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As President Trump announced the opening strikes of a U.S.-led assault on Iran, he told the country\u2019s soldiers to \u201clay down your weapons\u201d and urged its people to \u201ctake over your government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be yours to take,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n
The message was rife with ambiguity. Mr. Trump left it unclear who Iranian soldiers were supposed to surrender to, and how Iranians might overthrow their rulers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like there are American soldiers there and they can put down their weapons right now,\u201d said Philip H. Gordon, a senior foreign policy official in the Obama and Biden administrations. As for the president\u2019s call for the Iranian people to overthrow their regime, Mr. Gordon said: \u201cWhich Iranian people? There\u2019s 90 million of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In past conflicts, the United States relied on federally funded media outlets to get its message, coupled with critical journalism, past enemy lines. It created Voice of America during World War II, and Radio Free Europe during the Cold War. The outlets lived on after the Berlin Wall fell, with local language offshoots targeting audiences across the Middle East, in former Soviet countries<\/a> and elsewhere.<\/p>\n But many critics say that the Trump administration\u2019s cuts to government-funded broadcasting have hurt the United States\u2019 ability to reach the Iranian people \u2014 and win their trust \u2014 just as Washington is calling on them to rise up.<\/p>\n The Trump administration \u201chas dismantled some of the most potent tools that it has\u201d to get its message out, said Ilan Berman, an Iran expert at the American Foreign Policy Council, a Washington think tank.<\/p>\n \u201cThis de minimis approach is just not suited for the moment,\u201d said Mr. Berman, who is also a member of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty\u2019s board.<\/p>\n Last year, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that Voice of America was \u201ca TOTAL, LEFTWING DISASTER,\u201d and put nearly all of its 1,400 journalists and support staff on paid leave. He tried but failed to shutter Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty, known as RFE\/RL, an independent, U.S.-funded group whose outlets include the Persian-language Radio Farda.<\/p>\n Kari Lake, the Trump ally who now runs the parent entity overseeing government-funded media, reversed some of the cuts to Voice of America\u2019s Persian service when Israel and the United States bombed Iran last June, according to news<\/a> reports<\/a>. But she continued to berate RFE\/RL, asserting in January that its outlets had failed to \u201calign their message with American foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n RFE\/RL had long broadcast into Iran via a U.S. radio facility in Kuwait, which allowed it to be heard in the country even when the government blocked internet access. It lost its ability to use that transmitter for several months last year amid the dispute with Ms. Lake, and its reach was still limited when Israel and the United States attacked Iran on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cFarda was built for this moment,\u201d Steve Capus, the president of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty, said in an interview on Saturday, as he and his staff scrambled to deal with disruptions to internet access and satellite distribution in Iran. \u201cOur job is to empower the people of Iran by giving them access to timely, relevant information, and amplifying their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Capus said that on Saturday, Ms. Lake\u2019s U.S. Agency for Global Media had agreed to carry Farda\u2019s programming on the AM radio waves from the Kuwait transmitter at Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still working to effectively transmit our programming on any available means of distribution,\u201d Mr. Capus said, calling Saturday\u2019s agreement \u201ca big first step.\u201d<\/p>\n After Mr. Trump announced the strikes on Iran on Saturday, a Persian translation of his speech by Voice of America was quickly posted to the president\u2019s account on Truth Social. Ms. Lake said in a statement that \u201cV.O.A. Persian went live within hours of this morning\u2019s operation, delivering President Trump\u2019s message and real-time updates to the brave people of Iran through a variety of methods, including satellite.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat a glorious moment we are in the midst of,\u201d Ms. Lake wrote on X.<\/p>\n On Voice of America\u2019s Persian homepage, one headline paraphrased Mr. Trump\u2019s message to Iranian soldiers: \u201cLay down your weapons or face certain death.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Gordon said that the risk that the United States faces amid the muddled messaging is that seeking regime change without ground troops can create \u201ceven more of a security vacuum into which all sorts of different forces will surge.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Gordon served as the assistant secretary of state for Europe when NATO waged an air war against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya in 2011, aiding a rebellion that eventually brought about the dictator\u2019s death but threw the country into further chaos.<\/p>\n In Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, he said, the U.S. military sought to bring about regime change in different ways. But, he said, \u201call cases were similar in the sense that they turned into a costly disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n Minho Kim contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n