Trita Parsi, the President of the National Iranian-American Council, discusses the “surge” distraction from the impending war with Iran, Bush’s false claims about Iran killing Americans in Iraq, the Walter Jones resolution, why the U.S. ought to try talking Iran for a change and how the average Iranian feels about the U.S.
Trita Parsi is the author of the forthcoming Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007.) He wrote his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama (and Drs. Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. K. Ramazani, Jakub Grygiel, Charles Doran) at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 2006.
Dr. Parsi is one of the few people in the US – if not the only one – that has traveled both to Iran and Israel and interviewed top officials in these countries on the state of Israeli-Iranian relations. He has conducted more than 130 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American officials in all three countries. He is fluent in Persian/Farsi.
He has followed Middle East politics for more than a decade, both through work in the field, and through extensive experience on Capitol Hill and the United Nations.
Dr. Parsi’s articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the Financial Times, Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Globalist, the Jerusalem Post, the Forward, BitterLemons and the Daily Star.
He is a frequent commentator on US-Iranian relations and Middle Eastern affairs, and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN (Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room, Anderson Cooper 360°), CNN International (Your World Today), Al Jazeera, C-Span, NPR, MSNBC, Voice of America and British Channel 4.