The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), which has masqueraded as a cross between a respectable think tank and a voice for the Iranian diaspora in the United States since its founding in 2002, has had a rough time since Israel started destroying Tehran’s nuclear program on June 13, 2025. Soon after Israel started bombing nuclear facilities in Iran, NIAC—which enjoyed easy access to officials in the Obama administration— hosted one of the most cringe-worthy protests to have ever been held on American soil. Video of the protest in Washington, D.C., is so embarrassing that one wonders why NIAC staffers even bothered to post it on Instagram.
It’s that bad.
[I]s [Trump] just Benjamin Netanyahu’s bitch?
About the only people who showed up were a dozen or so activists from Code Pink who almost needed to be hit over the head with a megaphone to get them to chant “No war with Iran” and “Stop the bombing” when speakers concluded their rants.
The most cringe-worthy moment came when NIAC President Jamal Abdi complained that U.S. President Donald Trump failed to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from bombing Iran.
“We saw Joe Biden get bodied by Benjamin Netanyahu for the past two or three years [and] get manipulated in every way imaginable and … he’d say a few nasty words about [Netanyahu] in the press,” Abdi said. “Does Trump even have the howsele [comprehension] to say nasty words in the press about Benjamin Netanyahu, or is he just Benjamin Netanyahu’s bitch?” Abdi also declared that the attacks on Iran were perpetrated so “that a few self-conscious men can feel more powerful and have more agency.”
Suggesting President Trump is someone’s “bitch” and insecure is a surefire way to make sure no one in the current administration will ever return your calls. It’s not the tactic the leader of a respectable think tank hoping to influence White House policy toward Iran would use in a million years.
What’s Going On?
Clearly, the NIAC folks are doing what they can to undermine support for President Trump, who has said all along that Iran can’t have nuclear weapons. On this score, NIAC’s speakers tried to capitalize on the schism between President Trump and folks on the isolationist wing of American politics. They told the audience that this is Israel’s and Netanyahu’s war, not America’s. NIAC seems to have forgotten that the Islamic Republic of Iran kept dozens of Americans hostage for over a year, supported proxies that have killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers, and has been calling the U.S. the Great Satan for as long as most Americans can remember.
NIAC’s efforts to undermine Trump aren’t working. Eighty-four percent of the American people agree with Trump’s demand that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
NIAC also hopes to stir up the American left. Aidin Panahi, an Iranian-American research professor, energy expert and counter-regime activist, summarized the rally’s message perfectly, saying, it ‘made no mention of the Islamic Republic’s role in arming proxies, suppressing dissent, or enriching uranium beyond civilian thresholds.”
The rally expressed opposition to military action “while omitting the regime’s violations of international law and continued threats against regional and global stability. This is part of a broader pattern in which regime-aligned activists attempt to shift blame away from Tehran by framing all escalation as external provocation,” Panahi said.
That’s exactly the type of messaging that a group intent on stoking hostility toward Israel, the United States, and the West on the part of easily manipulated college students would offer. The problem for NIAC is that the autocratic, oppressive, and hostile regime for which it advocates has taken such a beating over the last few days that even the people who believe that the West is evil and the global south is without sin won’t get on Iran’s bandwagon. And yet that’s what NIAC is asking Americans to do—align themselves with autocratic leaders hiding in bunkers.
That’s not a good look.
