America is winning the air war and losing the information war

As the shooting war with Iran enters its sixth month, the United States continues to smash Iran’s military — and lose the information war in Iran, at home, and around the world.American forces can 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.The Iranian officials would earn an A in my information-warfare seminar. Too many American officials would earn an FIt is not. But Iran is winning the argument over what the war means.Too many senior American officials still treat television — whether broadcast or streamed — as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The War Department approaches global visual media as if it were still 1991 and Desert Storm. That must change.U.S. military planners still tend to think in Clausewitzian terms: War is politics conducted through the controlled application of violence. 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 colleagues and I have taught this form of warfare to generations of students at U.S. war, staff, and intelligence colleges since the early 1990s. Too few American institutions adapted.Iran did. Its military and intelligence apparatus has embraced the concept since at least 2003 and even adopted the American-coined term in its own publications and influence operations.That helps explain why the United States has spent billions of dollars over five months while Iranian drone and missile attacks — and Tehran’s televised defiance — continue. Washington is using Cold War systems and industrial-age doctrine against an asymmetric enemy organized for the infosphere.Iran’s theocratic dictatorship is fighting a four-dimensional guerrilla war across land, sea, air, and information. Its military losses have limited its ability to retaliate directly against U.S. forces. Its remaining attacks are therefore chosen less for battlefield effect than for global media impact.Oil tankers and cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a desalination plant and power station 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.RELATED: The only Iran plan that doesn’t end with a 20-year hangover Marcin Golba/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesIran times its scattered counterattacks for its own early-morning hours so the images arrive during the American prime-time news cycle. The objective is not merely to damage a target. It is to shape the story told about the war here, there, and everywhere.The United States 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 push the mullahs’ account across dozens of television channels and through its official news operation.Washington destroys weapons and commanders but fails to contest the information environment that gives those losses political meaning. It has not destroyed the transmitters and replaced the regime’s message with one aimed directly at the Iranian people.Those people are the regime’s real engine: a population that has endured repression and the reported killing of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators. Outside the relatively small number of Iranians with access to Starlink, the United States has no coherent way to speak to them at scale.America does not lack the technology. The military weakened its own capacity. In 2024, it retired 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 taken over the mission.The result is overwhelming kinetic power without a direct means of reaching the Iranian public. It is the doctrine of a mechanic who responds to an engine-warning light by cutting the wire to the bulb. The warning disappears. The engine keeps failing.Meanwhile, Iranian propagandists study the American audience, especially younger people hostile to the Trump administration, and target them with AI-generated Lego-character videos.

Senate advances Lindsey Graham’s long-stalled Russia sanctions bill just hours after his funeral

“Even though Lindsey is not physically with us today, his presence can certainly be felt in this chamber,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said.

John Cornyn: We Can't Pass the SAVE America Act Because I Want My Break

Trump appears to fall asleep during late Sen. Lindsey Graham's funeral

President Donald Trump appeared to doze off during his late friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) funeral Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral. Social media users quickly noted Trump's closed eyes and drooping face after delivering a eulogy for his former Republican ally. Journalist Aaron Rupar captured the moment and wrote, "Trump, face drooping heavily, is struggling to stay awake at Lindsey Graham's memorial service."Political commentator Jo speculated on X, "We are five months out from him faceplanting for all the world to see."Progressive account Sundae Divine posted, "Trump’s tribute was observing a brief moment of unconsciousness."Political scientist David Darmofal expressed concern, "Like I said before, it was remarkable to me how tired he was for an event in the afternoon. It's even more remarkable that the legacy media have no interest in what's going on with his health."Watch the video below. Your browser does not support the video tag.

It's Official: We Have a New Director of National Intelligence, and Democrats Are Hopping Mad

Senate advances Russia and Iran sanctions bill in honor of Lindsey Graham

The Senate on Tuesday voted to advance a dual Russia and Iran sanctions bill honoring the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, hours after the South Carolina senator’s funeral in Washington, D.C. The upper chamber voted 86-12 to advance the sanctions bill, which is meant to cripple Russia amid its war against Ukraine. The legislation also extends […]

Hannity torn apart over 'bizarre' claim about Lindsey Graham’s heaven

Fox News entertainer Sean Hannity seems to have a mighty weird understanding of heaven, reports Mediaite.On Tuesday, Hannity said the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is likely sitting in a gold-encrusted heaven inspired by President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and Mar-a-Lago.“Lindsey, Mr. President, I would argue in my mind, probably has a heavenly version of Mar-a-Lago. It may even be a little bigger,” said Hannity. “He may have a little more gold in the Oval Office in his mansion in heaven, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he added one big beautiful ballroom and an arch somewhere on the property because he would want to obviously duplicate his dearest friend in life, you, Mr. President.”Daily Beast described the eulogy as "bizarre," and Mediaite reports Hannity delivered his remarks after Trump’s own eulogy, in which the president praised Graham’s eagerness for war and joked about broadcasting the senator’s phone number during a heated GOP primary.As Trump sat and fought to stay awake at times in the audience, Hannity reminisced about the times he would miss sharing with Graham.“To my dear friend, to our fearless warrior, I will miss our late-night calls, I will miss our strategizing together, I will miss our dinners, I will miss our conversations about the President and the country we both loved,” Hannity added. “I’ll miss the gossip, I’ll be honest. I’ll miss talking about how to defeat evil in our time and how to find a path to peace so that peace may one day reign around the world.”Mediaite added that Hannity also referenced his own show before easing into a discussion of Graham’s version of heaven, complete with Trump’s design trappings, which involve liberal use of gold paint.Critics lashed Hannity's speech on social media."Just as the Bible foretold," said podcaster Hemant Mehta on X."Theologian Sean Hannity shares a vision of hell," heckled Variety Chief Music critic Chris Willman on X.Slate contributor Christina Cauterucci said there is no shortage of examples of Trump’s gold fixation, however.It’s long been a "trademark of Trumpworld," and he has brought it into the White House, decorating the so-called People’s House with as much gold trim as possible, Cauterucci said. And recently at the Trump National Doral Miami golf club, a group of clergy members dedicated a 22-foot-tall golden statue of the president, an idol that is “everything Trump wants to be: larger than life, fit to be worshipped, an embodiment of excess that thumbs its nose at notions of democratic propriety.”Trump and Graham grew close after the death of Republican Sen. John McCain, of Arizona. Prior to McCain’s death, however, Graham once took pride in standing up to extremism within the Republican Party — at least, before he decided to hitch his political cart to President Donald Trump’s wagon.Increasingly, that unpopularity has extended to Republicans and Trump’s own MAGA coalition.

Senate Advances Graham’s Russia Sanctions Bill

As Washington remembered Senator Lindsey Graham, his colleagues cleared away a hurdle to passage of his long-stalled bill to penalize Moscow.