CNN Panel Goes Haywire After Iranian Political Prisoner Says Trump Did Not Start War With Iran

A former Iranian political prisoner sent a CNN panel off the rails after he said that Iran considered itself at war with the United States.

President Donald Trump announced that the United States military and the Israeli Defense Forces had launched Operation Epic Fury in a video posted on Truth Social early Saturday morning. Kian Tajbakhsh, who was imprisoned after the 2009 Green Revolution, related what an Iranian official told him during “CNN NewsNight” on Thursday.

“There is a big picture here and I, perhaps, to simplify it, I would put it this way,” Tajbakhsh said. “I don’t think it’s 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 I’ll just — I’ll say this. These aren’t just words.”

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“Let me just tell you an anecdote,” Tajbakhsh continued. “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, ‘It’s a cold war, but it’s a war nonetheless.’”