Gaslighting America that Iran is a threat
As he does daily, Asshat Trump is gaslighting the American public, barking that Iran poses an “imminent threat” to the United States, dressing up Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs as some apocalyptic horror story meant to terrify fools still buying his act. Or, more accurately, he’s just performing the ritual incantation required of him so the institutions actually doing the bombing can pretend their killings are anything other than cold-blooded murder. Off the script shoved in front of him, we’re told that Iran’s supposed dangers demand escalating military action. Utter bullshit.
In his recent State of the Union address (which I hope no one watched) and in public remarks, Trump's lies claim that Iran is pursuing long-range missiles capable of striking the continental U.S. and that its nuclear ambitions pose a serious, existential menace to American security — claims repeatedly used to justify further sanctions and potential strikes.
But much of that narrative is a continuation and amplification of rhetoric that long predates his presidency and reflects the strategic priorities of Israeli leadership, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose obsession has focused for decades on portraying Iran as an existential threat that must be neutralized. Iran remains Netanyahu's erotic fixation, his necropolitical object of desire. The military strikes against Iranian sites are an attempt to bring a failed state and more chaos to Iran. The goal is that Iran will no longer be a help to Palestinians and a threat to Zionism.
Trump’s current posture — which includes launching a major joint U.S.–Israeli military operation against Iran in early 2026, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” — illustrates how that rhetoric has translated into real escalation, not merely political language. Trump and allied officials describe the strikes as aimed at dismantling Iran’s missile infrastructure and nuclear capabilities, and they have portrayed the campaign as necessary to protect U.S. and allied security, including calling for Iranians to rise up against their government.
Whereas in January 2026, when the people actually did rise up, Trump’s Secretary of State tweeted that Mossad was walking with the people in Iran during the uprising — giving justification for the Iranian regime to violently and paranoically suppress its people. The truth is, the U.S.A. and Israel didn’t want the Iranians to independently bring down their regime and build a functional one. Israel and the U.S.A. want to break the knees of Iran and keep it that way perpetually.
Analysts and intelligence sources categorically deny the factual basis for portraying Iran as an imminent threat to the United States itself, noting that claims about long-range missile development and direct risk to U.S. soil are unsupported. The Trump administration's assertions — especially about an imminent Iranian missile threat to the U.S. homeland — are part of a broader set of exaggerated claims used to justify a large-scale military campaign.
This trajectory — from diplomatic engagement and sanctions pressures to full military confrontation — maps closely onto longstanding Israeli strategic narratives (Clean Break Document, 1997; Foreign Policy Plan to attack seven countries — google it!) that frame Iran as a persistent and unparalleled boogeyman. The truth is that Iran helped support the Palestinian cause, and any nation supporting Palestine is a threat to Zionist genocide dreams. Trump’s shift toward direct military action, which involves significant risks of broad regional escalation, reflects a continuation of a pattern in which U.S. policy mirrors the threat framing long advanced by Netanyahu’s government. The tail wags the dog. Meanwhile, in the western U.S.A., the Grand Canyon National Park Service has lines of tourists waiting outside bathrooms where people are locked out, and the one open offers a toilet near overflowing — a visible disgrace being offered to tourists who are actually investing their money to visit America.
Now take that whole picture and lay over it what Noam Chomsky has been spelling out for decades. None of this is a surprise. None of it is a deviation from some noble American path gone astray. It is the normal functioning of an imperial system. A state that sees the world as its “backyard” will constantly invent “imminent threats” at the periphery in order to justify the permanent exercise of violence and control. Iran, in this script, is not dangerous because it is about to launch intercontinental missiles at New York tomorrow; it is dangerous because it doesn’t fully obey, it influences regional politics, it backs the Palestinian cause, and it offers an example — however flawed — that powerful states can’t entirely bend to their will.
From a Chomskyan angle, the “imminent threat” rhetoric is just the latest version of an old formula. During the Cold War, it was the “Soviet menace” lurking behind every independent movement. In Southeast Asia, the planners were terrified not of a North Vietnamese invasion of California but of the “virus” of successful independence spreading through the region. In Central America, the nightmare was “the threat of a good example” if a small country managed to prioritize health and literacy over foreign investors. In each case, the official story of “defense” and “security” concealed a much more straightforward concern: maintaining a system in which the U.S. and its close allies decide who is allowed to develop, who is allowed to control resources, and who must be punished for stepping out of line.
In his recent State of the Union, those scripted lines about Iranian missiles and nuclear terror are not personal quirks of one grotesque demagogue. They are the voice of a stable structure speaking through him. As Chomsky has shown again and again, the “puppet masters” are not some shadowy conspiracy in the cartoonish sense; they are the predictable institutions of concentrated power: the arms industry that profits impeccably from another “Iran crisis,” the fossil fuel conglomerates that treat the Middle East as a gas station, the financial sector, the think-tank ecosystem funded by those same interests, and the allied states that plug into this network as junior partners and regional enforcers. A figure like Trump is a noisy frontman for an apparatus that would function under anyone who accepts its basic rules.
The Israeli leadership’s role — especially under Netanyahu — fits neatly into that structure. For decades, the strategic doctrine has been to present Israel as a tiny, eternally endangered outpost of “Western civilization,” surrounded by irrational savages, facing annihilation at any moment. Iran, in that story, must be the supreme enemy, the permanent Hitler on the horizon. This is not analysis; it is a propaganda requirement. If there is no existential threat, the grotesque treatment of Palestinians, the endless settlement expansion, and the periodic massacres become much harder to justify. So Iran is cast as the demonic force supporting the unforgivable crime: Palestinian resistance to dispossession.
Trump’s joint operation — with cartoonish names like “Epic Fury” and “Lion’s Roar” — is exactly what follows when that propaganda is internalized at the level of policy. The slogans about “dismantling Iran’s missile infrastructure” and “protecting U.S. and allied security” are recycled phrases; they could be dropped straight into the speeches about attacking Iraq in 2003, bombing Libya in 2011, or funding right-wing terror in Latin America in the 1980s. As Chomsky emphasizes, the language is deliberately abstract and moralistic. There is almost never a serious discussion in mainstream forums about who actually threatens whom, about comparative force levels, or about the documented record of U.S. and Israeli aggression. The assumption is always that “we” act defensively, by definition, and that “they” are inherently menacing, by definition.
The call for Iranians to “rise up” against their own government while foreign bombs are dropping and sanctions are strangling the population is another standard move. Washington weaponizes suffering and then pretends to stand in solidarity with the victims. It did this in Iraq under sanctions, in Nicaragua under contra war and economic sabotage, in Cuba for decades. The hope is that a crushed population will blame only its immediate rulers and not the great power orchestrating the misery from outside. Chomsky’s constant point is that this is not a bug of the system; it is the logic of imperial management. Domestic populations at home are told they are “helping” freedom. Populations abroad are driven into desperation until they submit or implode.
The fact that serious analysts and even official intelligence assessments do not support the claim of an “imminent” Iranian threat to U.S. soil is not a minor detail — it is the whole story. When lies are repeated in the face of available evidence, it’s not because the liars are misinformed; it’s because the lies are serving their function. The propaganda model Chomsky developed with Edward Herman explains this precisely: major media, integrated into corporate and state power, filter reality. They select and frame information so that what serves power appears as “common sense” and what challenges power appears “extreme” or invisible. So if the machinery needs Iran to be a monster, public intelligence can say what it wants; the talking heads will still shout about missiles to New York and “existential” dangers to America.
The reference to the “Clean Break” document and the insane “seven countries in five years” framing is not conspiracy. It is the tip of the iceberg. Planning documents routinely spell out the intention to use overwhelming U.S. force, along with Israel and other clients, to smash any state that does not fall into line. Iran is not just one more country on the list; it is central because of its size, resources, and symbolic position as a pole of resistance to U.S.–Israeli–Gulf dominance. When that resistance includes tangible support for Palestinians, it crosses an intolerable line. As the text bluntly states: anyone supporting Palestine is a threat to Zionist genocide dreams. The language is harsh, but the reality on the ground — the methodical destruction of Palestinian society — more than earns it.
From a Chomskyan perspective, the word “genocide” here is not rhetorical inflation; it points to a long-term project of expulsion, fragmentation, and erasure. The U.S. role is not that of a neutral mediator but of a primary enabler, providing the weapons, the diplomatic cover, and the propaganda shield. When Iran or any other actor breaks ranks and backs Palestinian rights, even inconsistently, they are targeted not because they introduce more violence into the region but because they contest the principle that Israel and its sponsor may do what they please, to whomever they please.
“The tail wags the dog” captures part of the relationship between U.S. and Israeli policy, but the Chomskyan refinement is that dog and tail belong to the same beast: an imperial order run by and for concentrated wealth and power. Israeli elites have immense leverage in Washington, and they know how to use it, but that leverage functions because their agenda dovetails with U.S. strategic doctrine, not because they have somehow hypnotized an unwilling empire. Standing ovations in Congress for Netanyahu are not acts of mind control; they are rituals of shared commitment to a common project of regional domination.
The final image — tourists at the Grand Canyon facing locked bathrooms, overflowing toilets, and low toilet paper — is more than a cheap contrast. It is a precise snapshot of what Chomsky calls the “dual economy” of empire. Vast resources are poured into projecting force abroad — into bombing campaigns, bases, and war games — while at home even the most basic infrastructure and public services rot. The state is extremely strong where it serves corporate and strategic interests and deliberately weak where it might serve the general population. There is always money for the next “Operation Epic Fury,” for the next fighter jet, for the next missile defense system. There is somehow never money to maintain toilets in a national park or to guarantee healthcare, housing, and education.
Seen through this lens, the overflowing bathrooms and the bombed Iranian facilities are two faces of the same system. One face turns outward, smashing “enemy” societies that resist incorporation into U.S.-led hierarchies. The other turns inward, starving the domestic population of public goods and then blaming them for their own misery. The ideology that glues it together tells people that the real threats are always somewhere else: in Iran, in Gaza, in some distant cave — never in the boardrooms and planning offices where the decisions are actually made.
The refusal to accept the official fairy tale is not a deviation from rational analysis; it is what a sane reaction looks like when confronted with a ruling class that can fund endless death abroad while letting its own parks, schools, and cities decay. A Chomskyan reading doesn’t dilute that outrage. It sharpens it by tying it to institutions, doctrines, and history: Trump’s gaslighting on Iran as one more entry in a long ledger of manufactured threats; Netanyahu’s endless invocation of existential peril as cover for regional dominance and Palestinian dispossession; U.S. planners’ steady march from sanctions to bombing to occupation whenever an independent state proves too stubborn.
The picture that emerges is not an accident, not a mistake, and not a temporary detour. It is how the system is designed to work. And it will likely keep working that way — churning out new “Operations,” new “menaces,” new “existential threats.”