Nournews: At a time when the domestic atmosphere in the United States is highly polarized, tense, and burdened with accumulated crises, the revival of threat-laden rhetoric and enemy construction by Donald Trump once again recalls one of the enduring patterns of American foreign policy: the “false flag” model.

In his latest remarks on Fox News, Trump claimed that individuals who entered the United States through open borders during the Biden administration could be “Iranian sleeper cells.” The claim lacks evidence, yet its function is clear: preparing the American public to attribute any future threat to a pre-designated enemy.

This narrative stems from a long-standing tradition in American political practice. The United States has repeatedly invoked fabricated external threats to justify aggressive decisions. From the staged Gulf of Tonkin incident during the Vietnam War to the false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Washington politicians have often mobilized public opinion by constructing an imaginary enemy. In all such cases, the propaganda and media machinery moved ahead of the military: first a narrative is created, and then political decisions gain legitimacy within that narrative.

As a populist politician, Trump is applying this logic not on the international stage but within the arena of domestic competition. He understands well that a society plagued by social divisions, economic insecurity, and institutional distrust needs a “common enemy” more than anything else to restore a sense of unity. That is precisely why he has once again brought Iran back to the center of the threat narrative—linking America’s domestic weaknesses to an external danger and presenting himself as the defender of national security.

This choice is not accidental. In the political and media imagination of the United States, “Iran” already exists as a ready-made image—one that can easily be reproduced. After decades of propaganda, Iran has been entrenched in Western public opinion as a source of threat. Whenever an American politician requires a new crisis narrative, this image is simply pulled from the shelf of pre-existing stories. The result is the continuation of a perception war, where reality matters less than plausibility.

The primary aim of such narratives is to prepare the public psychologically for a crisis. When a politician speaks months in advance about “Iranian sleeper cells” or “Iranian drone threats,” the public is being conditioned to blame Iran for any future incident. If tomorrow an explosion or attack occurs on American soil, society may no longer seek the truth; the narrative will already be planted in people’s minds. This is precisely the historical function of a false-flag strategy: constructing the story before the event.

Meanwhile, assessments by official U.S. security institutions fundamentally contradict these claims. Authorities in California and even the FBI have stated that no active threat from Iran exists. This gap between security reality and political rhetoric suggests that the issue is not an intelligence warning but rather a targeted psychological operation within the framework of electoral competition.

Under such circumstances, a smart response from Iran is more important than ever. At this stage, the conflict is not a war of weapons but a war of narratives. An emotional or aggressive reaction is precisely what the architects of such narratives seek, as it helps cement the image of “an angry and dangerous Iran” in public perception. A more effective strategy is the calm and reasoned exposure of the mechanisms behind this narrative game—demonstrating how, whenever the United States faces a crisis of domestic legitimacy, it revives an external enemy to stimulate public fear and nationalism.

An effective response in this arena is a combination of media analysis and public diplomacy. Iranian media outlets and think tanks can draw on historical cases and clear evidence to show that systematic fear-mongering has long been part of Washington’s political logic. Against the narrative of fear, one must construct a narrative of awareness and reason—a story that reveals to global public opinion the repetitive mechanism behind this political spectacle.

Although Trump’s remarks appear, on the surface, to be warnings, they actually signal the return of the politics of fear to the heart of American foreign policy—a mechanism that history has repeatedly tested at the cost of war, destruction, and instability. Today, Washington’s propaganda artillery may once again be preparing to fire, but experience has shown that the most effective weapon against false-flag politics is transparency and a deep understanding of its underlying logic.

In a world where media increasingly shapes reality, victory is determined not only by firepower, but also by the power of narrative.