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Leaked Cable Details Rubio’s Push for Pro-US Propaganda That Includes Psyops and Social Media
The State Department initiative aims to thwart efforts to weaken US alliances, something President Donald Trump has done repeatedly on his own social media posts.
Mar 31, 2026
A leaked diplomatic cable signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructs American embassies and consulates worldwide to engage in a coordinated campaign to counter foreign propaganda, which the missive defines in part as messaging that seeks to “shift blame to the United States.”
The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the cable, reported on Monday that US State Department employees have been asked to "work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation" on social media.
The cable points to the Community Notes feature on Elon Musk's X platform, which allows other X users to provide context or correct false claims on other users' posts, as a particularly useful feature for the US to push back against narratives promoted by foreign governments.
The initiative's main goals are "countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behavior, elevating local voices who support American interests, and promoting what it calls 'telling America’s story,'" The Guardian reported.
In explaining the need to the initiative, the State Department cable cited foreign influence campaigns that "seek to shift blame to the United States, sow division among allies, promote alternative worldviews antithetical to America’s interests, and even undermine American economic interests and political freedoms."
The cable did not address social media posts by US President Donald Trump, who has repeated sowed divisions among US allies. On Tuesday, for example, the president once again lashed out at European nations for not helping carry out his unconstitutional war with Iran, telling them to "start learning how to fight for yourself" because "the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us."
The president's posts have also undermined the country's political freedoms, including multiple instances where he has described US journalists as the "enemy of the people," while pushing for American TV networks to lose their broadcasting licenses if they continue airing negative stories about him and his administration.
The plan to combat foreign influence operations comes as the US has struggled to fight a propaganda battle against Iran, and Trump last month even floated "charges of treason" for journalists who report what he described as "fake news" about the conflict.
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US Military Reportedly Feeds Trump a Daily Propaganda Reel of ‘Stuff Blowing Up’ in Iran
"Every day the Pentagon makes a video of cool explosions from Iran for the president of the United States to watch, so he can bounce up and down in his high chair, clap his little hands, and cry 'Yay! Make it go boom again!'"
Mar 25, 2026
A Wednesday report from NBC News is raising concerns that President Donald Trump may be getting a rose-colored view of the unprovoked and unconstitutional war he started with Iran.
According to NBC News, US military officials show Trump a daily two-minute video montage of operations conducted in the Iran war, featuring "the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets," with one official telling NBC that the video essentially consists of "stuff blowing up."
Two sources in the administration told NBC that "the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving—or absorbing—the complete picture of the war," and one official told the network that "the information Trump gets about the war tends to emphasize US successes, with comparatively little detail about Iranian actions."
The video montages are also leaving the president confused about why the media is covering negative ramifications of the war, which he believes to be an unqualified success, NBC reported.
Critics of the president were quick to slam him and his administration over the reported war highlights montage.
"Sounds like Trump is getting a Centcom propaganda video briefing of things blowing up every day," commented foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen, "but not being briefed when things go wrong."
Anthony Zurcher, North America correspondent for BBC, wrote that it appears Trump is "getting an overly rosy picture from his generals of how an unpopular war is going."
MS NOW columnist Paul Waldman contended that the president's behavior as depicted in the NBC report was positively childlike.
"Every day the Pentagon makes a video of cool explosions from Iran for the president of the United States to watch," wrote Waldman, "so he can bounce up and down in his high chair, clap his little hands, and cry 'Yay! Make it go boom again!'"
National security attorney Bradley Moss summarized the NBC report with a single five-word sentence: "The emperor has no brains."
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The Weapons Makers Who Fund the Iran War Cheerleaders on Your TV
After the American public soured on the Iraq War, many groups that pushed for the invasion tried to downplay their role in the debacle. Here we go again.
Mar 17, 2026
As the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran intensifies, Americans have shown little appetite for another war in the Middle East. Far fewer Americans support the war than in previous conflicts at this stage, including Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kosovo.
Washington think tanks, however, have been far more enthusiastic. They also happen to be funded by weapons contractors that stand to profit handsomely from the war.
For instance, many fellows employed by the Hudson Institute are supportive of strikes on Iran. As the Trump administration built up its military presence, Hudson Institute fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs went on Fox News and celebrated Trump’s initiative to “push the regime over” as a “major strategic opportunity for peace and stability in the Middle East.” After a week of strikes, Heinrichs celebrated the escalation of the military campaign. “We have a lot more of those kinds of munitions, and now I would suspect that we are just going to continue to destroy the production capabilities and any other storage facilities that they have deeply buried underground, so that’s good for the United States,” Heinrichs told Fox.
The Hudson Institute has received over $4 million from the defense industry since 2019, with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics CEO Neal Blue among their largest donors. Those companies’ weaponry has been used extensively in Iran. Northrop Grumman manufactures the $2 billion B-2 stealth bombers that are used to strike Iran. Lockheed Martin manufactures a variety of aircrafts used in the attacks, as well as the $300 million THAAD radar system that was recently destroyed by Iran. General Atomics, for its part, produces the MQ-9 Reaper drones used in the campaign. RTX, the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile that killed 168 girls at their elementary school in Minab, Iran, is also a major donor.
General (Ret.) Jack Keane, Chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, took to the airwaves to claim the US should "take Iran off the map." In a segment on Fox, Keane made the case against exiting the conflict prematurely over rising oil prices; "Are we saying we can't accept several weeks of oil prices being higher than what they should be to take Iran off the map as a predator in the Middle East for decades to come?" asked Keane. "I think we're much tougher than that frankly."
ISW, Keane’s think tank, has received funding from major Pentagon contractors General Dynamics and CACI, but recently delisted the names of both donors from the website. In response to a request for comment, Alexander Mitchell, Director of External Relations at ISW, said, “ISW does not share information about our supporters or their giving histories outside standard 990 reporting.” ISW does list several other corporate sponsors on its website.
The Atlantic Council, which accepts more funding from the defense industry than any other think tank, hired an Israeli national security insider in the lead-up to the war, who used his new perch to make the case for US attacks. Michael Rozenblat, who the Atlantic Council describes as a “visiting research fellow from the Israeli security establishment,” published an article titled “Six reasons why Trump should choose the military option in Iran” less than two weeks before the strikes, framing an attack as a “moral imperative.” Rozenblat concluded that “a decisive US-led coalition effort aimed at regime change may offer a more sustainable strategic outcome” in Iran.
Last year, the Atlantic Council published a report recommending that the US procure more THAAD and SM-3 missiles to deal with threats abroad, including Iran. The manufacturers of those missiles, RTX and Lockheed Martin, have given the Atlantic Council $850,000 and $700,000 respectively since 2019. Both systems have been used extensively for missile defense against Iran.
War has been good for those donors’ pocketbooks. As stock exchanges opened the week after the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the share price of weapons manufacturers RTX, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin soared.
On March 12, the senior director of the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center Matthew Kroenig defended the military campaign on Iran during a debate with Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. “Removing the Islamic republic from the chessboard, or significantly weakening it for years or a decade I think stands to greatly improve regional and global security, and the lives of ordinary Iranians,” said Kroenig.
Many of the most outspoken voices pushing for regime change in Iran come from dark money think tanks, which reveal nothing at all about their donors. Around 40% of the US top think tanks fall into this category, according to the Quincy Institute’s newly updated Think Tank Funding Tracker.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a prominent dark money think tank, has been advising the US to topple the Iranian regime for years. Founded with a goal to “enhance Israel’s image in North America,” FDD played a critical role in pushing Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
On the day of the US-Israeli strikes, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz and senior analyst Ben Cohen wrote in an op-ed that “the survival of this regime – a nuclear-seeking, terror-sponsoring, protest–crushing dictatorship – is far more dangerous than the risks that come with its collapse.” Dubowitz has been cheering on the regime change effort since, recently retweeting an AI-generated video from Mossad encouraging Iranians to work with Israeli intelligence in overthrowing the Islamic Republic. FDD’s experts are invited to testify to the House Foreign Affairs Committee more than almost any other think tank, second only to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) is another dark money think tank pushing for the military campaign on Iran. JINSA’s fellows include Benjamin Netanyahu’s former National Security Advisor, the former Commander of the Israeli Air Force, and Trump’s former Iran adviser, Elliott Abrams, as well as over a dozen retired US generals and admirals. In 2020, after the US assassinated Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, two JINSA scholars argued in the Washington Post that the United States “must keep up the attacks against Iranian assets in the region and join Israel in rolling back Iranian aggression,” with the goal of provoking a regime collapse.
When the military operation on Iran began, JINSA published an open letter signed by 75 retired generals and admirals in support of the war. Blaise Misztal, Vice President for Policy at JINSA, argued in an article titled “Iran is not Iraq” that fears of repeating the failures of Iraq are overblown.
In a recent appearance on Fox Business, JINSA strategic advisor Vice Admiral Robert Harward described the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a “short-term problem” and argued that ending the war on Iran now would “only exacerbate” problems in the region.
Many other think tank experts have expressed support for the US pursuing a military campaign against Iran. Analysts from the Washington Institute, which was founded as a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have long pushed for Congress to pre-emptively authorize the use of military force against Iran.
The Middle East Forum, meanwhile, recently published an article pushing Congress to appropriate funds not just for missile stockpiles but also nation-building efforts in Iran. Gregg Roman, the Executive Director of the Middle East Forum, suggested the US should fund “transitional governance planning” including “constitution-drafting support, judicial reform expertise,” and “lustration frameworks that remove regime loyalists” in Iran.
The Atlantic Council, the Hudson Institute, FDD, JINSA, the Washington Institute, and the Middle East Forum did not respond to a request for comment.
After the American public soured on the Iraq War, many groups that pushed for the invasion, including FDD, tried to downplay their role in the debacle.If the US-Israel bombing campaign on Iran continues on its perilous trajectory, one can’t help but wonder whether these pro-war organizations will once again attempt to memoryhole their supporting role in America’s latest military misadventure.
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