Democrats and the liberal media want to paint Operation Epic Fury as a new war launched against Iran by the United States.
But an American and former political prisoner of the Iranians, Kian Tajbakhsh, delivered a little reality on CNN on Thursday night.
First, he explained how it wasn’t the U.S. starting the war, but the U.S. finishing a war that Iran has been prosecuting on various levels for the past 47 years.
Former Iranian political prisoner Kian Tajbakhsh shuts down an entire CNN panel with a blunt reality check.
Abby Phillip and Ashley Allison were spiraling over whether the U.S. is actually at war with Iran.
That’s when Tajbakhsh dropped an absolute truth bomb: “I think… pic.twitter.com/XddsKT7FWT
— Overton (@overton_news) March 6, 2026
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“To simplify it, I would put it this way,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s right to say that President Trump has started a war with Iran. I think President Trump wants to finish a war that Iran started in 1979, 47 years ago.”
He then went on to explain how the perception of the regime has been that they were at war with us for a long time.
“In 2003, 2004, when I was there in Iran, working on projects at a very high level, I was talking with deputy ministers…going back and forth. I was in the foreign ministry in Tehran, where I met someone who was very senior, and he was semi-sympathetic to the projects we were doing. But as I was leaving, he looked me in the eye, and he said, “You, as an Iranian-American, I want you to know something and listen very carefully.” He said, “We in this building…[representing the regime]…we believe we are at war with the United States.” He said at that time it was a cold war, but it’s a war nonetheless.”
Indeed, he’s correct. Iran’s president said in December 2025 that they were at full-fledged war with the U.S. So whether we wanted to acknowledge it or not, they’ve been acting that way toward us for a long time.
But Tajbakhsh wasn’t done yet. He then took on how Barack Obama’s actions with Iran led to problems, as our sister site Townhall reported.
CNN’s Abby Phillip interrupts former Iranian political prisoner Kian Tajbakhsh and immediately cuts to a commercial right after he said this:
“You can draw a straight line from the 2015 nuclear deal to October 7th.”
TAJBAKHSH: “What happened with President Obama, I’ll just say… pic.twitter.com/Y3ZHO2cH7M
— Overton (@overton_news) March 6, 2026
“What happened with President Obama is that, for better or worse — and I’m not going to litigate that here — he decided that given the four big problems that have always been on American objectives with Iran, that is enrichment, ballistic missiles, proxies and democracy inside Iran, that he would put all the last three aside and focus only on the nuclear deal. Now, I’m not going to say that was good or bad. I don’t think it was a great idea, but what we have seen, and this is also maybe controversial, and I think a lot of my liberal friends are going to hate me for this…is that unfortunately you can draw a straight line from the 2015 nuclear deal to October 7th.”
You notice the minute he dropped that truth bomb, host Abby Phillip said they had to go to a break. Was that too much truth for them? The Iran nuclear deal was ridiculous – that didn’t stop them. Ultimately, Obama helped prop up the mullahs with it. It emboldened them and their proxies, and just allowed their bad actions to continue.
It was about as far from President Donald Trump’s “peace through strength” as you can get.
Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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