TEHRAN - While Donald Trump names different branches of Iran’s armed forces each day and claims to have completely destroyed them, Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly asserts that not only has he dismantled Iran’s defensive and missile capabilities, but that with spies and infiltrators embedded everywhere, no place is beyond his reach.

Despite all these claims, Iran and its allies continue to target official and unofficial American bases across West Asia, as well as various Israeli interests, with their missiles. The Strait of Hormuz remains fully—and more than fully—under Iranian control, and it appears that Bab al‑Mandab will soon fall under the control of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement.

Although the United States and Israel constantly speak of victory, they have not only failed to reopen Hormuz, but have resorted to attacks on universities, schools, medical centers, and civilian infrastructure—acts that constitute war crimes. It seems they believe they are not fighting Iran’s military forces, but rather an immortal army of invincible civilian ghosts. On the other side, the puppet of the United States and Israel, Reza Pahlavi, once claimed that around 150,000 members of Iran’s armed forces had joined him and stood ready to sacrifice their lives. Yet at no critical moment was any such order ever issued; even when he urged opponents to take to the streets at night and later claimed that tens of thousands had been killed, he did not call upon his supposedly loyal forces to come to their aid. In other words, Reza Pahlavi too commands an army of invisible ghosts—present, armed, yet devoid of any operational function.

In this strange landscape, if we take the reports of Trump and his allies seriously, West Asia is now filled with ghost armies lined up against one another, fighting across empty battlefields. In today’s hybrid wars, although different units operate in different arenas, a war room and a coherent strategy are essential to coordinate logistics, combat, and propaganda. It appears that Trump and his allies have recognized the importance of media and cognitive warfare, but have failed to understand that their war room must preserve the link between media narratives and on‑the‑ground reality. Their media claims have drifted so far from the facts that the final picture resembles an apocalyptic battle between phantom legions.

Ultimately, the persistence of these spectral narratives reveals a deeper crisis: when political actors allow their messaging to detach from verifiable events, they do not merely distort public perception—they lose the ability to shape outcomes in the real world. The region’s future will be determined not by ghost armies conjured in speeches and broadcasts, but by the tangible forces, alliances, and material conditions that continue to operate regardless of the stories told about them.