During a meeting with US media on the UNGA sidelines, Max Blumenthal asked Masoud Pezeshkian about the Biden administration’s accusation this his government was funding pro-Palestine protest in the US, while the newly inaugurated Iranian president campaigned to prevent regional war.

BY MAX BLUMENTHAL AND ANYA PARAMPIL

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil were among a select group of media organizations invited to a meeting with Iran’s recently-inaugurated president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The question-and-answer roundtable offered an intimate look at the strategic thinking behind the president’s visit, which featured dozens of meetings with foreign diplomats and influential members of Iran’s US-based diaspora. Participants in the meeting included Beltway press fixtures Andrea Mitchell, Lester Holt, and an array of correspondents from mainstream outlets like Sky News, the New Yorker, and PBS. Just outside the Hilton Millennium conference room, a heavily armed NYPD tactical team stood at the ready.

As Israel trains its US-supplied weapons on Lebanon, leaving over 1000 dead in just over a week of aerial bombardment and terrorist sabotage, Pezeshkian appealed with his audience of media insiders to understand Iran’s historic position. Seated beside Javad Zarif, the Vice President for Strategic Affairs and former Foreign Minister who negotiated the P5 + 1 nuclear deal, the president insisted the Islamic Republic sought a renewal of negotiations with Washington on nuclear issues.

At the same time, he framed Iran’s alliance with Hezbollah and Hamas as a morally just defense of the victims of Zionism. “Hezbollah, or any other group that wishes to defend her rights, we defend them. We defend righteousness. If we defend the Palestinians, we’re defending the rights of those who cannot defend themselves,” Pezeshkian declared.

Confined within a 6 block radius in Manhattan by US sanctions law, Pezeshkian was on a clear mission to avert a regional war that could deliver a major setback to his country’s development. “We do believe that if a larger war were to erupt in the region, it will not benefit any country,” he proclaimed. “It is the Zionist regime that seeks warmongering and the expansion of insecurity in the region.”

Because the president’s aides initially declared the meeting off-the-record, only ceding to reporters’ demands to quote him once the discussion concluded, a complete video of the question-and-answer exchanges is not available online. The unfortunate decision fueled an uproar in Iran over Pezeshkian’s claim that the Islamic Republic would be “willing to put all our weapons aside so long as [Israel] is willing to do the same.” Against thunderous condemnation from pro-IRGC media outlets, the president’s defenders insisted his comments were “a slip of the tongue,” and had been taken out of context. Before the meeting, an Iranian political observer told us that Pezeshkian was prone to gaffes, such as repeatedly referring to Russia as “the Soviet Union.”

During the session, The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal asked the president to respond to an accusation by US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that the Iranian government was “seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters” demonstrating across the US against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed Haines’ claim during an interview the day before with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, claiming she’d seen “evidence” of the foreign funding of protests.

Pezeshkian mocked the accusations, joking, “We can barely make our domestic payroll. How do they expect us to pay thousands of students?” He then defended the protesters, thundering, “Are you saying these students have no conscience,” and are not moved to oppose Israel because of the bloodshed and injustice they’ve witnessed? The accusation was an insult to the students, he continued, who needed no incentive to vent their rage against Israeli violence.

None of the US media outlets present at the meeting quoted the president’s response to DNI Haines. That includes the New York Times, which published a de facto press release for US intelligence this September, asserting, “Iran also used social media to stoke student-organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students, according to American intelligence assessments.”

Pressed on whether Iran would release Narges Mohammadi, an open supporter of regime change and Nobel Prize-winning voice of the 2023 protests against the mandatory hijab, Pezeshkian retaliated that if the Western governments and NGO’s which made Mohammadi a cause celebre truly cared about human rights, they would also unite in outrage against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Within Iran, the president recently criticized the morality police for allegedly confronting a female journalist, angering the clerical establishment.

Most questions centered on whether and how Iran would respond to the brazen Israeli assassination of Hamas politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Pezeshkian recounted how the Biden administration pressured Tehran to allow time for their diplomacy to pay off. “They told us that, within a week, we’re going to reach some sort of an agreement with Israel,” he recalled. “But, unfortunately, that week never came, and Israel keeps expanding its illegal activities and killings.”

As Israel escalated its bombardment of Lebanon throughout the week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned the UN Security Council that the war was placing “the entire region on the brink of a terrible catastrophe.”

Pezeshkian, for his part, left his audience of Beltway media bigwigs with an ominous message: “I hope that the world does not drag us to a point where we are forced to display a behavior or reaction that is not worthy of us.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2024/09/26/grayzone-iranian-pres-pezeshkian-un-general-assembly/

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