What the Pezeshkian Letter Actually Says, Line by Line

Pezeshkian letter to Americans bypassed diplomacy to name who benefits from the Iran war — and the answer is not the workers paying for it at the pump.

On April 1, 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian published an open letter addressed to “the people of the United States of America” — not to the State Department, not to Congress, not to Trump. To the people. Hours before Trump’s own prime-time address to the nation on the same war. The form is already an argument: the conflict isn’t between the American and Iranian states, but between a population and the apparatus claiming to represent it. Everything that follows is built on that premise.

The Opening Move: Separating People from Policy

Pezeshkian opens with a claim about Iranian identity before making a single political argument: “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.” He is establishing the baseline before the American counternarrative can reassert itself.

He then draws the distinction that structures the entire letter: “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 isn’t rhetorical softening. It is the letter’s core mechanism — separating the American public from the American state, creating an audience that can receive the argument without being asked to identify as an enemy. It targets the same separation that weaponized diaspora strategies work to collapse — only in reverse.

The 1953 Line and Why It Comes First

The letter places 1953 early and names it plainly: “The turning point was the 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.” The CIA’s confirmed 1953 coup role is not a contested claim. Pezeshkian deploys it not to relitigate it but to establish causation: the hostility was created by a specific act, not by Iranian nature or ideology. That makes it reversible in principle, and makes the American government responsible for its origin.

He then builds the sequence forward: “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.” The declassified Iraqgate files confirm the U.S. provided intelligence enabling chemical weapons attacks on Iranian forces, then later destroyed Saddam, then used the instability as justification for further intervention. Iraq shows the pattern: consistent punishment of states that refuse subordination. Structural things can be changed. That’s the point of naming the structure.

The Inversion: Who Is Actually Surrounding Whom

This is where the letter makes its sharpest structural move: “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.”

U.S. forces operate from bases encircling Iran — Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Diego Garcia. The standard American framing presents Iran’s missile programs and regional proxy networks as unprovoked aggression. Pezeshkian asks Americans to look at the geography: Iranian military capabilities can reach American forces only because those forces are positioned on Iran’s borders. That is a rational deterrence response to encirclement, not evidence of expansionist intent. The letter doesn’t ask Americans to agree — it asks them to look at the map.

The Nuclear Double Standard Named Directly

Pezeshkian doesn’t sidestep the nuclear question. He frames it through the diplomatic record: “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.” U.S. intelligence assessments confirm Iran has not produced nuclear weapons, yet its research program justifies ongoing military threats while Israel’s actual undeclared arsenal draws no equivalent pressure. The letter names this asymmetry without spelling it out — the “foreign aggressor” whose delusions are being served is made explicit in the next section.

The Proxy Question: Fighting to the Last American

This is the letter’s sharpest passage, and the one most likely to be dismissed rather than engaged: “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?”

Each question is framed so that a straight answer implicates the American government. To say no to “Is America fighting as a proxy for Israel” requires defending a position that even significant parts of the American right — Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, elements of the America First coalition — have publicly abandoned. The entire Iran war narrative depends on the proxy relationship remaining invisible. Pezeshkian names it directly, in public, to an American audience, hours before Trump addresses the nation. The timing ensures Trump’s address has to implicitly answer it.

He then makes the cost-benefit case explicit: Americans gain nothing material from this war. Forty years of sanctions failed to produce regime change or policy reversal — on the contrary, Iran’s literacy rate tripled from roughly 30% before the 1979 revolution to over 90% today, with university enrollment expanding and domestic pharmaceutical and aerospace sectors developing despite technology transfer restrictions. These are the results of a policy the letter is asking Americans to evaluate. Gas prices are up. Soldiers are dying. The enriched uranium the war was supposedly launched to destroy is still there. The post-9/11 institutional pattern runs the same logic: build apparatus around stated security objectives that are never achieved, and the apparatus persists indefinitely. Pezeshkian is asking Americans to recognize it before the next escalation makes the question harder to ask.

Why Each Escalation Gets Harder to Reverse

The letter’s closing argument is temporal rather than moral: “Today, the world stands at a crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before.” That framing contains a structural claim worth unpacking. Each escalation creates institutional commitments, political constituencies, and material investments that resist reversal. When the United States designates the IRGC a terrorist organization, it creates legal structures that criminalize normal diplomatic and commercial engagement. When sanctions expand to secondary targets, they force global compliance regardless of other countries’ interests. When military infrastructure expands to support Iran operations, it generates bureaucratic momentum toward using that infrastructure.

Military planners who spent careers preparing Iran contingencies don’t easily accept that preparation was wasted. Defense contractors who built Iran-specific capabilities don’t voluntarily surrender those revenue streams. Political figures who built careers on Iran hawkishness don’t suddenly acknowledge the policy failed. The longer this continues, the more resistant to reversal it becomes — which is precisely why Pezeshkian’s letter asks Americans to act now rather than after the institutions of permanent war have consolidated further. The question of whose interests are being served gets harder to ask the more those interests become embedded in the apparatus of the state itself.

The Closing Stakes: Warning, Not a Plea

The letter ends: “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.” That is not asking for American sympathy. It is stating a historical pattern and inviting Americans to consider which side of it they want to be on. The letter works by making the gap visible — the space between what Americans are told justifies Iran policy and what that policy actually accomplishes for them. The apparatus that discredits messengers will work to close that gap again. But for the hours between when Pezeshkian posted and when Trump began speaking, the question was in the air: who actually benefits from this, and who is being asked to pay for it?

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