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trita parsi
After Oval Office Meltdown, Trump Cuts Off All US Military Aid to Ukraine
"Let's be clear—this is not about bringing peace," argued Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "Donald Trump is siding with Russia, Putin, and dictators across the world over our allies and the defense of democracy."
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump late Monday ordered a suspension of all American military assistance to Ukraine after his conduct in a televised meeting with the war-torn country's president in the Oval Office last week sparked international dismay and outrage.
Trump's decision reportedly impacts over $1 billion worth of weaponry and ammunition that was set to be delivered to Ukraine, which has been under attack by invading Russian forces since February 2022. The U.S. has provided more than $65 billion in military aid to Ukraine during the full-scale Russian assault, according to State Department figures.
The Associated Pressnoted Monday that the U.S. president's move "comes some five years after Trump held up congressionally authorized assistance to Ukraine as he sought to pressure [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to launch an investigation into Joe Biden, then a Democratic presidential candidate."
"The moment led to Trump's first impeachment," the news outlet observed.
Democratic members of Congress argued that Trump's aid cutoff amounts to another instance of the U.S. president unlawfully withholding spending approved by lawmakers—and rejected the White House's claim that the move was motivated by a genuine desire for peace.
"Let's be clear—this is not about bringing peace," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who faced backlash in late 2022 over her handling of a Congressional Progressive Caucus letter urging the Biden administration to "seriously explore all possible avenues, including direct engagement with Russia, to reduce harm and support Ukraine in achieving a peaceful settlement."
"Donald Trump is siding with Russia, Putin, and dictators across the world over our allies and the defense of democracy," Jayapal said Monday. "This is a shameful day in American history."
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that "if President Trump was truly concerned with securing a just and sustainable peace deal for Ukraine, he wouldn't have conceded every piece of leverage the United States, our allies, and Ukraine held before even beginning negotiations."
"He wouldn't be siding with an authoritarian responsible for war crimes," Meeks continued. "And he certainly wouldn't be forcing Ukraine into surrender, while claiming it's a deal. Instead, he would have continued U.S. support for Ukraine to put it in the best possible position to secure a peace deal for Russia's illegal and unjustified war against it."
"Ukraine is left with impossible choices: fight a losing war without U.S. support, or submit to economic vassalage under the very powers that prolonged its suffering."
Trump's decision to suspend U.S. aid to Ukraine, which the Kremlin welcomed, came after Zelenskyy said in the wake of the Oval Office meeting that "an agreement to end the war is still very, very far away."
"The peace that we foresee in the future must be just, honest, and most importantly, sustainable," added Zelenskyy, who has demanded security guarantees from the West as part of any diplomatic resolution with Russia.
Trump, who is pushing for U.S. control of Ukraine's mineral wealth, responded furiously to Zelenskyy's comment, calling it "the worst statement that could have been made."
Trump's Oval Office blow-up and subsequent aid suspension led some to lament missed opportunities for diplomacy under U.S. President Joe Biden.
"It would have been better for Ukraine—and the world—if Biden had pursued diplomacy much earlier," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "But the Blob and the Democratic centrists shut down even any whisper of diplomacy."
Aída Chávez, communications director and policy adviser at Just Foreign Policy, argued in a recent column for The Intercept that "Trump's demand for 'payback' from Ukraine—treating the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II as if it's some unappreciated favor—presents U.S. foreign policy in its most naked form."
"As a result of the West's refusal to seriously consider diplomacy," Chávez added, "Ukraine is left with impossible choices: fight a losing war without U.S. support, or submit to economic vassalage under the very powers that prolonged its suffering."
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As DOJ Unseals Murder Plot Charges, Fears of Trump Iran Policy Mount
"Trump is inheriting a mess that he helped create," said the National Iranian American Council. "All parties need to focus not on threats but on dialogue to end these crises."
Nov 08, 2024
Amid growing concerns about what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House will mean for Washington's rocky relationship with Tehran, the Department of Justice on Friday announced charges against an Afghan national accused of plotting to assassinate the Republican at the direction of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Though Trump survived two shooting attempts during the campaign, neither appears to be tied to Iran's alleged plot to kill him.
"There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a Friday statement announcing the charges against Farhad Shakeri, "an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran's assassination plots against its targets," including Trump.
"We have also charged and arrested two individuals who we allege were recruited as part of that network to silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist who has been a prominent critic of the regime," Garland added, referring to New Yorkers Jonathon Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, who are both in custody—unlike Shakeri, who is believed to be in Iran. "We will not stand for the Iranian regime's attempts to endanger the American people and America's national security."
The department did not publicly identify the reporter but its statement "matched the description of Masih Alinejad, a journalist and activist who has criticized Iran's head-covering laws for women," Reutersnoted Friday. "Four Iranians were charged in 2021 in connection with a plot to kidnap her, and in 2022 a man was arrested with a rifle outside her home."
The Friday announcement about these three men follows another case related to Trump and Iran. As Politicodetailed: "In August, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged a Pakistani man suspected of plotting on behalf of Iran to kill high-ranking U.S. politicians or officials—including perhaps Trump. The man is accused of trying to hire hitmen to carry out the plot."
The next month, after Trump was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him, he declared during a campaign rally that "if I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens."
"We're gonna blow it to smithereens, you can't do that. And there would be no more threats," added Trump, whose comments were swiftly decried by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) as "an outrageous threat" and "genocidal."
Responding to Reuters coverage of the Justice Department's Friday statement on social media, NIAC said that "threats of violence against political officials are unacceptable and only risk further opening Pandora's box of war and destruction. Trump is inheriting a mess that he helped create and reports like this demonstrate just how grave the stakes are. All parties need to focus not on threats but on dialogue to end these crises."
During Trump's first presidential term, he ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal; ramped up deadly sanctions against the Middle East country; and ordered the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq—actions that heightened fears of a U.S. war with Iran.
Such fears have surged since Trump's Tuesday win. He is set to return as commander-in-chief after more than a year of the Biden-Harris administration backing Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and strikes on other countries including Lebanon and Iran.
NIAC Action executive director Jamal Abdi said in a statement after the U.S. election that "many in our community feared this day—worried about the return of the travel ban, attacks on our civil liberties, demonization of immigrant communities, and deepening militarism in the Middle East. But we have been here before and our resilience is unwavering in standing up for our community and our rights."
"In the coming weeks, Trump, along with his new vice president, JD Vance will select the advisers who will shape his policies," Abdi noted. "We will not stand down, disengage, or give up but will redouble our efforts for peace and justice by any means necessary. The resilience and unity of our community are more vital now than ever."
CNN and Politico have reported that Brian Hook is expected to lead Trump's transition team at the U.S. Department of State. As Drop Site News' Murtaza Hussain wrote, Hook is "known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the 'maximum pressure' campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump's approach to Tehran."
Speaking with Hussain, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, pointed out that Trump's previous Iran policy was largely guided by John Bolton, who spent over a year as his national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"The Trump administration's approach towards Iran depends very much on who he chooses to staff his administration. In his first term, he was sold on an idea by people like Pompeo and John Bolton that Iran could be sanctioned and pressured into oblivion, but that was an approach more likely to deliver war than an agreement," Parsi said. "The Iranian view is that Trump himself wants to make a deal, but it depends on whether he appoints the same neoconservatives as last time to his administration."
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Gaza Doctor Corrects CNN Anchor: 'This Is Not a Humanitarian Crisis... This Is Genocide'
"History books will be written on this and countries will have to reckon—media agencies will have to reckon—with their major role in the genocide," said Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan.
Oct 11, 2024
Human rights advocates on Friday highlighted a rare instance in which a U.S. corporate media outlet allowed a pro-Palestinian voice to set the record straight about Israel's crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Earlier this week, CNN "News Central" aired a panel segment on the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory war. Anchor Kate Bolduan noted that around 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas attack—although she did not say that at least some of them were slain by Israeli forces in "friendly fire" incidents and under the Hannibal Directive—and that 250 others were kidnapped.
Bolduan also acknowledged that nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and another 2 million displaced by Israeli forces, calling the situation in Gaza a "desperate humanitarian crisis."
"A humanitarian crisis is what you deal with when you have a hurricane, what you deal with when you have an earthquake."
The anchor asked panel participant Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan—an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip—for her thoughts on the matter.
"In all honesty, a humanitarian crisis is what you deal with when you have a hurricane, what you deal with when you have an earthquake," Haj-Hassan replied. "This is not a humanitarian crisis."
"Kate, and I'm going to say it very clearly for your viewers to hear, this is genocide," the doctor stressed.
Haj-Hassan continued:
When 70% of the population that are killed are women and children, when the population is starved of food, of water, of medicine, when you have attacks, repeated attacks on all the hospitals, the clinics, the aid distribution sites, the humanitarian aid agencies that tried to help, more [United Nations] workers have been killed in Gaza than in U.N.'s history. When you have over 900 families that have been exterminated, that have been taken off of the civil registry, killed, when you have over 17,000 children that have lost one or both parents, when you have bakeries, aid distribution sites, churches, mosques, schools, and in the last three days—in the last 24 hours in fact—a hospital today that was bombed, as you just reported, the hospital where I personally was working, and I can tell you, they are working every second of every day to try and sustain life.
"And so it's really hard to hear it over and over and over again, framed in the way that it's being framed in the media, which, frankly, Kate, is very misleading," Haj-Hassan said. "It is very misleading. Three hundred and sixty-five days of this. Death tolls that are so far outdated we have... no idea how many people are killed."
"But I am... genuinely afraid about what we're going to find out when the dust settles. History books will be written on this," she added. "And countries will have to reckon—media agencies will have to reckon—with their major role in the genocide of an entire population and in the destruction of humanitarian law and rule of order."
Some observers noted the absence of voices like Haj-Hassan's in U.S. mainstream media coverage of Gaza, which is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and almost never airs the word "genocide"—even as Israel is on trial for the crime at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The New York Times, for example, ordered journalists covering the war in Gaza to eschew terms including "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and even "occupied territory," even though Israel has indisputably occupied Palestine for over half a century and the ICJ recently ruled that the Israeli occupation is a crime of apartheid that must end immediately.
"The media may be forgiven for missing a carefully hidden story. For missing some details," Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi said Friday on social media. "But when a genocide is there for everyone to see and you help conceal it, forgiveness is not in the cards."
Another social media user offered mild praise for Bolduan—who has been criticized by Israel supporters for previous interviews in which Palestine defenders accused Israel of genocide—writing that the anchor "didn't seem happy" to hear what Haj-Hassan was saying.
"Hard to say whether it was because the truth is so horrible or because CNN doesn't want to report that truth—but she did let her say it," the user said of Bolduan.
Allegations of Israeli genocide remain highly contentious—even taboo—in the United States, which provides the key Mideast ally with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions that were overwhelmingly supported by other countries.
In the United States, Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, and human rights groups are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit a lawsuit they filed accusing President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of complicity in the Gaza genocide.
In July, a three-judge panel of the federal court dismissed the lawsuit, in which the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California previously found that "the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law," but dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds.
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