A CNN panel quickly unraveled after a former Iranian political prisoner argued that President Donald Trump did not start the conflict with Iran, but is instead confronting a war the Iranian regime began decades ago.
The heated exchange occurred during an episode of CNN NewsNight hosted by Abby Phillip, where analyst Kian Tajbakhsh — who was imprisoned following Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution protests — shared a striking story from his time dealing with Iranian officials.
Tajbakhsh pushed back on the narrative that Trump initiated the current conflict.
“I don’t think it’s right to say that President Trump has started a war with Iran,” he said. “I think President Trump wants to finish a war that Iran started in 1979, 47 years ago.”
He then recounted a conversation he had years earlier with a senior Iranian official while working on projects in Tehran.
According to Tajbakhsh, the official told him directly that Iran’s government viewed itself as being in a long-running conflict with the United States.
“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘We in this building believe we are at war with the United States,’” Tajbakhsh recalled. “He said it’s a cold war, but it’s a war nonetheless.”
The comment immediately sparked reactions from other panelists, including former CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott and Ravi Agrawal, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy.
As Tajbakhsh spoke, the two analysts began interrupting and debating his interpretation, prompting Phillip to step in and attempt to manage the back-and-forth on the panel.
Labott argued that a confrontation between the United States and Iran was likely inevitable regardless of who was in office, saying she believed at some point a U.S. president would have been forced to authorize strikes against Iran.
However, she also expressed discomfort with the current situation and the messaging surrounding it.
The discussion comes as tensions have dramatically escalated following the launch of Operation Epic Fury, a joint military operation by U.S. forces and the Israel Defense Forces targeting Iran’s leadership and military infrastructure.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been simmering for decades. During Trump’s first administration, the U.S. carried out a strike in January 2020 that killed Qasem Soleimani, a powerful commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Soleimani had been widely accused of orchestrating attacks against American forces in the Middle East, including supplying advanced explosive devices used against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump had also warned the Iranian regime in the past that it was approaching a “red line” with its violent response to domestic protests. Human rights groups later reported that thousands of protesters were killed during government crackdowns.
For Tajbakhsh, the bigger picture is clear: the conflict did not suddenly appear overnight.
And judging by the reaction on CNN’s panel, that perspective clearly struck a nerve.
