Trita Parsi

And then they produce all of these different reports in support of the country that supported it or these weapon companies that are giving that money.

And there's no transparency at all.

Most of the people that are testifying in Congress

are coming from these think tanks.

They never have to announce in any way, shape or form that I'm coming here to testify about this specific problem, but you should know I'm funded by this country that is very much part of this problem, or I'm very much funded by the weapons company that is producing the very system that you're having a hearing about.

That transparency is completely non-existent.

So, you know, there's gonna take a lot to be able to change the system, given how much it's essentially been neoliberalized.

So that kind of- But that is fixable.

I mean, you could have a piece of legislation that essentially ensures, I mean, you have it in California, you cannot, I mean, there's limitations on how much you can give to a nonprofit.

You could just make sure that think tanks are a separate type of a category or research institutes that have to have transparency about who they are funded from.

You can have a situation in which if someone is testifying in Congress, they have to disclose any potential conflicts of interest.

There's ways to fix these things.

And they're very simple.

We just don't do it.

So there was this hit piece in Bari Weiss's Free Press, very ironic name for that outlet, that just listed, I mean, it was 10 pages long, just listed this long list of lies against me that has been repeated by the neocons in Washington for the last 20 plus years.

And low.

Oh, I'm an agent of the Islamic Republic, all of these different things in order to kind of cancel me, shut me down.

You're an Iranian agent.

Exactly, I'm an Iranian agent essentially.

And all of that, but the only thing that was new is that they claimed that the State Department was now investigating me in order to have me deported.