A tense exchange unfolded during a recent CNN panel discussion when a former Iranian political prisoner argued that the current confrontation between the United States and Iran is not a newly created conflict but the continuation of a struggle that began decades ago.
Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar who was imprisoned by Iranian authorities following the 2009 Green Movement protests, appeared on CNN NewsNight to discuss escalating tensions in the region after President Donald Trump announced a joint U.S.–Israeli military campaign known as Operation Epic Fury. The operation, revealed in a video posted to Truth Social early Saturday, marked a major escalation against Iranian military infrastructure.
During the discussion, Tajbakhsh offered a perspective shaped by his years working in Iran before his arrest. He pushed back on the framing that Trump had initiated a new war.
“I don’t think it’s right to say that President Trump has started a war with Iran,” Tajbakhsh said. “I think President Trump wants to finish a war that Iran started in 1979, 47 years ago.”
To illustrate his point, Tajbakhsh recounted a personal encounter from the early 2000s when he was working on policy projects and regularly interacting with officials at high levels of Iran’s government. During a meeting at Iran’s foreign ministry in Tehran, he said a senior official delivered a blunt message as their conversation concluded.
According to Tajbakhsh, the official told him that the Iranian regime believed it was already engaged in a form of conflict with the United States.
“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘You as an Iranian American, I want you to know something and listen very carefully,’” Tajbakhsh recalled. The official then explained that leaders inside the ministry believed the two countries were already in a “cold war,” even if it was not openly acknowledged as such.
The comment briefly disrupted the flow of the panel discussion. Former CNN Global Affairs Correspondent Elise Labott and Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal attempted to respond almost simultaneously, prompting host Abby Phillip to step in and allow Labott to speak first.
Labott suggested that some form of direct military confrontation between the United States and Iran had long seemed possible. She said it was perhaps inevitable that an American president would eventually authorize strikes against Iran under the right circumstances. At the same time, she expressed unease about the current situation and the messaging surrounding it.
The broader discussion reflects a long history of hostility between Washington and Tehran. Relations between the two countries collapsed following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Since then, tensions have persisted through proxy conflicts, sanctions, and periodic military confrontations.
One of the most dramatic moments came in January 2020 when the Trump administration ordered a drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. U.S. officials said Soleimani played a central role in directing proxy militias and supplying advanced explosive devices used against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Iranian government has faced repeated international criticism over its treatment of domestic protesters. Human rights groups have documented thousands of deaths linked to government crackdowns during waves of demonstrations over the past decade. One such report cited by the BBC estimated that nearly 6,900 protesters had been killed in recent unrest.
