A former Iranian political prisoner stunned a CNN panel when he argued that Iran has long viewed itself as being at war with the United States, and that President Donald Trump is trying to end, not start, that conflict.
According to the Daily Caller, the exchange unfolded after President Trump announced that the United States military, in coordination with the Israeli Defense Forces, had launched Operation Epic Fury, a major strike revealed in a video posted to Truth Social early Saturday. Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian American academic who was jailed by Tehrans regime following the 2009 Green Revolution, appeared on CNN NewsNight Thursday and recounted a chilling warning he said he received from a senior Iranian official two decades ago.
There is a big picture here and I, perhaps, to simplify it, I would put it this way, Tajbakhsh said, pushing back on the networks framing of recent events. I dont think its right to say that President Trump has started a war with Iran. I think President Trump wants to finish a war that Iran started in 1979, 47 years ago. And Ill just Ill say this. These arent just words.
Let me just tell you an anecdote, Tajbakhsh continued, before describing his time working on high-level projects in Iran in 2003 and 2004. In 2003, 2004, when I was there in Iran, working on projects at a very high level, I was talking with deputy ministers, I was talking with going back and forth, and I was in the foreign ministry in Tehran where I met someone who was very senior, and he was semi-sympathetic with the projects we were doing.
But as I was leaving, he looked me in the eye and he said, You as an Iranian American, I want you to know something and listen very carefully, said Tajbakhsh, continuing to relate the exchange. He said, We in this building, and what he meant is the foreign ministry, which meant representing the government, which means representing the regime, he said, We believe we are at war with the United States. He said at that time, Its a cold war, but its a war nonetheless.'
That stark admission underscored what many conservatives have long argued: the Islamic Republic has treated America as an enemy since the 1979 revolution, regardless of Washingtons diplomatic posture. The first Trump administration confronted that reality directly when it authorized the January 2020 strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander widely credited with orchestrating terror operations and supplying advanced IED components used to kill and maim American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The CNN panel, however, quickly grew uneasy as Tajbakhsh laid out his case. Former CNN Global Affairs Correspondent Elise Labott began, I think that before Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal cut in with, Ill just remind you in an apparent attempt to redirect the conversation.
Ill let Elise respond really quickly, host Abby Phillip interjected, as Labott tried to reframe the discussion. Super quick. I think its inevitable that wed be coming to this point. Okay? I think at some point a U.S. president would be involved in strikes against Iran. And it does turn out that president
Agrawal disagreed, signaling the familiar reluctance among foreign policy elites to acknowledge the depth of Tehrans hostility. Labott pressed on, voicing her unease with the current moment, saying she felt uncomfortable with where we are and adding, Im not sure I feel comfortable with where we are right now. And I definitely dont feel comfortable with the messaging or the
While some in the media fret over tone and optics, President Trump has repeatedly warned that the theocratic regimes brutality at home and aggression abroad cannot be ignored. During a Jan. 11 gaggle on Air Force One, Trump cautioned that Irans rulers were starting to cross a red line with their violent crackdown on protesters, a campaign of repression that a human rights group later said left nearly 6,900 demonstrators dead, the BBC reported, underscoring that the real escalation has long been coming from Tehran, not Washington.
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