by Gregg Roman
Trita Parsi called the midterms for Iran more than twelve hours before Vice President Vance blamed the war. What the documents show about the man who reads Tehran to Washington: three New York sessions with Iran's president, a funder who pays both camps, a court file in the court's own words, and what they leave out.
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| President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, at the head of the table, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meets American experts and journalists in New York on September 24, 2026. The place cards that can be read include Robin Wright and Patrick Wintour. One of the photographs released after the session, as carried by Iran International; the presidency’s own gallery holds seven frames. |
On Friday this newsletter argued that the voters punished an unfinished war, not the decision to fight it, and that “End the war” is a slogan until it says what becomes of the uranium, the strait and the launchers. This Long View is the file on the man who said Iran had won the election before the Vice President said the war had lost it, graded at every step, with what it shows and what it does not.
At 10:04 p.m. Eastern on election night, with returns still coming in, Trita Parsi posted: “Let’s be frank. The Democrats didn’t win the midterms. Iran did.” Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the Washington organization that argues for military restraint. He was a founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president for years. Eight hours and forty minutes later Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman of Iran’s foreign ministry, told Washington that “The American people have now sent you a clear message.” Just under four hours after that, Vice President JD Vance wrote: “The reason we lost is the war.”
On Thursday Parsi wrote on his Substack that “it wasn’t the Democrats that won, but Iran,” and that “Tehran, of course, pursued a deliberate strategy of making everyone feel the pain of this war in order to undermine Trump and the GOP, including in the midterms.” On NPR the same morning: “I think reality is that it’s not the Democrats that won this election. It’s Iran.” The President’s decision to go to war, he went on, “in and of itself was a result of an Iranian strategy to create an energy crisis for the precise reason of defeating Trump and the Republican Party. That has now been completed.”
He had forecast the strategy in July, on BreakThrough News: “I suspect that the Iranians will wait even longer this time around ... probably perhaps even after November to give Trump as much of a defeat in the midterm elections, impose as much of a political cost on him as possible.” On Piers Morgan’s program, recorded on Wednesday and posted the next day, he said of the Vice President’s post: “I think it’s undoubtedly true and I think the fact that Vance tweeted this is in and of itself very significant.”
By Friday, Axios reported, Vice President Vance was leading the push inside the administration for a new deal with Tehran. The man who called the election for Iran more than twelve hours before the Vice President blamed the war has been cited in Tehran’s state press 86 times since the start of 2024 and has sat at the Iranian president’s table in New York three Septembers running. His institution shares a funder with the organizations now employing the Vice President’s former aides.
What the documents do not show matters as much. No paper, photograph, recording or witness puts Parsi and the Vice President in a meeting, on a call or in correspondence. The traffic runs one way: Parsi praises and interprets the Vice President, who has never named him.
“Let’s be frank. The Democrats didn’t win the midterms. Iran did.”
Iran’s president comes to New York each September for the United Nations General Assembly, and since 2024 Masoud Pezeshkian has used the visit to meet a room of American experts and journalists. This year his office published seven photographs of the session of September 24. Pezeshkian sits at the head of the table with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi beside him. The place cards that can be read in the official photographs include Robert Malley, the former American special envoy for Iran; Robin Wright of The New Yorker; Patrick Wintour of The Guardian; and Adam Weinstein, the deputy director of Quincy’s Middle East program, who was a senior law and policy analyst at NIAC.
Iran International, the Persian-language channel based in London, wrote that the images “also showed Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, and journalists Farnaz Fassihi and Negar Mortazavi among those attending.” The Associated Press went further the next morning: “Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute ... who attended, said Araghchi suggested that a speedy agreement would help U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections.” Parsi himself wrote on Bluesky early on September 25 that he and the broadcaster Chris Hayes “both attended meetings with Pezeshkian today in NY.”
Four days later Andrew Napolitano, the former judge who hosts the program Judging Freedom, said to Parsi on air: “You and I had the pleasure of being two of about 35 or 40 people, along with our friend and colleague Jeff Sachs, to a private interview session last week with President Pezeshkian of Iran and Foreign Minister.” Parsi did not dispute it. He said he had been at the United Nations “for all of last week” in “several different sessions and meetings with numerous diplomats.”
The year before, Iran International and three participants described an hourlong private session with Pezeshkian and Araghchi at a Manhattan hotel on September 26, 2025, with Parsi and the Quincy fellow Hadi Kahalzadeh among those present. In September 2024 Iran International placed him at an evening meeting of the Iranian delegation at the Millennium Hilton, ahead of a dinner for the diaspora that Pezeshkian attended, and Euronews Persian listed him among the dinner’s guests. The presidency’s photographs, three outlets’ reporting over as many Septembers, a host on tape and his own post point the same way. No official list of the 2026 attendees has surfaced.
Two rules bear on those sessions. Since 2025 the State Department has confined Iran’s delegation to “the areas strictly necessary to transit to and from the UN headquarters district,” a restriction it restated this September; the 2026 session was held, by Iran International’s account, at the delegation’s accommodation, and no one has alleged a breach.
Quincy’s own transparency page says: “In certain cases, QI staff may accept in-kind support from foreign governments to attend conferences, convenings, and roundtable meetings, with approval from QI management.” Whether a seat at the Iranian president’s table falls under that rule, and who approved it, is a question for Quincy. Three days after the 2026 session Pezeshkian told his cabinet that “in one or two cases, scholars and various individuals openly said, ‘We are embarrassed and ashamed of this situation.’” He named no one.
Gregg Roman
Source: https://mefinsider.meforum.org/p/special-edition-parsi-vance-and-three-septembers-at-tehrans-table
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