Yorktown Institute Senior Fellow Shay Khatiri spoke with Fox News Digital’s Preston Mizell about Trita Parsi, “a controversial figure among the Iranian American community, [who] will be speaking at an event hosted by the John Quincy Adams Society at Yale University on Thursday.”
“[Parsi] founded this group called the National Iranian American Council, NIAC,” Khatiri explained. “That was really a lobbying group to promote lifting sanctions and what would eventually become the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama reached with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“There has been huge suspicion among the Iranian diaspora and broader foreign policy community in Washington, D.C., that Parsi and his group have been lobbying on behalf of unofficially lobbying and promoting the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Khatiri told Fox.
The Yorktown institute fellow went on to explain that he believes the “talking points” used by Parsi are filled with disinformation.
“[Parsi says that] the protesters are really not that peaceful, and they are violent, and he omits the context that it’s always the Islamic Republic that initiates violence and, defensively, protesters respond to it, or that the protests are really not that cohesive, that they lack a leadership, which is also not true,” Khatiri added. “The protesters have been chanting the name of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the exiled crown prince of Iran.”
The full article can be read at Fox News.
