequences of militarism.
A significant part of the letter focuses on the damage inflicted on U.S. forces.
The IRGC says more than 200 strategic drones, 12 tanker and transport aircraft, 30 fighter jets and at least one AWACS aircraft were destroyed. It also cites the destruction of dozens of helicopters, radar and air-defense systems, as well as more than 350 units of military facilities and infrastructure at U.S. bases.
The IRGC also says the operational capacity of 18 U.S. bases in the region was brought close to "zero" during the fighting.
The significance of these figures, however, becomes greater when parts of the picture presented in the letter can also be compared with foreign reporting.
The Washington Post, after examining more than 100 high-resolution satellite images, identified damage to or destruction of at least 228 structures and pieces of equipment at military sites used by the United States. The review identified 217 damaged or destroyed structures and 11 pieces of equipment, ranging from aircraft shelters and troop facilities to fuel depots, radar systems, communications equipment and aircraft.
The newspaper also reported that the damage visible in the imagery was greater than what the U.S. government had previously acknowledged publicly.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel, described the Iranian attacks as "accurate" and said the imagery showed multiple identifiable strikes on targets.
BBC Verify also examined satellite imagery and publicly released videos and reported that Iranian attacks had damaged at least 20 U.S. military sites in eight countries across the region. In the months that followed, released imagery documented damage to U.S. facilities and bases in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and elsewhere.
A September 2026 report by the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General provided a more official picture of the damage to American aircraft. According to the report, four F-15Es, one F-35A and one A-10 were destroyed or severely damaged. Twelve KC-135 tankers and nine other aircraft were also listed among the losses.
The same report, citing data from the Congressional Research Service, said more than 30 MQ-9 drones had been lost by June. In another report, the Congressional Research Service listed a total of 42 U.S. aircraft as damaged or lost.
Reuters also reported in September that an A-10 sustained severe damage and lost a wing during an attack on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, while around eight F-15s were also damaged.
These figures do not amount to confirmation of every detail presented in the IRGC letter. But they indicate that the broader issue of extensive damage to U.S. equipment and infrastructure was not raised solely in Iran's official narrative.
It was not just about aircraft
Perhaps the more important part of the story is not the number of aircraft and drones at all.
The U.S. military presence in the region depends on a network of bases. When aircraft shelters, command centers, radar systems, fuel depots or communications facilities are damaged, pressure is placed on part of the network that enables military operations.
A Pentagon Inspector General report covering the period through June 30 said hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in the region had been damaged and also recorded $184 million in damage to U.S. diplomatic facilities.
The Washington Post, citing U.S. military experts, reported that damage to some bases had forced U.S. military planners to confront a difficult choice: move troops to safer locations and reduce operational capacity, or keep the bases in place and accept the risk of further attacks.
The same report described damage to the "Naval Support Facility Bahrain" as extensive and reported that the command center had been moved to the United States.
Maximilian Bremer, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and researcher at the Stimson Center, also said the new war had shown that U.S. bases no longer enjoyed the same level of immunity as in the past and that American forces around those bases had effectively been forced into a defensive posture.
Why are ordinary Americans the target audience?
This is where the logic of public diplomacy becomes clearer.
If the cost of war remains confined to military reports, it is a distant issue for a large part of American society. But when the cost of war is connected to public spending, taxes, the safety of U.S. troops and the vulnerability of American bases in the region, the issue takes on a different meaning.
The IRGC letter seeks to move the war from the level of a U.S. government decision to the level of American society.
People in the United States can ask why their forces should enter a war thousands of miles from American soil, why U.S. bases in the region should become targets for retaliatory attacks, and why the cost of such a confrontation should be paid from public resources.
These questions do not necessarily lead to a single answer. But raising them is itself part of the logic of public diplomacy.
That is also why another section of the letter attempts to distinguish the American people from the policies of the U.S. government. The letter says the Iranian people are not enemies of the American people and that "Death to America" does not mean a desire to destroy the American people or their country, but is directed at what it describes as U.S. policies of aggression, killing, plunder and war-making.
The IRGC also explains the formation of the organization, its missions and activities, and why it was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.
The letter, therefore, is not aimed solely at American policymakers. Young people and intellectuals in the United States are explicitly addressed as well.
From missiles to narrative
Ultimately, the IRGC letter should be viewed as part of a war that has not been fought solely on the military battlefield.
In a hybrid war, damage inflicted on the battlefield can lose part of its political impact if it is neither seen nor explained. At the same time, a narrative that cannot be connected to what actually happens on the battlefield cannot by itself create deterrence.
The IRGC letter attempts to bridge that gap. It explains the damage caused by the war, presents its narrative of why the conflict began, highlights the costs for the United States, and directly addresses the American people, students and intellectuals.
The path is therefore designed to move from the battlefield to the narrative, and from the narrative to perception.
That is why the IRGC spokesman's description of the organization as being "with its finger on the trigger" against an aggressor but "with a pen in hand" when speaking to people around the world captures the essence of this approach.
On the battlefield, a military response is delivered. But for deterrence to take hold, the other side must understand why that response was delivered, what costs it has created and what continuing down that path could mean.
The IRGC letter should be read in that context: as an attempt to turn the outcome on the battlefield into a direct message to a society that ultimately bears the cost of its government's decisions to go to war.
And perhaps that is why, despite its length, the letter is more than a political message. It is part of the same war — one side of which is being fought on the military battlefield, and the other in the minds and perceptions of its intended audience.
OBVIOUSLY, the Not So United States and PissraHell are the Terrorist Aggressors.
the Murder, by the US Navy, of 290 humans, mostly Gentiles, aboard Iran Air 655, in 1988.
For Example.
Shot down a passenger airplane ... after spending a decade trying to fuck up Iran by giving Iraq weapons - including bioweapons -in the Iran-Iraq War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
All Iran needs to do is to read the Low Lights of Iranian history vs. PissraHell and their NSUS (and European) supporters.