A tale of three presidents

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It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. On Wednesday, in a post on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump suggested the war with Iran may soon be over, while also threatening to send Tehran “back to the stone age.”

That same day, in a letter addressed to the American people, his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Iran is not, and never has been, a threat to the US — but then threatened to strike back “beyond Iran’s borders.”

Needless to say, President Pezeshkian has lost credibility since his March 7 statement, in which he apologized for attacking Iran’s Gulf neighbors, only for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to double down on those attacks.

These included drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia, which had signed — in good faith — the Beijing Declaration with Iran in 2023 and, from the outset, refused to allow its airspace or territory to be used for attacks on Iran.

They also included Oman, which does not host US bases and had even attempted to negotiate on Tehran’s behalf to help prevent further conflict — negotiations that Pezeshkian later suggested were sabotaged by a predetermined decision to strike Iran regardless of the outcome.

“Iran pursued negotiations, reached an agreement and fulfilled all its commitments,” Pezeshkian said in his April 1 letter.

“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 US government — choices that served the delusions of a foreign aggressor.”

Pezeshkian repeated the familiar narrative that regional countries should not allow their territory to host US military bases if they genuinely want to focus on development.

This is contradicted by several IRGC actions and statements, such as the one that “all universities of the occupying entity (Israel) and American universities in West Asia will be considered legitimate targets.”

His claim that Iran has never been a threat to the US is also false.

This was rebutted by President Trump, who correctly cited a number of past Iranian actions, including those carried out by Iranian proxies responsible for the 1983 killing of 241 Americans in the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut.

They were also involved in the killing of hundreds of American service members in Iraq through roadside bombs. Iran, of course, was a major supporter of Hamas,........

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