Ghalibaf Says ‘America First’ Is Really ‘Israel First’ — Is Tehran Winning the Narrative Even When It Admits U.S. Power?
Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has openly acknowledged that the United States has greater resources and military power, while arguing that Washington still made strategic mistakes and put Israel first. The speech is revealing because it blends realism with defiance: Tehran is no longer pretending America is weak. It is arguing that superior power can still lose the political design of a conflict.
One of the most revealing speeches in a war is often the one that sounds least delusional.
That is why Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s recent remarks deserve attention. Iran’s parliamentary speaker did not claim that Tehran is militarily stronger than the United States. In fact, he said the opposite, openly acknowledging that America has more money, more equipment, more resources and more experience from repeated military aggression. For any senior Iranian official, that kind of admission is notable in itself. It strips away the cartoon version of wartime rhetoric and replaces it with something more strategic.
Ghalibaf’s argument was not that Iran is stronger. It was that superior strength does not guarantee superior design.
According to his framing, the United States and Israel made strategic errors because they misunderstood Iran’s people, misread the conflict and acted on distorted assumptions. That is where his more politically charged line comes in: America says “America First,” he argued, but behaves as if “Israel First” is the real doctrine. In one sentence, he tried to fuse three messages at once: Iran is realistic about power, confident in asymmetry and determined to turn U.S.-Israel alignment into a political liability.
Why does that matter?
Because wars are not decided only by who has the most hardware. They are also shaped by endurance, perception, legitimacy, alliance management, domestic morale and the ability to absorb damage without strategic collapse. Iran knows it cannot outmatch the United States in conventional force. So its information strategy increasingly emphasizes something else: that Washington’s power is being misapplied in defense of an ally, not in defense of its own citizens or long-term interests.
This is not new, but Ghalibaf’s formulation sharpens it. By openly conceding material inferiority, he makes the next move more credible. He is effectively telling domestic and foreign audiences: yes, they are stronger on paper, but they are still making mistakes. That message is aimed at several audiences at once.
For Iranians, it says the leadership is not living in fantasy and that resistance remains rational despite the imbalance. For the wider region, it says U.S. policy is less independent than it claims. For Western publics, it whispers a dangerous question: how much of this war is really about American interests, and how much is about alliance entanglement?
That question has obvious propaganda value for Tehran, but it also touches a real debate in the United States and Europe. When costs rise, energy markets convulse and wider regional instability spreads, the phrase “Israel First” becomes more than an Iranian slogan. It becomes a frame that critics of the war can use domestically, even if they reject Tehran’s broader worldview.
None of this means Ghalibaf’s narrative is automatically true or that Iran has somehow solved its own contradictions. Tehran also depends on messaging, selective memory and strategic mythmaking. It downplays internal strain, magnifies enemy errors and presents asymmetric tactics as proof of wisdom rather than necessity. That is standard wartime political language.
Still, there is a reason this speech stands out. It shows a more mature line of argument than crude triumphalism. Ghalibaf is trying to redefine “winning.” Not seizing the skies, not outspending Washington, but surviving, imposing costs, shaping global argument and persuading others that American power is strategically misdirected.
That does not guarantee success. But it may explain why Iran’s messaging remains dangerous to its adversaries even when those adversaries vastly outgun it.
Because if enough people begin to believe that the strongest actor in the room is fighting on behalf of someone else’s priorities, then raw superiority starts to look less like dominance and more like overcommitment.
That may be the real battle Ghalibaf was speaking to.
Not whether America is powerful. That is obvious.
But whether power used in the wrong political design eventually weakens the user more than the target.