How Iran Is Using the Art of War Against Americans

About 2,500 years ago a man named Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, and it has been studied ever since. It lays out, in amazing detail, how to win a war at the least possible cost in money and in lives, and it is used today in war, in business, in politics, in negotiations, and even in family relationships. I think a lot of us in the West are unfamiliar with it, and we have had these tactics used against us for years without recognizing them. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, the Iranian military force we have been fighting since the end of February, knows this material very well. Iran is a civilization thousands of years older than ours, with long traditions of war, and its leaders understand Sun Tzu. So when the IRGC sent a twenty-six page letter this week addressed to "the honorable people of the United States of America," I was not surprised to find his fingerprints all over it. What surprised me was how many of my friends believed it.

Why I Am Writing This

At first the letter reads like a sincere appeal. Here is where things stand from our point of view, and we want this to end. It is polite. It quotes the Bible. It quotes Jesus. It reminded me of the leaflets that were dropped over the lines during World War II. But it is propaganda, and there is enough truth mixed into it to make the rest go down easy. That is how every deceptive organization works. It is the way Satan works. Half-truths are some of the most powerful tools he has. You put something true next to something partly true, and then next to something completely false, and you mix them all together until it gets harder and harder to tell which is which. I am watching friends of mine fall for it, Trump supporters and people who used to be Trump supporters, and they are sharing it on social media, which is exactly what Iran wants. They see a warm letter laid out with details and supposed facts, many of them false, and they do not recognize that they are being persuaded to go in a certain direction. So you have to look at more than what it says. How it is written is just as important. What is the goal? What does the writer want you to feel when you finish? This letter wants you to believe that things are not going well, that Trump has failed you, that Iran is winning this war, and that the United States is falling. Watch those four feelings get built, page by page.

Who Sent It and Why Now

The Guard's spokesman, Gen. Hossein Mohebbi, presented the letter on September 29, 2026, at a news conference in Tehran titled "A Letter to the American People," and he told the Associated Press that Americans should take to the streets and protest the President's policies. It was released five weeks before our November 3 midterm elections. So who is the audience? You are. The letter makes that plain. On page two it even invites you to take a short trip to Iran, "possibly even the Strait of Hormuz," to see for yourself that everything in it is true. We are going to take them up on that.

Sun Tzu Wrote the Playbook

In the first chapter of The Art of War, Sun Tzu says this:

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. (Sun Tzu, The Art of War, I.18–19, Giles translation)

You always show your enemy the opposite of what is true, and if you are weak, you do everything you can to look strong. And Iran is weak right now. Most of its navy has been sunk or disabled. Its economy is a wreck. It has cut off as much of the internet as it possibly can so the people inside cannot reach the outside world, and yet a few videos still get out, and they show that things inside Iran are terrible. So what does the letter do? On page twenty-six it warns that if we continue, people all around the world will rise and "set fire to all of America's interests and assets throughout the world," and that our economy "will be hit by a massive economic earthquake." That is a country that has lost most of its navy threatening the whole world on our behalf. A few lines further on, Sun Tzu gives an instruction that fits this letter better than anything else in the book: "If his forces are united, separate them" (I.23). And in his third chapter he explains the whole purpose. The highest skill "consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting" (III.2). Iran cannot defeat the United States on the water or in the air. But if Americans can be convinced that the war is already lost, that their President is a liar, and that their real enemy is in Washington, then Iran does not have to win anything. We will quit on our own.

Ten Tactics in Twenty-Six Pages

I went through the letter page by page and pulled out the tactics I could find, and then I went looking for what outside reporting says about each one. I am giving you the page numbers so you can check me. I would rather you read it for yourself than take my word for it.

1. Declare Victory Before Anyone Can Check

On page one the letter says that "the United States and Israel have suffered a crushing defeat, while the Islamic Republic of Iran has achieved a decisive victory." On page three it claims that "for the first time in history, Iran has exerted, and retained, operational control over the Strait of Hormuz." That is the centerpiece of the whole letter, and it is the claim that is falling apart the fastest. Tanker trackers now put oil flow through the strait at nearly 80 percent of what it was before the war. Iran itself has not been able to move oil through Hormuz since the U.S. blockade was reinstated in July, and analysts expect its stored reserves to run dry by mid-October. The rial is trading around two and a half million to the dollar on the open market, and inflation passed 69 percent this month. Does that sound like a country in control of the strait? It does not. And the letter came out the same week those numbers were being reported.

2. Make Your Enemy's Losses Bigger Than They Are

Page three lists "more than 200 expensive strategic drones, 12 tanker and transport aircraft, 30 fighter jets, at least one AWACS aircraft" destroyed. Now, I want to be honest here, because our losses are real. The Pentagon's own Inspector General reported that Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings at our bases in eight countries, and Americans have died in this war. But the official accounting of aircraft looks nothing like the letter's list. Four F-15Es were destroyed, and three of those were lost to friendly fire over Kuwait. Two KC-135 tankers were destroyed and as many as seven damaged. The drone losses are serious, up to about forty-seven Reapers, but nowhere near two hundred. The letter takes damaged and destroyed, blends them together, and multiplies. That has been the pattern since the first day. On March 1 the IRGC claimed it hit the USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles, and Central Command answered that the Lincoln was not hit and the missiles did not even come close. The Tehran Times posted a satellite photo of a "destroyed" American radar in Qatar that turned out to be a Google Earth image from February 2025, altered with AI. NewsGuard has now tracked 146 false claims about this war, and it reports that they overwhelmingly push a pro-Iran agenda.

3. Go After the Commander

This one did not start with Iran. For twelve years now the President has been attacked, mocked, investigated, and marred like no one in our lifetime. Iran simply picked up a weapon that was already lying on the ground. On page eight the letter describes him as "not only an inveterate liar but is also an insanely avaricious man," and it spends more words on his character than on any battle. Why? Because in the first chapter of The Art of War, Sun Tzu gives seven questions for predicting who will win, and the second one is "Which of the two generals has most ability?" The letter runs that exact comparison. It lists the five qualifications Iran's constitution requires of its leader and asks you to gauge our commander-in-chief against them. If you can be convinced that your commander is worthless, it does not matter what your army can do. You can like the President or dislike him. But one of the loudest voices telling you he is a liar right now is a foreign military that has been at war with us for seven months, and that ought to make anyone stop and think about where their opinions are coming from.

4. Split the People From Their Government

This is the tactic I think is working on my friends. On page ten the letter says, "Iranians and Americans have been wronged by the same cohort of elite actors. We share the same pain." That is Sun Tzu's "If his forces are united, separate them," word for word, and the beast system has been trying to pull the American people away from this President for twelve years. But this letter goes a step further. It redefines forty-seven years of chanting. "Death to America," it says, is really "a prayer for the eradication of the diabolical ruling elite whose seat of power is the White House," and on page fifteen they say the true meaning is "Death to the crimes perpetrated by the American elite." That is an astonishing statement, and it is a lie. They held fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days. Iranian-backed Hezbollah killed 241 of our Marines and sailors in their barracks in Beirut in 1983. The Pentagon has found that Iran and its proxies killed 603 American troops in Iraq. They have been behind war after war that has killed Americans, and they are killing Americans right now. And who are these elites the chant was supposedly aimed at? The letter tells you on page nine and again on page twenty-three, where it blames "powerful Zionist capitalists" and "the Zionist masters of global finance." I have written before about the claim that Israel is pulling our President's strings, and it is interesting to find the same claim coming straight out of Tehran.

5. Tell Americans to Rise Up, Five Weeks Before an Election

Page nineteen says, "Americans need to wake up. They need to wrest control back from corrupt politicians. Now is the time, as the American political system is at its weakest." Page twenty-four says, "Now is the time. Americans need to rise up." Page twenty-five tells you "you can change the makeup of the government" and ends with, "Take back control." This is a foreign military, one that has been at war with us for seven months, telling American voters what to do in our own election. So ask yourself one simple question. Would they be saying any of this if they thought keeping this President and his allies in power was good for them? Of course not. They know exactly who is causing their trouble, and they are trying to take his power away through us. When the Revolutionary Guard tells you how to vote, I think you ought to wake up and do exactly the opposite.

6. Start With a Real Grievance

The letter is full of things that are true about our country, and this is where it gets sinister. On page twenty-two it reminds you that our national debt has passed $40 trillion, and it has. Then it sets the debt right beside this war, as if the war were the reason we are drowning. The Pentagon told Congress this month that the war has cost about $45 billion. That is real money. It is also about one-tenth of one percent of the debt, which has been piling up for more than fifty years under administration after administration. The letter takes a truth that is demoralizing all by itself and ties it to the war and to one man, and we have to see the whole truth instead of the piece they want us to see. Prices really are up, and a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll in late August found that four out of five Americans say the war has raised what they pay for food and gas. The letter takes that pain, which is real, and assigns all of it to one cause, and then on the same page tells you America has become "a Third World country." That is how good propaganda works. It starts with something you already feel so you will trust it before it tells you something false. And to be fair, an American who opposes this war is not repeating Iranian propaganda. People can reach that conclusion on their own. The problem comes when we cannot tell the difference between our own thinking and a script that was written for us.

7. Speak American

This letter knows us. It talks about the White House ballroom and the Kennedy Center sign on page twenty. It praises the "No Kings" rallies on page twenty-three as "a nationwide repudiation of the burgeoning autocratic tendencies within the American government." It quotes the Gospel of Matthew on page twenty-five. That same fluency is behind the Lego-style AI videos you may have seen online. Canada's Rapid Response Mechanism traced them to the Iranian state and estimated that at least 83 million users viewed them in March alone, and probably around 200 million saw at least one. The Associated Press found that the pro-Iran memes played up infighting in the President's own base and the bruise on the back of his hand. They found real divisions and made them bigger. Sun Tzu said to know your enemy. They have studied us carefully.

8. Hide Who Is Talking

The letter at least has a name on it. Much of the rest of this campaign does not. Researchers at Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub identified a network of at least 62 accounts tied to the IRGC, many posing as Latina women from Texas and California and others posing as people from Scotland, England, and Ireland. They spent months posting about local politics and building followers, and within a day of the war starting, they all pivoted to pro-Iran war content. Meta removed roughly 300 related accounts in March. Here is the hard truth. When you share this letter, you are working for the Iranian government. You are doing their work for them, and you are doing it for free. When you post it and tell people that things are lost, that the President made a terrible mistake, that we are in a forever war he will never get us out of, you have become part of their campaign. In the old days that would have been called treason. I have said it before, and I will say it again: you don't send ammunition to the other side. I hate war. But war exists, and it will exist until Christ comes, and while we are in one we have to recognize the tactics being used against us.

9. Leave Out Your Own Record

Page sixteen says, "there is not a single verifiable instance where the IRGC has committed an act of violence against civilians." Page fourteen blames the January uprising on CIA and Mossad agents and puts the dead at "more than 2,300 innocent Iranians." Here is what outside reporting says about January. Amnesty International documented mass unlawful killings of protesters by Iran's security forces, including the IRGC and its Basij battalions, mostly on January 8 and 9. Iran's own Supreme National Security Council put the death toll at 3,117. HRANA published a list of 7,007 dead, by name. This month a United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that the crackdown involved crimes against humanity, and the regime has executed 29 people in connection with those protests since March. So which is it? Was the IRGC nowhere near those streets, or was it the force doing the shooting? The record answers that question. And while we are at it, page five says "not a single store shelf has been left empty," and page eighteen slips in the claim that September 11 was a false-flag operation run by American intelligence. There is no credible evidence for that, and I think it tells you who they hoped would share this letter.

10. Claim That God Is on Your Side

This is the tactic that struck me the most. The letter says the reason Iran won has nothing to do with missiles. It gives three reasons on page five, and the third is "the competent and righteous leadership of a man of God." On page seven it calls the new Supreme Leader "a God-fearing, compassionate, and kind man, a deeply spiritual ascetic." On page nine it says, "It is perfectly clear which of the two leaders God supports." On the last page it says the Iranian people will be led "by Mahdi and Christ toward final victory" and invites us to stand beside them. The inference could not be plainer. They are led by God, and we are not.

By Their Fruits

I want to be careful here, because I am not writing against Muslims or against the people of Iran. I have great respect for people of faith who are trying to live what they believe, and I know many Iranians have suffered terribly under their own government and under this war. My quarrel is with the men who wrote this letter and the way they are using God's name to sell it. On page twenty-five they quote the Savior's Golden Rule from Matthew 7:12. I read the rest of the chapter. Three verses later, Jesus says this...

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? (Matthew 7:15–16)

What are the fruits? Thousands of protesters dead in two days. Public executions. Fake pictures of an American carrier on fire. Accounts pretending to be women in Texas. A letter that tells you there are no empty shelves while the currency collapses. You do not need to guess which tree that fruit came from. The letter also quotes Jeremiah on page twenty-three, telling America to repent before it is too late. I agree with Jeremiah. But the principle he taught does not stop at our border.

At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. (Jeremiah 18:7–8)

That is true of every nation, including ours, and including the one that sent the letter.

These Are Very Old Tactics

These are very old tactics, and they are included in the Book of Mormon. About sixteen years after the sign of the Savior's birth, the leader of the Gadianton robbers sent a letter to Lachoneus, the governor of the Nephites. I am not saying the people of Iran are Gadianton robbers. I am saying the pattern of the letter is the same, and I believe the Book of Mormon was written for our day so that we would recognize it. Giddianhi opens with flattery, and he even brings God into it:

Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so. (3 Nephi 3:2)

Then he tells them how many brave men are under his command and how hopeless it is to resist. Then he offers them a partnership, "not our slaves, but our brethren" (3 Nephi 3:7). Then he tells them his organization is good and ancient:

And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us. (3 Nephi 3:9)

Flattery. Overwhelming strength. An invitation to join. An ancient and good cause. A threat if you refuse. It is all there, and it is all in this letter too. I wrote about what the Book of Mormon warned us about secret combinations, and this is one of the clearest examples we have. And what did Lachoneus do?

Now behold, this Lachoneus, the governor, was a just man, and could not be frightened by the demands and the threatenings of a robber; therefore he did not hearken to the epistle of Giddianhi, the governor of the robbers, but he did cause that his people should cry unto the Lord for strength against the time that the robbers should come down against them. (3 Nephi 3:12)

He did not answer the letter. He did not debate it. He was not frightened by it. He gathered his people, fortified them, and had them pray. There is another chapter I want you to read, and that is Alma 47. It is one of the most powerful chapters on deception in the whole Book of Mormon. It tells how Amalickiah took over the Lamanite kingdom without ever winning a battle. He was "a very subtle man to do evil" (Alma 47:4). He sent secret messages to Lehonti until he talked him down off the mountain, and then...

And it came to pass that Amalickiah caused that one of his servants should administer poison by degrees to Lehonti, that he died. (Alma 47:18)

Poison by degrees. A little at a time, so nobody notices until it is too late. That is how propaganda works, one letter, one video, one shared post at a time. Then Amalickiah's own servant stabbed the king, and his men raised the cry, "Behold, the servants of the king have stabbed him to the heart" (Alma 47:26). He pretended to be angry and sent the army chasing innocent men. Security forces shoot thousands of protesters in the streets, and the letter blames the CIA and Mossad. "And thus Amalickiah, by his fraud, gained the hearts of the people" (Alma 47:30). The Lord is mentioned only once in that whole chapter, in the very last verse, and it is to tell us that those people ended up "entirely forgetting the Lord their God" (Alma 47:36). Deception like this does not bring anyone closer to God, no matter how often His name gets used.

Where the Letter Tells the Truth

I hold every side to the same standard of evidence, and so I have to tell you that not everything in this letter is false. On page one it says the war began with an attack on an elementary school in Minab, and I looked hard at that one, because I did not want to take anyone's word for something so serious. On the first day of the war a girls' elementary school there was destroyed, and somewhere around 150 to 175 people were killed, most of them children. The U.S. military's own preliminary findings, as they have been reported, point to us. CNN reported that the first stages of the military's own investigation found the strike hit the coordinates it was aimed at, and that the U.S. was responsible. The full Pentagon report still has not been released, so we do not have the final word. But the evidence says this was a terrible targeting mistake. The building had once been part of the Iranian naval base next door, it was walled off and turned into a school around 2016, and the target list was working from old information that still showed it as part of the base. Our military did not decide to fire on children. It fired on a place it believed was a military building, and it was wrong. The letter erases that difference. And even here, Iran could not leave the truth alone. The Iranian embassy in Austria posted a fake picture of a bloodstained child's backpack in the rubble. They took a real tragedy and dressed it up with fake pictures. The damage to our bases is real too. The debt is real. The 1953 coup is real history. And that is exactly why the letter works. The true parts carry the false parts. Your friend checks the one true thing, finds it holds up, and swallows the rest.

What I Am Asking You to Do

When I went back to YouTube after downloading this letter, my feed filled up with glowing videos about Iran. I do not know whether that was the algorithm doing what it always does or something more deliberate, and I am not going to claim more than I know. But I noticed it, and I want you to notice it too. Before you share anything about this war, ask who wrote it. Ask what they want you to do. Ask what they left out. I have a whole article on how to avoid deception, and every one of those principles applies here. If we fall for propaganda, we can fall for anything. I am not going to say that the people falling for this have lost the Spirit, but I do believe they are not listening to it, because the Spirit would tell them this letter is not true. And if you have already shared it, the first step is simple. Recognize it. Say, I believed this, I shared it, and it was wrong. Take it down and tell people you were wrong. Hardly anyone admits to the whole world that they were wrong, yet that kind of humility is going to be required of all of us in more ways than one. In the days ahead, a lot of people are going to have to admit they were wrong about this President, and wrong about the leaders they trusted before him. That is one of the hardest things a person can do, and it is better to practice it now on something as small as a shared post.

And please do not let anyone convince you that this war is the end of the world. This is not Armageddon, and there is a great deal of prophecy still ahead of us. The Lord told the Saints in 1831 that there would be wars, and He told them how to face them...

Ye hear of wars in far countries, and you say that there will soon be great wars in far countries, but ye know not the hearts of men in your own land. I tell you these things because of your prayers; wherefore, treasure up wisdom in your bosoms, lest the wickedness of men reveal these things unto you by their wickedness, in a manner which shall speak in your ears with a voice louder than that which shall shake the earth; but if ye are prepared ye shall not fear. (Doctrine and Covenants 38:29–30)

That is what Lachoneus did, and it is what we can do. We do not have to answer the letter. We do not have to be afraid of it. We have to recognize it, refuse to pass it along, gather our families, and cry unto the Lord for strength. The men who wrote this letter want you to believe that God is on their side. I would rather spend my effort making sure that I am on His.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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