A US projectile hit a 150-ton cargo dhow from Sirik in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province in the Sea of Oman early on Thursday, Sirik governor said.
Reza Shahidian said the dhow had five crew members, who were rescued with help from passing vessels and transferred to Oman.
The vessel was hit five miles from Oman’s Khasab port while carrying basic goods from Khasab toward Sirik, he said.
The report, by Jay Solomon, said US officials and documents reviewed by The Free Press show Parsi has become a target of the State Department investigation as Secretary of State Marco Rubio seeks to counter Iranian influence inside the United States.
Parsi, 51, was born in Iran, raised in Sweden and has lived in the United States for more than 25 years. He is a green-card holder and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank that argues for diplomacy, military restraint and a smaller US military role overseas.
The State Department declined to discuss Parsi’s immigration status, The Free Press said. Parsi and Quincy did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment.
The investigation places one of the most prominent critics of the US-Israel war against Iran at the center of a broader fight over who shapes Washington’s Iran debate.
Since the war began, Parsi has appeared across left-wing, mainstream and even pro-MAGA platforms arguing that Trump faces a quagmire and that Washington should seek a deal with Tehran.
His critics say that position fits a much longer pattern: opposing sanctions and military pressure, amplifying Tehran’s warnings, and presenting policies favorable to the Islamic Republic as anti-war realism. Parsi has denied wrongdoing and has said such criticism is an effort to silence opponents of Trump’s Iran policy.
The Free Press cited a Trump administration official saying the State Department is reviewing people whose work is seen as helping US adversaries. “Anyone who seeks to undermine the US, we’re taking a hard look at,” the official said.
Parsi has long been a divisive figure among Iranian Americans. In 2002, he founded the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC, which described itself as a voice for Iranian Americans and later became one of the most visible organizations advocating engagement with Tehran.
In 2020, Republican senators Tom Cotton, Mike Braun and Ted Cruz asked the Justice Department to examine whether NIAC should register as a foreign agent, accusing it of amplifying Iranian government propaganda. No investigation or enforcement action was publicly announced.
The Free Press also revisited Parsi’s defamation lawsuit against Iranian American journalist Hassan Daioleslam, who had accused Parsi and NIAC of advancing Tehran’s interests. The lawsuit was dismissed. Emails disclosed in the case showed Parsi had corresponded with Iran’s then-UN ambassador, who later became foreign minister, about meetings with US lawmakers and policy conferences.
The latest report also points to Parsi’s family and professional ecosystem. His brother, Rouzbeh Parsi, helped create the Iran Experts Initiative, a network of Iranian scholars and analysts formed in 2014 as nuclear talks with world powers intensified.
The initiative was first exposed in 2023 by Iran International and Semafor, based on thousands of Iranian Foreign Ministry emails. The documents showed Iranian officials sought to cultivate overseas analysts and academics who could promote Tehran’s positions on the nuclear talks in Western media and policy circles.
The Free Press said Trita Parsi’s name did not appear in the Foreign Ministry emails as a member of the initiative. But it quoted critics who argued that the work of the two brothers should be viewed as part of a broader effort to weaken pressure on Tehran and normalize engagement with the Islamic Republic.
Rouzbeh Parsi has denied cooperating with Tehran. A later investigation by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, his former employer, found no evidence that he was paid by Iran or controlled by it. But it concluded that he had been a principal creator of the initiative and had failed to disclose its work to the institute, Sweden’s foreign ministry or Lund University. The institute ended his employment in May 2025.
The Iran Experts Initiative revelations also drew attention in Washington because one of its founding members, Ariane Tabatabai, later held a senior Defense Department role under the Biden administration.
Republican lawmakers pressed the Pentagon and FBI to ensure members of the initiative were not in positions to influence US policy or access sensitive intelligence. Tabatabai’s current employer has defended her record and said she had passed security reviews under multiple administrations.
The controversy around Parsi has not been limited to Washington. In February, the German Institute for Global and Area Studies canceled a Berlin event featuring him after public backlash from Iranian activists and opponents of the Islamic Republic.
The institute cited security concerns, while critics said Western institutions should not offer unchallenged platforms to figures they accuse of echoing Tehran’s policy line.
The Free Press report said Quincy had prepared for a possible legal fight. In an April memo reviewed by the outlet, Quincy CEO Lora Lumpe said the think tank’s chairman had agreed to cover legal costs to prepare for, and if necessary fight, what she called a “deportation attack on Trita.”
The memo said Quincy was retaining an immigration lawyer and preparing a habeas corpus petition in case Parsi was suddenly detained by immigration authorities.
The report also said Parsi’s recent criticism of the Iran war has been noticed in Tehran. Photos circulated last month by Iranian activists showed banners bearing his face on a Tehran overpass and lamppost, alongside a quote attributed to him saying Trump’s “failed war” had destroyed Washington’s ability to make military threats.
For critics, those images captured the central question around Parsi’s career: why a Washington analyst’s arguments are repeatedly useful to Tehran at moments when US pressure on the Islamic Republic is at stake.
For his defenders, the case raises a different concern: whether the Trump administration is using immigration powers to punish lawful political speech and dissent over war policy.
That tension makes the Parsi investigation more than a dispute over one analyst’s status. It is now part of a wider battle over Iranian influence, free speech, immigration power and the long-running struggle to define US policy toward Tehran.
