OPINION:
One fitting response to Iran’s unseemly and interminable 26-page open letter Tuesday to the American people, calling on them to vote for Democrats in November, would be to paraphrase Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Gertrude’s response to the insincere overacting of one of the characters in a play within the play: “Thou dost protest too much, methinks.”
Tehran’s lengthy and implausibly decorous letter has the stench of a desperate about-face to it, coming as it does from a regime that for the past 47 years has chanted “Death to America.”
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It is not at all clear who exactly among the American electorate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps thinks will actually read the letter in its entirety, much less be persuaded by it to vote against President Trump’s congressional Republican allies, in Tehran’s hopes of preserving its Islamist theocratic dictatorship.
The English-language version of Iran’s “Open Letter to the Honorable People of the United States of America” calls on Americans to vote for Democrats in November and to give up fighting the mullahs because the fight has, for all practical purposes, already been lost.
“Now, nearly seven months into this unjust war, the U.S. military — the largest and costliest military in the history of the world — has scored no wins,” the letter asserts.
“Although American politicians often win your votes through deception and false promises, as Mr. Trump did, you can change the makeup of the government,” Tehran further states. “Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state.”
If that is the sort of claptrap the English-language version is peddling, there is no telling what Tehran is saying in a Farsi or Arabic version.
With Iran’s navy and air force decimated (literally and figuratively) and unable to export its oil, the regime’s only real source of income to prop it up, because of a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is, from all indications, teetering on the brink of economic collapse.
As such, the open letter is little more than a Hail Mary — or, in this case, Hail Allah — pass.
After all, the likes of far-left influencer Hasan “America deserved 9/11” Piker and his radical ilk hardly need to be persuaded that the mullahs and ayatollahs are on the side of the angels and the Trump administration is the devil.
It is also somewhat akin to preaching to the choir when, disturbingly, there are Democrats in the House and in the Senate who have pejoratively described Mr. Trump’s bid to denuclearize and defang the fanatical Iranian regime as a “war of choice.” They include House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and various other House Democrats, as well as at least a dozen far-left senators.
Disgracefully, Democrats afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome have gone so far as to declare the war has already been lost and agree that Iran has won, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. (That is shamefully reminiscent of how the pro-communist left in America gave aid and comfort to Hanoi in the 1970s, which only prolonged the Vietnam War. It is Democrat deja vu all over again.)
It is unclear, however, how much impact the IRGC’s massive missive will have. Even if Democrats win congressional majorities in January, Mr. Trump will remain president and commander in chief for two more years. It is doubtful that Iran can hold out until January 2029, when it hopes a weak-kneed Democrat might move into the White House.
Unlike the yearslong “Russia, Russia, Russia” election interference hoax perpetrated by Democrats against Mr. Trump in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, Iran is openly, albeit ham-handedly, attempting to influence the outcome of the 2026 elections.
It is the equivalent of a political endorsement from Lizzie Borden in a burqa or Ted “the Unabomber” Kaczynski, and it will be interesting to watch how all this plays out over the remaining four-plus weeks of the midterm campaign season.
Although no Democrats running for the House or Senate — not even Muslim radicals such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib or Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, both of Michigan — are likely to openly welcome, much less tout, Tehran’s partisan endorsement, how loudly will they repudiate it and how far will they distance themselves from it?
Just as tellingly, will Republicans (and their overpaid and underachieving consultants) make full political hay of this unexpected gift they have been handed? Stay tuned.
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