VOA Persian journalist says he was fired over coverage of Reza Pahlavi 

A journalist with Voice of America’s (VOA) Persian service said he was fired this week over efforts to limit coverage of Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.

Ahmad Batebi, a prominent Iranian dissident, human rights activist and American journalist, said he was given no explanation for why his contract was terminated but blamed it on efforts to curb coverage of Pahlavi.

The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency overseeing the VOA, said it doesn’t comment on personnel matters. A spokesperson for USAGM further pushed back on accusations of censorship, saying VOA Persian has sent Pahlavi an open invitation to be interviewed on its programming.

Batebi said his firing came days after he had a confrontation with VOA Persian-language service senior adviser Ali Javanmardi about censorship. Batebi said interviews he conducted with eyewitnesses and to families of those killed during protests in Iran were blocked from publication because the interviewees talked about their support for Pahlavi. 

“All of these people — whose original interview files are in my possession — stated that they took to the streets in response to the call of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and that they did so with the explicit goal of toppling the Islamic Republic,” Batebi wrote in an email to The Hill, explaining what he believed led to his firing.

“Ali Javanmardi repeatedly told me (always verbally, never in writing) that I was not allowed to include any of the eyewitnesses’ statements about support for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, or any of the pro-Pahlavi slogans chanted in the streets in my television reports or in the articles I wrote for the VOA website,” he continued.

“Every time a report went on air or was published without these statements, the interviewees messaged me accusing me of censorship and fabrication.”

The Hill reported earlier this year about allegations of censorship at VOA’s Persian-language service focused on Pahlavi. VOA staffers told The Hill that Javanmardi was excluding coverage of Pahlavi or protesters chanting his name, silencing guests from discussing Pahlavi and skewing Trump’s position toward the crown prince.

Kari Lake, the chief of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has repeatedly issued statements that VOA Persian is excluding coverage of Pahlavi to avoid promoting his profile or favoring coverage of any one person. The spokesperson also pointed to these statements when asked about Batebi.

VOA’s Persian-language service is viewed as a critical tool in disseminating the U.S. government position to Persian-language speakers in Iran amid the war.

Batebi spent nearly a decade in an Iranian prison. In 1999, he was photographed at a protest in Iran holding up the bloodied shirt of a fellow demonstrator who had been shot. The photo ran on the cover of the July 17 edition of The Economist and newspapers worldwide. 

Batebi was arrested after the photos’ publication and sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to 15 years. But he made a daring escape while on medical leave in which he was smuggled out of Iran over the border to Iraq, with the help of Iranian-Kurds, and received humanitarian parole in the United States. He later became an American citizen. 

In January, Batebi was invited to testify at the United Nations Security Council on protests roiling Iran in which at least 7,000 people were killed under a brutal crackdown — although some groups estimate the number of dead could be as high as 30,000. 

In emotional testimony, Batebi recounted his death sentence, solitary confinement, mock executions and torture before escaping prison. At one point, Batebi chastised Iran’s representative at the meeting for laughing during his remarks and warned justice would be served. 

“You tried to kill me, but you couldn’t … don’t laugh sir, don’t laugh at me, because a day come … and you have to go to court and answer for all those things you do here today sir,” he said.  

“Don’t laugh at me.” 

Batebi told The Hill that he is committed to objectivity in his journalism reports even if he holds personal opinions supporting Pahlavi. 

“I support who the people support,” he said. 

“But the moment you work as a journalist, in any organization you follow the rules and do not break any rules and you have to consider the morality of your job and I did that,” he said.

“Professionally I do not put my personal opinion in my reports.”

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