A former Iranian political prisoner dropped a truth bomb on a CNN Thursday evening that several leftists on the panel clearly didn’t like, and it showed.
Kian Tajbakhsh, whom the Iranian regime imprisoned and released in 2015, pushed back hard on the dominant narrative that President Trump “started a war” with Iran. While pundits have been wringing their hands over the bombing campaign, Tajbakhsh offered something rare on cable news: actual lived experience inside the Islamic Republic.
He started by laying out the grim reality facing ordinary Iranians, like people who are “unarmed,” “disorganized,” cut off from political parties, newspapers, and any real ability to organize. The regime holds all the cards, and the people have none essentially. That context matters because it reframes the entire debate about what’s actually happening over there.
Then came the moment that shifted the whole conversation. Tajbakhsh acknowledged upfront that what he was about to say might ruffle some feathers. “I know this may sound controversial among a number of my friends,” he said, “some of them is quite controversial.”
And then he delivered.
“I don’t think it’s right to say that President Trump has started a war with Iran,” Tajbakhsh said. “I think President Trump wants to finish a war that Iran started in 1979, 47 years ago.”
And then he explained why.
“These aren’t just words. Let me just tell you an anecdote. 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.’”
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The official told him, “We in this building,” referring to the Foreign Ministry and by extension the Iranian government, “we believe we are at war with the United States… it’s a cold war, but it’s a war nonetheless.”
A senior Iranian government official, inside the Foreign Ministry, told an Iranian-American to his face that Iran considers itself at war with the U.S.
That was over two decades ago. This wasn’t some fringe hardliner — this was someone inside the diplomatic apparatus of the regime.
Former Iranian political prisoner Kian Tajbakhsh shuts down an entire CNN panel with a blunt reality check.
Abby Phillip and Ashley Allison were spiraling over whether the U.S. is actually at war with Iran.
That’s when Tajbakhsh dropped an absolute truth bomb: “I think… pic.twitter.com/XddsKT7FWT
— Overton (@overton_news) March 6, 2026
Democrats in Congress have invested heavily in the narrative that Trump is starting “another endless war,” but as Tajbakhsh pointed out, Trump isn’t starting a war; he’s ending one that has been going on for nearly 50 years. Decades of appeasement and kicking the can down the road have gotten us nowhere and only served to embolden the regime, especially when Democrats are in office.
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