Sad Realities about Life, People, and Voice of America

I wrote this article 17 years ago and began my campaign against the VOA. Throughout these years, we continuously urged the leadership to change their strategy, but they refused to listen. Eventually, we had no choice but to advocate for shutting down the entire network. Today, after 17 years, I am thrilled to see that our campaign was successful, and the entire network has been closed. Don't worry—we already have plans for an alternative. Stay tuned!"

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My name is Saman Sanatnama and I am a 24- years old student majoring in Civil Engineering in London. Just to tell you a little bit about myself. I was part of “International Visitor Leadership Program” through the State Department last year. A group of young Iranians including myself came to the US for three weeks. We met with a lot of American officials, visited college campuses and informed Americans, and some American officials about Iran. We also learned about the wonderful land of USA. This was an honor for me.

As part of our tour, we visited “Voice of America Persian Service” and have been told that VOA Persian service received millions of dollars for more broadcast to Iran. This was heartwarming news. When I went back to London, I kept in touch with some of the producers and staff at VOA to tell them about our activities in London.

As many of you may know, London has a large population of Iranians and there are a lot of cultural and political activities among the Iranians.

Besides my school work, I am also involved with an organization called, “Confederation of Iranian Students.” Our goal is to educate Iranians in the United Kingdom and brief the British officials and the academia about the situation in Iran.

We also have activities such as soccer team, concerts, and parties where young Iranians get together and learn about the issues. As our activities were growing, I contacted VOA and asked one of the guest producers, Mr. Faraj Ardalan if he would invite us so we can talk about our activities. He said, “Since you are friends with Amir Abbas Fakhravar, the former political prisoner, we can not bring you or discuss your group on our show.”

I was shocked and thought to myself, I and many Iranians escaped Iran to have freedom of speech and freedom of press, yet this basic right was taken away from me and my group. I kept contacting the producers and staff and was given the same answer. “Sorry, you are friends with Fakhravar and we can not invite you to our show.”

I then contacted Mr. Alireza Nourizadeh, a well known veteran journalist who is based in London and who is a contributor to VOA for many years to set up a meeting to discuss the issue. Our group went to see him in his office. He promised us that he will solve the issue. I learned another sad reality. Mr. Nourizadeh was more worried about collecting his pay checks from VOA than trying to help the young Iranians.

On so many occasions he has preached our group that he will serve as a mentor and guide us. Wrong again. Money takes precedent to people for Mr. Nourizadeh.

I then decided to travel to Washington, DC to visit a few colleges for my post graduate degree and possibly meet with some VOA staff. I was staying with my good friend, Amir A. Fakhravar in his DC home. Amir was preparing for his International Conference in Rome.





I even took pictures of Amir as he was preparing his speech. Two days later, I received a call from a good friend of mine who is also like a big brother to me, Potkin Azarmehr.





Potkin told me that he was watching the VOA program “News Talk” hosted by Mr. Jamshid Chaharlengi. Chaharlengi and a VOA reporter from Italy Mr. Ahmad Rafat made fun of Fakhravar’s presence in Rome and further Mr. Rafat lied about Fakhravar.

Rafat said, even though the conference was about democracy and Islam but Fakhravar talked about himself and his experiences in jail. Potkin attended this conference in Italy with Fakhravar and said this was a 2 day conference. The first day, there was a panel on the political dissidents, where the panel was about sharing your memories and your experiences. However, on the second day of the conference, Fakhravar was on a panel that talked about
“Regime Change from Within.” He talked about the School Fundamentalism in Iran.

This incident added to my frustration for all the unfair treatments at VOA that receives millions of US tax dollars.

I called Mr. Chaharlengi and told him why did they have such an unprofessional programming and his comment was, “be polite.”

I said I am being polite; you are being unprofessional allowing your reporter to lie. He said, “Mr. Rafat is a veteran journalist that can not be questioned.”

Mr. Chaharlengi was so selfish and so self consumed as if he is the “Cooper Anderson of CNN.” He kept saying he doesn’t have time, and made excuses.

I then called Mr. Ahmad Rafat, the VOA reporter in Italy. I asked him, “Why did you lie about Fakhravar?” He hung up on me. I called again and again, someone in Italian spoke and said he is not there.

I called the next morning and told him, I left you a message and asked you to call me back. He said,“leave me alone, I am not a VOA reporter. These were my personal observations. I did not attend the conference as a reporter.”

Mr. Rafat clearly lied, because if you go and watch the VOA “News Talk” program on December 13, you will see that he was introduced as the VOA reporter in this conference and the chyron under his name said, Ahmad Rafat, VOA reporter.





I called the next morning and Mr. Rafat called me, “pedarsag.” (This is a horrible term in Farsi meaning you son of a “bitch) He also raised his voice and cursed at me and my parents saying that it doesn’t look that I come from a good background.

I thought to myself, not only VOA is betraying the Iranian people with the US tax payer’s money but these unprofessional individuals like Rafat, and Chaharlengi do not have the decency to listen to criticism.

Since I had one day left of my two week journey in Washington, DC, I decided to go on a protest front of VOA.

I called Mr. Abbas Malayeri, who is known to be the Father of VOA Persian service, and asked him for some guidance. He the legendary veteran reporter who was one of the founding fathers of VOA told me. “I am disappointed at VOA programming. What happened to our mission statement and the VOA charter?”

He and his wonderful wife, Marie gave me the inspiration to practice the freedom of speech in this land of freedom. After all, we the Iranians left our country because we did not have freedom.

I went to the local CVS and bought a white board and some markers. I wrote on the board,
“Stop wasting US tax dollars, Sheila Gandji Must Leave, the Iranians Deserve a Better Broadcast to Iran.”



It was a super cold morning, and I was a little excited and felt a sense of liberation that even though people like Sheila Gandji, Ahamad Rafat, and Jamshid Chaharlengi have stopped me from speaking but this country allows me to display my dissatisfaction.

Here is my experience from my 5 hours of protest front of VOA in Washington, DC

It was Friday, December 14, at 6:30 AM. I took my board and stood front of the main door of VOA. I stood there for 20 minutes. The security asked for my ID and told me, “this is the government land you need to go a little farther from the area. “ I did.

I saw the VOA Persian staff arrive one by one. I knew most of them by their first name. I started saying, Good Morning.

Payam Yazdian, one of the anchors arrived in his almost brand new silver Toyota. He completely ignored me and left. Then there was Behravan Brothers, Behnood Mokri,
Vafa Mostaghim and the rest of them.

The only staff who cared to stop was, Ms. Hamideh Aramide. She seemed sincere and told me that she wished she could take me to her show, but she couldn’t. I found her to be a nice lady.

What I found interesting was my good friends who worked at VOA and all of a sudden because of their fear of Sheila Gandji and losing of their salary would ignore me.

My good friend, Reza Saber, who we spent a lot of time last year and met a few officials in DC, completely ignored me.

Kourosh Sehati, another good friend of mine, the student activist who sold his soul for money to VOA, was also another disappointment. He first ignored me, but when I called his name, he stopped. Kourosh was giving me a big lecture about how the Fakhravar phenomenon had turned into a personal issue. I became mad and asked Kourosh to “stop.”

Kourosh is the man who is suppose to defend the rights of Iranians who are suffering in Iran and kourosh is the man who spent years in jail with Fakhravar was now selling himself and his mission to a salary of about $3500.00. I became really sad, that how Kourosh sold his soul for such cheap price.

The weather was getting colder and my fingers were feeling numb. My legs were becoming more tired, because of what I witnessed. I saw how the VOA Persian staff comes in and signs in, and then they all came out to get coffee.

I saw individuals like Vafa Mostaghim and Kambiz Hosseini took long cigarette breaks after they sign in. It all made me really sad. I thought to myself, my Iranian friends are counting on such programming, and I didn’t see the employees of the Persian Service at VOA seemed reliable to fulfill the mission.

I looked at my clock. It was time for me to go back to take an online exam. I was freezing and starving.

I went to the Mc Donald’s across from VOA and bought a deluxe breakfast. As I was eating the hot breakfast I realized, I was blessed to practice my freedom and democracy in the US.

I hope one day my country Iran will be free so we could all have the freedom of speech, press and religion.

God Bless all the freedom loving countries and God bless the United States of America.