Media Hit Piece Was Designed To Deport Prominent Iran War Critic, He Claims

A prominent foreign policy writer alleged Saturday that a media hit piece may have been designed to deport him over his opposition to the Iran war.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in a Substack post that he believes a Wednesday exclusive report by The Free Press “was designed to trigger” the State Department to revoke his green card and deport him. Furthermore, he raised the possibility that the main source of the piece — which the department refuted shortly it was published — was a “rogue” government actor.

“I have fought the neocons and warmongers in Washington for more than 25 years. Throughout, they have tried to silence, discredit, slander, and cancel me,” Parsi began his Saturday post to Substack. “Only recently, however, have they tried to deport me.”

“At least,” he noted, deportation “appears to have been the aim” of The Free Press story by contributing writer Jay Solomon which he referred to as a “hit piece.”

Solomon had claimed in his Wednesday article that “n the eyes of some inside the Trump administration, Parsi isn’t just another Washington pundit eager to share his point of view.”

The Free Press author went on to write that “he State Department has launched an investigation of Parsi and could try to deport him,” citing anonymous “U.S. officials and documents reviewed by” his outlet. The foreign policy analyst has dual Iranian and Swedish citizenships while also a legal U.S. Permanent Resident.

The day after the alleged “hit piece” went live, however, a State Department official told the Turkish state-run outlet Anadolu Agency the department “has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time.”

The official added in their comments to Anadolu that “no foreign national is guaranteed a right to be in our country, and this Department will unapologetically terminate the legal status of any foreign national who participates in activities that undermine America’s national security.”

Neither the State Department nor Parsi immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Parsi further wrote in his Substack post that the State Department failed to “provide any confirmation for the central premise of the Free Press story — that an investigation of me existed in the first place.”

Neither The Free Press nor its founder and editor Bari Weiss immediately responded to the 📰DCNF’s requests for comment.

“I don’t believe there was any investigation against me,” Parsi’s continued. “Rather, some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure could help move things forward. I say ‘additional’ because for weeks, pro-Israel social media influencers had been urging the U.S. government to deport me, while some activists — or intelligence operators — even produced an AI-generated video of me being arrested by ICE.”

The author added as an aside that he found the video in question “quite amusing.”

Both The Free Press’s editorial stance and Weiss have long been known to be strongly supportive of Israel and its relationship with the United States. The outlet’s YouTube channel posted a video titled “A Message for Iran Regime Apologists” two weeks after the Iran war began.

“Parsi, 51, has long drawn the ire of many Iranian Americans, who believe he uses his residency and legitimacy in the U.S. to amplify the regime’s talking points. Some Republicans and anti-regime activists have been pursuing Parsi for years,” Solomon wrote in his story. He referred to a 2020 letter penned in part by two hawkish Senate Republicans, Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, calling for an investigation into an Iranian-American advocacy group Parsi founded and used to lead.

“That Jay Solomon and The Free Press would play this role, wittingly or unwittingly, should surprise no one,” Parsi added, noting that the former was “fired from The Wall Street Journal in 2017 over his financial involvement in arms deals with a businessman who was also one of his key sources.”

Parsi stated the alleged “effort to trigger an investigation” to deport him “appears to have backfired.” He cited the “outpouring of support” for him from people across the political spectrum following the story’s publication.

“We will, of course, continue making the case against war and the grand strategy that has produced endless wars. And the warmongers will continue trying to avoid that debate by silencing 🇺🇸US,” he added in his Substack post. “The era of endless war is ending, and no amount of censorship, cancellation, or political intimidation will stop the growing demand for a foreign policy rooted in restraint, diplomacy, and common sense.”

Born in Iran, Parsi moved with his family to Sweden at the age of four in the late 1970s. The Parsi family were members of the country’s millennia-old Zoroastrian religious minority and sought to flee the political turmoil immediately preceding the Iranian Revolution which turned their homeland into an Islamic theocracy. Parsi’s father was a political opponent of both the Shah of Iran and the ayatollah who deposed him, according to the writer’s biography on the Quincy Institute’s website.

In an interview with Current Affairs magazine published just two weeks after the Iran war began, Parsi claimed the Trump administration did not have a case for why it was waging the conflict.

“ne of the things that has made it utterly clear that this war is not justified is the constant shifting justifications used by the administration and its supporters to be able to justify the unjustifiable,” he told the magazine. “If they actually had a case, they would stick to it. It’s precisely because they don’t have a case that they constantly have to grasp at straws and try to come up with whatever argument, case, or claim that they can.”

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