Trita Parsi writes:

I have fought the neocons and warmongers in Washington for more than 25 years. Throughout, they have tried to silence, discredit, slander, and cancel me. Only recently, however, have they tried to deport me.

At least, that appears to have been the aim of a hit piece in Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which claimed that Marco Rubio’s State Department was “investigating” me for allegedly seeking to “undermine the U.S.”—presumably because of my opposition to war with Iran. Yet just hours later, the State Department issued a statement to reporters clarifying that “the State Department has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time.” Nor did it provide any confirmation for the central premise of the Free Press story—that an investigation of me existed in the first place.

So here’s what I think happened.

I don’t believe there was any investigation against me. Rather, some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure could help move things forward. I say “additional” because for weeks, pro-Israel social media influencers had been urging the U.S. government to deport me, while some activists—or intelligence operators—even produced an AI-generated video of me being arrested by ICE. Full disclosure: I found the video quite amusing.

At the end of the video, a smiling, clearly satisfied Marco Rubio appears, suggesting that the intended audience was the Secretary himself—the decision-maker in cases like this.

That Jay Solomon and The Free Press would play this role, wittingly or unwittingly, should surprise no one. Solomon was fired from The Wall Street Journal in 2017 over his financial involvement in arms deals with a businessman who was also one of his key sources.

But the effort to trigger an investigation appears to have backfired. In part, that was due to the broad and organic backlash against deporting me—and against the very idea that people should be deported for exercising free speech. [Continue reading…]