After a career in the foreign service, where officers are obliged to keep their political views to themselves and promote the positions of the current U.S. administration, some retiring diplomats have a hard time getting used to speaking their minds, particularly when the press is involved.

Ludo Hood is not one of those people.

The 53-year-old retired from the U.S. Foreign Service last week after two decades of service, a career that took him to Kuwait, Bahrain, France and Qatar. Most recently, he served as a senior advisor to Keith Kellogg, President Donald Trump’s former special envoy for Ukraine, and before that as a close advisor to Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism — two roles that put him in the crossfire of some of the biggest political debates in Washington. 

Hood, who is preparing to take on a role at a think tank, sat down with Jewish Insider this week to reflect on a career representing the U.S. that included stints working on Iran policy during negotiations for the 2015 nuclear deal, relations with Gulf states during the fraught Arab Spring and antisemitism policy in the tense aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023. 

Through all those foreign postings and geopolitical flashpoints, one of the most “alarming and shocking” moments of Hood’s time as a foreign service officer came within the halls of Foggy Bottom — when, in the months after Oct. 7, the State Department hosted listening sessions for staffers to express anti-Israel views and bash the policies espoused by the federal government.

“It was the only time in my career where active dissent against the elected president’s overall policy and strategic direction was allowed to be aired in the open, and was actually in many ways encouraged,” Hood told JI. 

The gatherings were hosted by then-Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, and they came as some rank-and-file diplomats, plus many political appointees from the Biden administration, voiced dissent against President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. 

“In terms of being politically correct, you had to give a lot of deference to a heavy anti-Israel point of view, which maybe is fine in the context of a social studies program at a university,” Hood said. “But it’s the State Department. We are national security professionals who are supposed to be implementing the policy of the duly elected president.” 

Hood compared that moment to the sentiment among some foreign service officers who have struggled to represent the U.S. under Trump. Hood acknowledged that some diplomats do not agree with Trump’s approach to foreign policy, but said that they should not express that view publicly as part of their job — and that Trump would not stand for so much public expression of dissent.

“There was and perhaps remains opposition to the way that Trump does and says certain things in the State Department,” said Hood. “The difference here is the Trump people, either under [former Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo or now, would never tolerate unprofessional behavior, and it is unprofessional.”

“Obviously, you’re allowed to have your own personal points of view,” Hood continued. “But if you’re going to sign up to do this work, you ought to be reasonable.” 

That doesn’t mean he always agreed with the positions that he was meant to promote as a diplomat. During the Biden administration, Hood took issue with the White House’s policy that nearly anytime antisemitism was mentioned, it had to be coupled with a mention of Islamophobia, a policy that Hood called “illogical and irrational.” (Lipstadt, his former boss, has called for antisemitism and Islamophobia to be discussed as distinct forms of hate.)

“It was official policy at the Biden White House in terms of how they named task forces and so forth,” said Hood. “We had to accept the horrendously problematic addition of ‘counter-Islamophobia efforts’ into what we were doing or what we were commemorating. I say ‘horrendously problematic’ because it undermines the fight against Muslim hatred or other forms of religious hatred to start conflating them for politicized reasons that have nothing to do with the actual strategies needed to curb that kind of discrimination.”

Even before Oct. 7, Hood said, getting certain State Department diplomats to include antisemitism in meetings with foreign leaders could be challenging. 

“It could be painfully difficult to say and do certain things because of an institutional reluctance to highlight antisemitism,” Hood said, particularly in Europe.

When Trump was inaugurated early last year, Hood transitioned to the Ukraine file, the first time in his career when his portfolio did not include the Middle East. 

He was more sympathetic to the plight of Ukraine than many members of the incoming Trump administration, which he said was more amenable to appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin and less interested in continuing to spend billions on Ukraine’s defense. Kellogg, the Ukraine envoy, was also more supportive of Kyiv than Trump, leading to some of his portfolio being taken over by White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kellogg ultimately stepped down in January.

“It was frustrating to see how that played out, partly because the guy is a decent, honorable man who probably could have been treated better by some people operating in the White House and elsewhere,” said Hood. “Perhaps more relevantly, more substantively, I think Kellogg had a view on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which, from where I stood, reflected reality and reflected how we should be approaching the conflict.” 

On the other side of the Ukraine issue was the increasingly influential isolationist right. Hood called the ongoing intra-Republican feud about foreign policy “a profoundly important debate,” even as he came down hard against the isolationist wing.

“I think there’s very easy arguments to be had to push back on isolationism and restrainers,” said Hood. “I think those of us who want an assertive America aren’t asking for forever wars, aren’t asking to invade in the name of democracy. I think there are ways of putting America first on the global stage without deploying what has now become known as neocon objectives, basically democracy promotion.”

It’s fair to say Hood is aligned with the more traditional, interventionist wing of the Republican Party; he recently joined the Hudson Institute, a pro-Israel think tank closely aligned with several former top Bush administration officials. He said that over his two decades in diplomacy, his central views about the world and foreign policy have not changed. But he said he has come to hold a more realpolitik view of the world that is less Pollyannaish about democracy as a strategic objective. 

“I think maybe democracy promotion, or even having a heavy focus on human rights, is probably at best naive, if not a lost cause, in some parts of the world,” said Hood. “We shouldn’t necessarily allow those issues to always get in the way of a bilateral strategic partnership that is broadly speaking good for stability and prosperity for that country or for that region.”

Hood is leaving the foreign service at a time when the institution’s future is in question. More than 1,300 State Department staffers — including many foreign service officers — were laid off last summer. The American Foreign Service Association, the union representing foreign service officers, called it “a catastrophic blow to our national interests.” 

Hood called Trump’s “top-down approach,” where he leans heavily on personal advisors like Witkoff and Jared Kushner, “understandable in some respects.” He is not instinctually opposed to the cuts and thinks some were necessary. 

“We needed a lot of disruption in the national security establishment. There’s still so much bloat to be cut,” said Hood. But, speaking diplomatically, Hood tentatively suggested that Trump might actually does have something to gain from the bureaucrats in Foggy Bottom and America’s embassies around the world. 

“What you don’t have now is bottom-up information and recommendations being aired, discussed, debated,” said Hood. “Sometimes there are real questions about implementation and messaging.”

Next stop:  the well-trodden Washington path of helping public officials hone their messages. In other words: a think tank.

Nine months after the Heritage Foundation came under fire for defending Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with a neo-Nazi, the conservative think tank is facing fresh scrutiny over accusations that it has enabled an extreme culture in which new hires feel free to question the Holocaust and to engage in historically revisionist debates about World War II, with no apparent internal policing from leadership.

Former Heritage employees, who had been part of a mass staff exodus stoked by its president’s refusal to disavow Carlson for hosting the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes on his podcast last October, told The New York Times Magazine in a newly published investigation that they encountered troubling debates during their time at the organization over issues like “whether the Holocaust happened or not” and “who was the bad guy and who were the good guys” in the war against Hitler.

Andrew Hale, a trade policy analyst at Heritage who left in January to join a rival think tank launched by former Vice President Mike Pence, recalled that prior to departing he had found new hires were fixated on antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Holocaust and Israel of the sort popularized by Fuentes, Carlson and Candace Owens, the extreme-right podcast host.

Hale confirmed to Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday that new, particularly younger, staffers at Heritage “openly said things which were antisemitic, whether they realized it or not,” crediting their views to an obsession with far-right social media channels. 

“The Heritage Foundation had an opportunity to combat antisemitism and misogyny but instead they chose to hire people with these views,” Hale argued, while claiming that the think tank’s “original goals have been subverted under the current leadership” and is now “a force for antisemitism and misogyny.”

Brian Phillips, a Heritage spokesperson, called Hale’s claim about the Holocaust debate “absurd” but did not address related allegations from former staffers, whom the think tank sought to discredit as “self-serving, bitter and vindictive” in a statement to the Times Magazine. 

“There is no debate at the Heritage Foundation whether the Holocaust happened and our record opposing antisemitism is long, consistent and public,” he said in a brief email statement to JI, sharing a link to a page on Heritage’s website detailing such efforts.

The foundation, which had long been influential to Republican administrations, has found itself on the defensive after its president, Kevin Roberts, posted a controversial video to social media last fall in which he dismissed Carlson’s critics as part of a “venomous coalition,” among other terms widely interpreted as antisemitic tropes.

“Heritage is catering to a conspiratorial streak popular with Gen Z Republicans, perhaps out of the belief that it’s the future of the party,” Daniel Samet, a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute who focuses on U.S.-Israel relations and Middle East policy, told JI. “It’s one thing to have serious heterodox views. It’s another to spew dreck about Jews. Heritage is failing to draw a line in the sand.”

Among those who left the organization over their discomfort with Roberts’ decision and handling of the fallout were the leaders of an antisemitism task force that opted to sever ties with the think tank last November, even as they voiced hope to “collaborate” again.

Late last month, Luke Moon, a conservative Christian activist and co-chair of the task force, returned to Heritage as a part-time visiting fellow to support its “efforts to combat antisemitism,” the organization said in a statement.

Moon has said he chose to join the organization after Yoram Hazony, an Israeli American political theorist and national conservative leader who has denounced Carlson as antisemitic, became a member of its board in May.

But Moon said on Wednesday his recent experience had been “the opposite” of the internal culture that former staffers had described to The Times. “They’re almost a little overzealous to have me there,” he told JI. “There’s a real frustration in the reputation being tarnished.”

Still, others who left the think tank said that they remained unconvinced Roberts had meaningfully reckoned with his remarks. Yaakov Menken, the executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values who resigned from the antisemitism task force last year, said that Roberts had not distanced himself from the rhetoric he used in his defense of Carlson.

“Anyone who thinks I belong to a ‘venomous coalition’ either doesn’t understand antisemitism or is a part of spreading it,” Menken told JI. “Heritage cannot combat antisemitism and endorse it at the same time.”

Josh Blackman, a legal scholar who also resigned from Heritage last year, said he had “not seen any public or private action taken by” the think tank “to adequately address” concerns over antisemitism that precipitated departures. “Until changes are made, I’m not sure how Heritage can be seen as a credible partner in the fight against antisemitism,” he told JI.

While Moon acknowledged that there were “certainly” issues at Heritage last fall, he said the think tank no longer employed problematic staffers like the former chief of staff who had written Roberts’ scripted comments about Carlson.

“There’s an explicit and very clear expectation on me to take on antisemitism on the right,” he said, adding that Heritage had also hired a researcher to help him with such work. “They’ve been very clear to me where they stand on antisemitism.”

The perennial complaint from supporters of Israel that the Jewish state has “bad PR” has sparked dozens of organizations and books over the decades and prompted the Israeli government to invest hundreds of millions in public diplomacy, including a $730 million allocation in its 2026 budget.

Yet the problem has only worsened after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, during the subsequent Gaza war and through the war with Iran this year. A new paper from the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University seeks to analyze the challenges and find solutions for Israel’s government to better handle them.

In an interview with Jewish Insider, the paper’s authors — Akiva Tor, a former Israeli ambassador to South Korea and head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s department for world Jewry and world religions, and Ofir Dayan, author of Intifada Globalized, about young Westerners’ turn away from Israel — characterized Israel’s image problem as a danger to its security.

“Everyone knows that there is a huge hasbara problem for Israel,” Tor said, using a Hebrew word that translates to “explaining” and is used to describe Israel’s efforts to portray the country in a positive light. “We tried to see what was unique in this moment … through a politically neutral perspective.”

Dayan noted that “it’s become a real issue of national security when Israel faces sanctions and countries are not willing to sell weapons. It affects Israel’s ability to execute plans and achieve its goals, and has a direct influence on Israel’s capability to fight.”

She added, “Since Oct. 7, we see a shift happening not only among youth and young adults, but it’s reaching positions of power, like [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani and elsewhere.”

Dayan said that there is nothing new about the rhetoric or harassment of Israeli and pro-Israel students abroad — she encountered it personally as an undergraduate and graduate student at Columbia University in 2017-2022 — but “what is unique about this moment is that people who supported terrorist organizations and the destruction of the State of Israel, sanctions and boycotts are no longer hiding behind the facade of human rights. Individuals, organizations and countries are taking steps they have not taken before to significantly harm Israel’s national security.”

One example she gave was European Union member states taking steps toward canceling the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which would downgrade relations between Israel and its largest trading partner. In addition, she said academic boycotts of Israel, both overt and covert, are much broader than in the past.

Israel is also in the unprecedented situation in which its prime minister is under criminal indictment at the Hague and faces genocide charges at the International Court of Justice.

“I was consul-general in San Francisco during Operation Cast Lead [in 2008-2009],” Tor said, “and people talked about genocide when 3,000 [Palestinians] were killed … but now it’s at the ICJ and [former Deputy Secretary of State] Wendy Sherman is using the term. Things that existed in the past have now reached a level we haven’t seen before.” 

The intended audience for Dayan and Tor’s 40-page paper, currently available only in Hebrew, is the Israeli government.

“We’ve seen clumsiness by Israel in the past, but I don’t think we’ve seen this level of dysfunction,” Tor said. “The clearest expression of this is … probably that at Israel’s worst moment of crisis, the job [of head of national public diplomacy directorate] was not filled for 2.5 years.”

At the outset of the Gaza war, Moshik Aviv held the position, but resigned in early 2024. This week, Israel’s Cabinet authorized the appointment of former Deputy Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the U.K. Tzipi Hotovely to fill the role.

“The system is not being run,” Tor said. “We spoke to journalists and newspaper editors about the way the media was simply not handled for the most part. The greatest example is Charlie Kirk’s letter to Netanyahu in May last year, where he said the only people defending Israel on [American] TV are you and me. Where are the Israeli spokespeople?”

Tor said that “internal political constraints” are behind much of the dysfunction, which has led to “self-censorship.”

For example, Israel allowed hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza each day for most of the war, but had Cabinet ministers and other political figures claim Israel was not in order to appeal to their far-right political bases.

“That’s a very dangerous situation for Israel. It’s very difficult to address Israel’s image problems seriously if the government is not interested in doing so,” Tor said. “I’m not aware of a situation [in the past] in which Israel’s government did not want to explain itself.”

Tor lamented that “Israel is judged by the statements of its most extreme ministers or members of Knesset who spoke. That is part of the politicization; the government is mute about its intentions, probably because of internal tensions within the government, and then the most extreme say we will destroy Gaza — it caused and is continuing to cause tremendous damage to Israel.”

Even if the government had done a better job, the fact that the war in Gaza lasted for two years posed immense challenges.

“Israel cannot fight for more than two years with the kinds of images it creates and avoid deep international isolation,” Tor posited. 

The second half of Tor and Dayan’s paper provides suggestions for improvement.

One is to empower one governmental body to be in charge of public diplomacy across the entire government, including drafting messages, recruiting figures to spread those messages and measuring impact.

“We are realistic,” Dayan said. “No one is going to close government offices that are doing the exact same work, but we need one body that will say ‘this is the message Israel is trying to convey’ and make sure all of the relevant ministries are in line with it.”

Dayan served in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit during her mandatory military service and again as a reservist in recent years, and said that “the IDF has no one telling them what to say. That is not the right process. [The government needs to] dictate one message so that all agencies and ministries will speak in one voice.”

There are four different government offices speaking for Israel on social media, and they do not work together, both Tor and Dayan pointed out.

“They’re all producing content that is very unlikely to become viral or speak to anyone under age 40,” Dayan said.

Tor said that, for Hotovely to be effective in her new role, she will have to have a voice at the Cabinet table. 

“If there is going to be a plan to flatten Bint Jbeil [in Lebanon], she will have to say what that means for Israel’s image,” he said.

One step they suggested that Israel take immediately is a public diplomacy campaign to defend Israel against charges of genocide, ahead of the decision from the ICJ. 

“Israel’s defense effort must include a strong public relations campaign using all available resources to prove Israel’s innocence before the ICJ and the court of world opinion,” they wrote. “The genocide charge is weak and specious, but Israel may lose its case if the hostile political agenda attempting to influence the court is not adequately countered.”

The report also suggests that Israel facilitate cooperation between Diaspora Jewry and Christian Zionists, something that Tor said was always a challenge when he led the Israeli Foreign Ministry department for world Jewry and world religions.

“Evangelicals are Israel’s friends, and liberal Jews are Israel’s friends, but they are very polarized from each other in American politics,” he pointed out. “This crisis moment may enable an opportunity for a new kind of cooperation, because both Jewish communities who love Israel and the pro-Israel Christians are under attack from the left and right.”

“We should come together to think about how to defend the basic legitimacy of Zionism,” he added.

Among their suggestions for those populations are to ensure 70,000 young Jews visit Israel on Birthright programs annually, and 100,000 young Christians do the same on a similar program each year. In addition, they call to encourage liberal rabbinical students and heads of liberal North American Jewish congregations to conduct study visits to Israel.

The INSS researchers also say that higher education is one of the most important spheres in which Israel can operate.

“Many Western university presidents would like to come back and work with Israeli institutions,” Dayan said. “They understand the academic excellence Israeli universities bring with them. But as of now, there is no concrete plan to rebuild those relations.” 

The Association of University Heads – Israel wrote a plan that it submitted to the government, which has not adopted it, she noted.

The paper suggested the government start a $100 million fund to “jump-start Israeli research.” The report also suggests flying presidents of 100 top-rated universities and academic institutions with many Jewish students to Israel over the next 18 months, so they can return and tell their boards why they should work with Israel.

Another element of their plan is a reimagining of Israeli outreach in Arabic and Persian.

Asked if they would suggest that laws be passed requiring the government to not leave positions empty in this field, or to allocate a certain amount of funds, Dayan said that “Israeli governments find creative ways to bypass laws when they need it. We need more public awareness and for the Israeli public to demand these roles be filled and that this issue of national security be addressed.”

“We don’t vote according to who promises to better Israel’s international standing, so I think decision-makers get this cue that we don’t care,” Dayan added. “But post-Oct. 7, [Israelis] care more and more. When Israeli discharged soldiers can’t travel the world because they risk getting arrested, this is an issue more and more people in Israel are going to care about. … We need to force politicians to address it as well.”

A prominent moderate Democratic think tank is continuing to call out Democratic candidates for being “too cozy” with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker, who has been embraced by several left-wing Democrats in recent months.

In his latest statement, Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way, condemned Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for his upcoming rallies with Piker, first reported by Politico, set to take place on April 7 at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan alongside Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA).

“It is morally repugnant and strategically self-defeating for Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed and Members of Congress like Summer Lee to cozy up to antisemitic extremists like Hasan Piker,” Cowan said. “Anyone eager to campaign with Hasan Piker is, at best, comfortable overlooking his antisemitic and anti-American extremism and, at worst, endorsing it.”

Cowan referenced a Wall Street Journal editorial he co-authored with Third Way’s Lily Cohen last week, titled “Democrats Are Too Cozy With Hasan Piker,” in which the two urged Democrats to follow the lead of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in calling out antisemitism in their own party.

“Piker’s depravity rivals that of far-right bigots. We will not defeat the surge of antisemitism in America without taking on its most influential proponents on our own side,” Cowan’s statement continued. “Embracing extreme bigots like Piker, who, for starters, has called religious Jews ‘inbred’ and said ‘America deserved 9/11,’ is not only dangerous and wrong, but antithetical to the urgent work of winning over the middle and defeating Trumpism.”

Other Democrats, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), have also embraced Piker, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently pledged to appear on Piker’s popular Twitch stream.

Tim Chapman, the president of former Vice President Mike Pence’s think tank, said on Monday that he expects his Advancing American Freedom organization to poach more staffers from the Heritage Foundation after announcing the hiring of 15 individuals from the embattled conservative organization.

Advancing American Freedom, founded by Pence in 2021 to advocate for classical conservative principles as President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement cemented its hold on parts of the Republican Party, announced on Monday that 15 Heritage staffers, including three senior officials from the think tank’s legal, economic and data teams, would be moving to AAF at the start of the new year. Chapman, who has been leading the recruitment effort, predicted more Heritage staffers would resign amid continuing frustration over Heritage President Kevin Roberts’ refusal to disavow Tucker Carlson for his platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

“Why I’m so excited about this big move today is because it really supercharges our efforts to be able to be a policy leader on the Capitol Hill and helps us create an institution that will be valuable to policy entrepreneurs,” Chapman told Jewish Insider in an interview on Monday. “These 15 hires that came today will not be the last 15. We expect to see other people leave Heritage and go to AAF and other places as well. We are happy to welcome them.”

Richard Stern, who led Heritage’s economic policy group, and Kevin Dayaratna, who served as Heritage’s chief statistician, were two of the senior officials from the embattled think tank joining AAF along with some members of their team. They are being joined by John Malcolm, Heritage’s vice president of its Institute for Constitutional Government and director of the organization’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, who will relocate the center, named for former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, to AAF. 

Chapman helped launch and lead Heritage Action, the think tank’s grassroots advocacy arm, and served as chief of staff to the late Heritage cofounder Edwin J. Feulner during part of his 36-year tenure as the organization’s president. He told JI that AAF began a $15 million fundraising campaign last month to cover the expenses of hiring the outgoing Heritage staffers and raised $13 million within two weeks. 

“We viewed this as a big opportunity to accelerate our growth plans, to become that institution that we’re building. It all happened very fast,” Chapman said.

Chapman said AAF’s quick success with fundraising suggested to him that “there is a market out there amongst conservative philanthropists for reorganization on the right. There were a lot of new donors who came in because they saw the value in the project and the importance of having an institution like the one I’m describing, and a lot of our current donors who stepped up and gave more.”

“It also says to me that there is a very heightened awareness of the downfall of institutions like Heritage, who have shifted their focus,” he explained.

“I look at it as the conservative movement reorganizing itself. The Heritage team that we are bringing over today, these are principled conservatives more in the traditional conservative camp. They wouldn’t think of themselves as nationalist conservatives, or not even necessarily MAGA conservatives,” Chapman said of the Heritage recruits. “There are a lot of things that MAGA fights for that we might be aligned on, but they would view themselves that way [from a more traditional standpoint], and they very much had been feeling stifled over the last two years at the Heritage Foundation.”

“Heritage had been creating an environment internally where the organization’s role as a traditional think tank that stood outside of the Republican Party was not the business plan for the future of the Heritage Foundation,” he added. “They started to think of themselves more as an outside enforcer for the MAGA nationalist perspective, and really began to orient themselves around personalities, whether it’s President Trump or [Vice President] JD Vance or other personalities that hold significant cachet on the right.”

Pence accused the Heritage Foundation of “abandoning its principles” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on AAF’s recruitment effort. “Why these people are coming our way is that Heritage and some other voices and commentators have embraced big-government populism and have been willing to tolerate antisemitism,” Pence told the outlet. 

A Heritage spokesperson did not respond to JI’s request for comment on Chapman’s comments or on AAF recruiting more than a dozen of their staffers, though Andy Olivastro, Heritage’s chief advancement officer, was critical of the former employees in a statement to the Journal. 

“Our mission is unchanged, and our leadership is strong and decisive,” Olivastro said. “Heritage has always welcomed debate, but alignment on mission and loyalty to the institution are non-negotiable. A handful of staff chose a different path — some through disruption, others through disloyalty.”

Walk into any think tank in Washington and you’re likely to bump into more than a few so-called “Iran watchers”: researchers whose job is to try to interpret the actions of the often-opaque Iranian regime and help policymakers figure out how to approach the Islamic Republic. 

Given the adversarial relationship between Washington and Tehran, making sense of the two nations’ policy choices toward each other is big business. But according to some Iranians, something is missing. 

“Most of the people who are working on Iran, they have never been to Iran. Americans, I mean. That brings with itself certain limitations,” said Mehdi Parpanchi, who was born in Iran but now lives in Washington. The U.S. does not have a diplomatic presence in Iran, and vice versa. “In my opinion, the image of Iran is not being seen properly from outside the country.” 

Parpanchi is the director of U.S. news at Iran International, one of the biggest independent Persian-language news outlets in the world. Based in London, Iran International broadcasts inside of Iran via satellite — much to the chagrin of Iranian officials, who have called the network a terrorist organization. It also reaches Iranians expats and dissidents around the world. While the network mainly operates with the goal of offering independent news from an anti-regime perspective to the global Iranian diaspora, Iran International also serves as a crucial source to Iran watchers of all stripes, including those who have never set foot in the country. 

“There is always a decade of delay between the reality inside Iran and how it is being seen from the West, especially from the U.S.,” Parpanchi, who moved to Washington in 2020 to launch a U.S. headquarters for Iran International, told Jewish Insider last month. 

A new show from Iran International, filmed in Washington and broadcast around the world, aims to at least partly remedy that problem. “Iran International Insight,” which launched in June, pledges to put Iran International viewers who live in Iran in conversation with the political figures and diplomats across the world whose policy choices will affect their lives. 

“The concept was that there’s a tremendous opportunity for policymakers and experts in D.C., but especially policymakers, to be engaging with and taking questions from the Iranian people directly,” said Aaron Lobel, a co-producer of the new show and the founder and president of America Abroad Media, an international media organization.

The growth of Iran International’s programming in Washington comes after the Trump administration slashed funding for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which supports independent outlets such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL) and Middle East Broadcasting Networks that air pro-democracy content around the world. Parpanchi previously spent two years at RFERL, which has a Persian-language branch. 

Iran International is not expressly trying to fill that niche, and the new program was in the works starting in 2024, before Trump even came to office. Regardless, the new program arrives at a time that America has pulled back from cultural diplomacy. 

“This is in the best traditions of the United States. It advances American values and it advances American interests,” said Lobel. “The more credible media organizations outside Iran that are trying to reach the Iranian people with information and to give them some sense of hope as well — the more the better.” 

So far, three interviews — hourlong conversations between one or two guests and an Iran International anchor — have been filmed, all in front of a live audience, including many Iranians who live and work in Washington. Iran International’s producers and journalists solicit questions from the network’s viewers in Iran. The interviews take place in English, but they are dubbed in Persian before being aired.

“I’ve met with groups of Iranian diaspora, who have family in Iran and who are activists with them. But I don’t think I received online questions like that,” Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, who was the first guest, told JI. “That was the primary agenda, to speak to the people.” 

Leiter’s interview with Iran International was a journalistic gold mine for the network: scheduled in advance, it happened to come at a particularly timely moment, hours after President Donald Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran at the end of the countries’ 12-day war in June. Leiter touted Israel’s military victories in its campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Yet many Iranians wondered why Israel would attack Iran, but ultimately not seek to remove the ayatollah from power. (Hundreds of questions were submitted.)

“One of the themes that came out that was so striking was, of course, many Iranians wanted Israel to continue the campaign, and they were, I think it’s fair to say, you could hear in that show, disappointed that Israel stopped the war. Or to put it differently, they were upset that the Israeli government had, in their view, raised their expectations of ‘regime change’ and then failed to deliver,” said Lobel. 

Leiter offered unusually candid responses to those questions, going beyond the diplomatic language that would’ve gotten the job done even if leaving viewers unsatisfied. 

“I appreciated the opportunity to explain why we weren’t going to go further and actually topple the regime by force,” Leiter explained. “I understand them. Remember when the chancellor of Germany said that Israel is doing the ‘dirty work’ for the world? I guess that the people wanted us to do the work completely for the world. But we can’t do that. And it was important for me to be able to explain that.”

Two other programs were recorded this fall. One featured Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy in Trump’s first term, and Dennis Ross, a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy who previously held several high-level jobs at the State Department in Democratic and Republican administrations. Another featured former CIA official Norman Roule and Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Iran International’s main Instagram account has 16 million followers, and video clips from the Roule-Dubowitz event got about 1 million views each.

Those four experts have different ideological backgrounds, but each falls closer to the hawkish end of the spectrum on Iran. So does Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who was scheduled to appear in an interview in September before the congressional schedule led Cotton to cancel. (Parpanchi said they hope to reschedule.) 

Parpanchi said Iran International aims to include a broad range of perspectives from Washington, noting that the program is only just beginning. 

“It’s not only hawkish. There are other people who have different views about Iran, and we will reflect them all,” Parpanchi said. Iran International plans to ramp up to a more regular filming schedule in 2026.