Winning a war on the battlefield is only half the job. The other half is convincing a sceptical electorate that the fight is necessary. That is Jeffrey Kahn’s core contention in his timely opinion piece for The Jerusalem Post.
He argues that while a strategy may exist, the Trump administration has not built the narrative architecture needed. This architecture is necessary to sustain public support for a prolonged confrontation with Iran.
Kahn reaches back to a blunt lesson from history. The United States entered the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson commissioned George Creel to lead. This leadership formed what became the Committee on Public Information.
Creel’s campaign marshalled newspapers, pamphlets, and posters. It enlisted 75,000 volunteer “Four-Minute Men.” This effort aimed to turn a divided, isolationist country into a mobilised electorate. The lesson is simple. Democracies require persuasion as much as logistics.
Kahn’s op-ed reads as both history lesson and tactical brief. He agrees with the administration’s strategic framing. This includes a worldview where authoritarian blocs seek to overturn the liberal order, which is coherent. He accepts too that Iran’s regional behaviour and proxy networks are a legitimate security concern.
The critique is narrower and politically sharper. The argument is that rhetoric has been transactional rather than transformational.
Officials have offered snapshots and narrowly legal explanations of strikes and escalations. Yet, they have not created a sustained moral and material case that the public can own.
That failure matters because modern warfare is as much cognitive as kinetic. Kahn pinpoints an overdue but important corrective: personalise the stakes.
He quotes a senior administration voice. This voice brought the cost of Iran’s shadow war home. They did this by invoking patrols in Iraq. They also mentioned Iranian-supplied bombs aimed at American soldiers.
That is the framing that converts abstraction into obligation. It arrives late in the domestic conversation and thus risks being drowned by partisan noise.
A conservative assessment accepts two things at once. First, the strategic case against Tehran fits into a broader contest involving China and Russia. Control of supply chains, access to rare earths, and technological primacy are not peripheral topics.
Second, democracies can’t outsource moral clarity to the media or to pontificating pundits. They must construct a coherent narrative. This narrative links tactical moves to long-term national interests. It explains proportionality and anticipates loss.
Kahn’s Creel parallel is provocative because it suggests an active information campaign rather than a passive expectation of public obedience.
There are pitfalls. Creel’s methods also produced excess. Government-directed messaging in 1917 encouraged xenophobia and suppressed legitimate dissent. Any modern effort at persuasion must thus be disciplined by safeguards. The aim should be sober education not agitprop.
It should marshal facts, eyewitness testimony from veterans and aid workers, and transparent accounting of objectives and costs. That is the conservative way to build durable consent: honesty about price and purpose.
On the ground, the administration has options. It can elevate veteran voices who can speak credibly about the threat to troops. It can map Iran’s attacks and proxies in plain English. It can tie battlefield actions to concrete aims. These aims are verifiable, such as the removal of specific capabilities. This is better than the amorphous promise of regime change.
Critics demand that any narrative campaign answer the fundamental question Kahn poses: Why are we fighting? What will victory look like? The answer must be measurable and time-bound.
Kahn also makes an uncomfortable conservative claim. If the strategic case is correct, then Republicans and conservatives bear a double duty. They must defend the national interest abroad while protecting civil liberties and robust debate at home.
That tension is hard but not insoluble. A successful public case should respect dissenting voices while exposing malign foreign narratives that aim to fracture democratic resolve.
It must also avoid the temptations of scapegoating and hysteria. The lesson of Creel is twofold: persuasion works but persuasion unchecked can erode the civic goods it seeks to protect.
Practically, the administration’s messaging should do three things right away.
First, unify the narrative across departments so that the public hears one coherent line linking tactical choices to strategic ends.
Second, humanise the costs by foregrounding the experiences of service personnel and affected civilians.
Third, commit to measurable objectives with periodic public accounting.
These steps will not eliminate opposition. Yet, they will make opposition accountable to the same facts and timelines the government publishes. Kahn’s plea is for deliberation and clarity, not for coercion.
Conservative readers will want to know whether the argument risks expanding executive power or softening resolve. The answer is no, provided the strategy stays tethered to law and congressional oversight.
Kahn’s historical comparison is not an admonition to replicate Creel’s excesses. It is a provocation: democracies can’t long sustain wars they can’t explain. Winning the fight against Iran requires winning the argument at home. This involves a campaign of conviction that is transparent, evidence based, and morally coherent.
Conclusion. If the administration hopes to prosecute a long campaign against Tehran with public backing, it must treat persuasion as central to strategy. The administration needs to consider persuasion as a key element of its approach. That means a determined, disciplined effort to explain, to connect, and to account.
The right case for action is not simply that it defends national interests. It does so in ways the public can judge. It respects democratic norms. It preserves the moral high ground.
Kahn’s op-ed is a necessary prod. Conservatives should take it seriously. It is not a concession to the left. Rather, it serves as a sober reminder that force without a credible case at home is an incomplete policy.
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