‘Which interests being served by war?’ Iran’s Pezeshkian asks US public

In open letter, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian urges Americans to see beyond ‘flood of distortions’ as war rages.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has urged people in the United States to look beyond “a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives” and ask whose interests are being served by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

In an open letter addressed to the US public and shared by Iran’s state-run broadcaster PressTV, Pezeshkian on Wednesday questioned whether President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy is “truly among the priorities of the US government today”.

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“Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war?” the Iranian leader wrote.

“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?”

Pezeshkian also rejected portrayals of Tehran as a threat, noting that Iran had twice been attacked while its negotiators were taking part in multilateral nuclear talks – once when Israel launched a 12-day war in June 2025, with the US briefly joining the campaign, and again at the end of February this year.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

The Iranian president’s letter comes just hours after Trump issued his latest threat against Tehran, writing on social media that the US would continue “blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.

The US president also said Iran’s “new regime president” had requested a ceasefire to end the war – a claim Iranian officials denied.

Reporting from the Iranian capital Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem noted on Wednesday evening that the US and Iranian governments have been fighting a “war of narratives” amid the deadly conflict.

Against that backdrop, Hashem explained that a key component of Pezeshkian’s letter was that the country maintains the right to defend itself from US-Israeli attacks. The Iranian president also stressed that Iran holds “no enmity” towards other nations or the American people.

Trump, for his part, is set to deliver a speech at 9pm local time in Washington, DC, on Wednesday (01:00 GMT on Thursday) to share what the White House said will be “an important update on Iran”.

“While the American administration is trying to push forward its narrative of victory, the Iranian establishment is trying to push its narrative of being under attack,” Hashem said.

Israel’s influence

Meanwhile, in his letter, the Iranian president also questioned whether the Trump administration was “manipulated” by the US’s top Middle East ally, Israel, in launching the war against Iran on February 28.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing the US to attack Iran for decades while also seeking to derail diplomacy between Washington and Tehran, according to experts.

Since the war began last month, the Israeli military has also claimed responsibility for several strikes against critical Iranian infrastructure, further escalating the conflict.

“Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime?” Pezeshkian said in Wednesday’s letter.

He also asked whether, by “manufacturing an Iranian threat”, Israel is seeking “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?” he wrote.