Trita Parsi

He was against the Iraq war from the outset.

His son still deployed, went there and sadly got killed.

But we were trying to build bridges between the anti-war left and the anti-war right.

There had been collaboration between the two sides.

Ro Khanna was working with Mike Lee in the Senate, for instance, to prevent, stop the support for the war in Yemen.

But it was episodic.

It was never something structural.

And we thought that if we can establish this institute that tried to marry the two,

it would be a real strong counter to the uni-party war machine.

And that became an even greater threat to the- But it remained this kind of tiny island in a sea of people who disagreed with you in Washington.

No, no, absolutely not.

They don't tolerate anything.

They don't tolerate the slightest question marks because at the end of the day, if people start to question the very foundational premises of this foreign policy in a structured and in a rational way, it's gonna collapse.

You can't defend this.

You can only silence the voices that are trying to question it.

Absolutely, yeah.

And I lay this out, try to, you know, on my sub stack, try to explain exactly what happened here.

And I think the most critical thing that has caused this significant spike against these attacks, because look, they try to silence me for a long time.

They never elevated it to try to actually deport me.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that despite the fact you're absolutely right, we're a small island in Washington, but nevertheless, there is an island now and we are making inroads and we certainly have the support of the American public.