America is losing the information war with Iran

As yet another U.S. bombing halt takes effect in the sixth month of the Iran war, the United States has demonstrated that it can smash Iran’s military piece by piece, but it continues to lose the information war in Iran, here at home, and around the world.

American forces can and do strike targets across Iran and hit Tehran's regional allies, especially the Houthis in Yemen. By every conventional military measure, Iran is taking severe losses. Yet a growing domestic and international audience believes Tehran is fighting the United States to a standstill. Why?

Iran is gaining ground in the information war because it has adapted to the global media environment far more effectively than has Washington.

It is because too many senior American officials are still treating television as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The Department of War treats global visual media as though it had forgotten about 1991’s Desert Storm media triumphs and as though there was no need for domestic and foreign public support. The little bit being tossed out is reminiscent of a kind of bureaucratic "let them eat cake."

That strategy will work right up to the U.S. midterm elections when the Iranian influence campaign ever so slightly tips the balance the wrong way.

Iran is gaining ground in the information war because it has adapted to the global media environment far more effectively than has Washington.

U.S. military planners still tend to think in Clausewitzian terms: that war is the extension of politics that uses the controlled application of violence to constrain the enemy to accomplish our will. That formulation reflected the technology of the early 19th century. It does not account for an information age in which images cross the globe in milliseconds and political effects can precede, outweigh, or even replace battlefield effects.

I call this form of conflict "SOFTWAR": the hostile use of global visual media to shape another society's will by changing its view of reality. Three other like-minded colleagues and I have taught this kind of warfare to U.S. War College, Staff College, and Intelligence College graduate students since the early 1990s. But very few have actually adapted.

Unfortunately, the entire Iranian military and intelligence structure has adapted, since at least 2003, and has even stolen the term “SOFTWAR” in its own publications!

The Iranian use of SOFTWAR helps explain why the United States has spent billions of dollars over five months while Iranian drone and missile attacks continue and Iranian defiance continues.

Washington is using Cold War systems and industrial-age doctrine against an asymmetric enemy that has organized itself for the infosphere.

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EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP/Getty Images

Iran's theocratic dictatorship is fighting a four-dimensional asymmetric war across land, sea, air, and information. Its military losses have reduced its ability to retaliate against U.S. forces directly.

Its remaining attacks are therefore selected less for battlefield effect than for global media impact: Oil tankers and cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a desalination facility and power plant in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil hub, a liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar, a U.S. communications center in Jordan, and American naval facilities in Bahrain all produce frightening images and headlines.

Iran times its “onesie-twosie” counterattacks in its own early-morning hours, so that the images arrive during the American prime-time news cycle. The objective is not merely to damage a target but to shape the story being told about the war here, there, and around the world.

Meanwhile, Iranian propagandists study the American audience, especially younger people hostile to the Trump administration, and target them with AI-generated Lego-character videos. The goal is to unite disparate American factions, erode domestic support for the war, and above all, influence the midterm elections.

When Iranian military officials such as Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Zolfaghari or IRGC spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi speak, they are usually seated behind a desk with the Iranian flag visible. Their uniforms are immaculate, their beards trimmed, and their war faces dramatically lit. Most importantly, they look through the camera lens directly at the audience. This is television 101.

Viewers who speak no Farsi still receive the intended message: discipline, seriousness, and defiance.

American military spokesmen often squander the same opportunity. They ignore, disdain, or have never considered acquiring the skills to effectively communicate on television.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is informed and capable, but at his Pentagon press conferences, his televised manner is that of a serious squadron commander consulting his notes as he briefs the weather to the three rows in front of him.

He should instead address the millions watching beyond the room. Place the camera a few feet away, frame him from mid-bicep to just above the head, and have him look through the lens to establish and maintain direct eye contact with the intended audience. The reporters can sit on either side. The difference would be immediate.

The United States is not losing the military contest with Iran. It is losing the contest over what the world believes the military contest means.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the combatant commander of U.S. Central Command, makes a similar mistake. He often appears in a green camouflage uniform designed to defeat electro-optical observation — including television — rather than in the Navy service uniform designed to convey authority, experience, and command. He also stands too far from the camera for viewers to read his face. His folksy Ozzie Nelson manner may work before Congress or the Navy League. It does not put an enemy on his heels.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, whose warrior credentials are undisputed and whose television experience is well noted, knows more about television perception than his military subordinates but is underperforming. To quote from his address to general officers last year: "We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes ... to point out the obvious things right in front of us."

So Mr. Secretary, from an instructor who has been teaching strategic information warfare since you were in grade school, here are the obvious things in front of us: You are no longer pitching to the Fox demographic. You need a tighter camera shot, better lighting, and a visual style designed for wartime communication.

Your presentation is crowded with distractions: a tight European-cut suit, patterned tie, clashing flag pocket square, and hair product that makes your scalp appear to glisten under studio lights. Deep-set eyes require careful lighting. Without it, viewers may read strain or evasiveness where none exists. The Pentagon has fixed studio lighting for briefings at the podium, and it should be properly adjusted for you.

Alfred Hitchcock understood the rule: Dress the leading man simply and light him properly so the audience watches the man rather than the costume. Cary Grant in "North by Northwest" remains a timeless example.

Iranian officials would earn an “A” in my information warfare seminar, I'm sorry to say. Too many American officials are still treating television as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The American officials bungling this information war would receive an “F” ... and three hours of detention.

That needs to change. Now.

The United States inadvertently helps Tehran by concentrating almost exclusively on visible military targets while leaving the regime's domestic television system intact.

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting continues to broadcast dozens of TV channels across Iran giving only the mullahs' view of the war. Thus, the only information that the vast majority of Iranians are getting comes from television and radio stations controlled by the Iranian government. With access to the internet long ago cut off by the regime, the only “news” the body politic receives is pure propaganda.

Meanwhile, Washington destroys weapons and commanders but fails to effectively contest the information environment that gives those losses political meaning. It seems no one has thought to bomb the TV transmitters and follow up with drones to broadcast information to the Iranian body politic.

Iran's real engine is that selfsame body politic — a population that has endured repression and the reported killing of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators. Yet today, outside of a small fraction of Iranians who may have Starlink receivers, the United States has no coherent means of speaking directly to those people.

It's not as though the United States lacks the technological wherewithal; the military has simply weakened its own capacity to respond. In 2024, the military decommissioned the EC-130J aircraft of the 193rd Special Operations Wing, the only U.S. airborne radio and television broadcast platform.

The aircraft were judged too vulnerable for modern combat, but no announced drone replacement has assumed the mission.

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HUGE PERALTA/AFP/Getty Images

The solution is simply to take any drones with the proper range and endurance, such as the dozen or so now-obsolete Predators sitting in the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, and strip them of their reconnaissance gear. Next, rewire the on-board Ku satellite antenna to optimize its broadband receive function and then hook that to any Phase Alternating Line TV transmitter and dipole antenna compatible with Iranian home TV receivers.

By flying the drones from semi-autonomous Kurd areas in eastern Iraq 300 miles to Tehran, each will have about a five-hour endurance over downtown. By orbiting at or above 15,000 feet, the drones will not be easy targets for shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles.

As the drones reach their selected orbit points, precision-guided munitions launched from distant attack aircraft take out all the transmissions towers in the area, leaving the airwaves clear for live programming from the drones.

The Iranian dictatorship, which absolutely must control information flow, will then be forced to turn on its radars so that its sophisticated antiaircraft missiles can shoot down the drones. Except that when they do, every U.S. air defense suppression weapon known to man will be directed at those sites.

Programming the video from the drones on a real-time basis can be fixed by reactivating the 1st Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual) that I designed for the War Department’s Office of Net Assessment a decade ago. That unit, composed of some 50 men and women from the California Air and Army National Guard, used their state-of-the art civilian occupational skills from Hollywood and the Silicon Valley to pioneer new and effective methods of information warfare.

Unfortunately, the Obama sequestration chopped the 1st JSU(V) with the grace of a blunt meat ax. But fortunately, it could be up and running again in about two weeks.

At present, America possesses overwhelming kinetic power but lacks a direct means of reaching the Iranian public at scale: a doctrine that resembles a mechanic who responds to an engine warning light by cutting the wire to the bulb. The warning disappears. The failing engine problem remains.

The United States is not losing the military contest with Iran. It is losing the contest over what the world believes the military contest means.

A nation can destroy every designated military target and still lose the war if its enemy controls the images, the timing, and the story. Information warfare is not an optional elective. It is the core course. And America, so far, is failing.

The answer is a genuinely four-dimensional American military capable of operating on land, at sea, in the air, and throughout the infosphere. Information warfare should be driving the organization and the direction of the campaign, with kinetic operations supporting the strategic influence objectives — not the other way around. Iran already understands this hierarchy.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.