Be Wary of Iran’s Propaganda Machine
It is time to ask what the United States and its partners should do with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Majid Rafizadeh | April 11, 2026
The dust of conflict has settled. The fever of the moment has yielded to the cooler discipline of strategic reflection. It is time to ask, with unflinching clarity, what the United States and its partners should do with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Tehran’s propaganda organs were quick to claim victory. That claim, however theatrical, must be taken seriously -- not because it reflects battlefield reality, but because it reveals an uncomfortable truth: the regime cannot, or will not, abandon the terrorist and extremist doctrines that have defined it for more than four decades. No amount of quiet concessions extracted in back-channel talks can alter the fact that its public posture remains implacable. Neither the nations of the region nor the broader international community can any longer pretend that peaceful coexistence with this regime is possible.
The war just concluded exposed a secret weapon the regime had wielded against the international community for years: our own ignorance of its internal workings. We had imagined its strength lay in hardware -- missiles, drones, a navy, an air force, a nuclear program. Within weeks those assets were largely neutralized. Its proxy network, once menacing, lies shattered and operationally crippled. Yet the regime’s real power was never hard; it was soft. It was the architecture of influence quietly embedded in our own societies: proxies operating inside think tanks, newsrooms, and foreign-policy circles, often cloaked in the respectable garb of “Iran experts” or “opposition voices.” These networks do not fire rockets. They shape narratives. They steer decisions.
For two decades the West invested heavily in the comforting narrative peddled by these same experts: that “moderates” existed inside the regime, pragmatic figures who could be engaged, moderated, and ultimately steered toward reform. The very individuals held up as proof of this moderation later boasted in regime-controlled settings of how skillfully they had deceived their Western interlocutors -- advancing missile and nuclear programs in the shadows while posing for cameras alongside leaders of Tehran’s proxy militias in state-staged ceremonies. The cost of that illusion has been paid in strategic surprise and diminished credibility.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/be_wary_of_iran_s_propaganda_machine.html
