Two Wednesday mornings ago, I got an email from a journalist friend in Tehran. The conservative Iranian newspaper Kayhan has targeted you, he warned.  I poured a cup of coffee, sat at my kitchen table in New York and googled my name in Persian. I had returned to the U.S. in 2014 after 11 years covering the Middle East for The Wall Street Journal from bases in Baghdad and Beirut.  As page after page of Iranian news reports popped up, I gasped. The articles claimed that I was an American spy. My heart raced. “Who was the liaison between Washington and the seditious movement?” asked the story in Kayhan, which included a twisted account of my career. Kayhan is owned by the Iranian government, and its editor in chief, Hossein Shariatmadari, is an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  “Journalist or the agent of coup?” was the headline on Mashregh News. “Report card for a woman of Iranian descent,” said Tasnim, a website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards Corps, accusing me of fabrication and spying.  These conservative media outlets and others claimed to have uncovered, at last, the missing link between Washington and the opposition Green Movement, which arose after Iran’s disputed 2009 election, only to be brutally suppressed by the regime within a year. Their evidence: a Forbes magazine piece by the American writer Michael Ledeen that had appeared in early August.  Mr. Ledeen claimed that a man who worked on Wall Street and was close to Sen. Charles Schumer had acted as a go-between for the Obama administration and the Green Movement during the 2009 uprisings. The articles attacking me concluded that “Wall Street”—that is, the financial world—was synonymous with “The Wall Street Journal” and that I was the unnamed go-between (despite being a woman rather than a man). “A close examination,” Kayhan declared, shows that this person could be no other than “Farnaz Fassihi.”  Despite the absurdity of these charges, seeing your name in the same sentence with the word “spy” is deeply unsettling, especially in publications that are closely connected to the Iranian regime and have a long track record of targeting Iranian-American journalists. We are a vulnerable bunch, with greater access because of our family identities, language skills and Iranian passports but also suspect because we are American and represent American media outlets. The usual immunity of foreign citizenship doesn’t apply to us.  Examples abound. The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian is an Iranian-American journalist currently jailed by Iran and accused of being a spy. He has been in prison for more than a year, and a final court verdict is expected any day. On Aug. 10, the Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, called his trial a “sham” and Mr. Rezaian “a dedicated, law-abiding journalist.” Mr. Rezaian’s mother told the Post last week that the family is expecting a long, harsh sentence.  In 2009, Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and correspondent for Newsweek in Tehran, was convicted of conspiring against the regime and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He spent four months in jail before being released under international pressure, but the regime didn’t exonerate him.  Iran’s hard-liners have long found it useful to demonize the U.S.—and have long feared being toppled by their own unhappy citizenry. After the false initial report in Kayhan, the campaign against me and the Journal expanded over the next few days. An article in Tasnim called the Journal the “media headquarters of a soft revolution against Iran” and called me an agent of U.S. intelligence. The story went viral on Persian websites, including ones dedicated to shopping and fashion.  A member of Iran’s parliament then called for the judiciary to investigate the case, and Tehran’s prosecutor’s office promptly published details of a supposed letter they allege the Journal passed from the opposition to Washington. Another lawmaker insinuated that I was a prostitute.  Readers posting comments on these stories called for me to be put on trial for treason and, in one case, to have my bones thrown to the dogs. Photographs of me were taken from online and circulated with the allegations. My journalism awards were called trophies for my supposed intelligence work.  I watched all this unfold with horror and dismay. Even though I was safe in the U.S., the country of my birth, it was rattling to feel the propaganda machine of the country of my heritage unleashed against me.  Why were they attacking me now? What would this do to my reputation as a journalist? What would my relatives living in Iran think? And most important: Could I ever go back to Iran?  The constraints of reporting from Iran aren’t new. Western journalists there learn to navigate the surveillance, the interrogations, the possibility of having press credentials revoked and of being detained. Iranian reporters have it even tougher.  I have been covering Iran for U.S. media organizations for two decades, starting as a Tehran-based stringer in the early 1990s and then as a visiting staff correspondent for the Journal and other U.S. papers. I’ve chronicled presidential elections, uprisings, the lives of young people and Iran’s growing influence in Iraq and Syria.  I was interrogated on four occasions while on assignment for the Journal in Tehran over the years. The interrogators, always cordial, called them “interviews.” They lasted up to three hours, and I was asked a torrent of personal and professional questions: What are the names of four of your best American friends? Do you have contacts with the U.S. military in Iraq? What is your favorite food? Who have you interviewed in Iran?  The most ominous encounter occurred one summer morning in June 2009, amid the violent crackdown. I received a phone call from a trusted contact at the Ministry of Information and Guidance, who asked in a shaky voice whether I was OK.  “They’ve started a rumor that snipers spotted The Wall Street Journal reporter and shot her in the protests,” said the contact. “Take this as a sign of warning.”  I was undeterred. In Iran as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, journalistic duty trumped security concerns for me. That afternoon, during more Green Movement protests, I watched with horror in Tehran’s Vanak Square as a young man was shot fatally in the neck just a few steps away from me by a gang of plain-clothed, regime-backed militiamen on motorcycles who opened fire on a crowd of civilian protesters.  Since I left Iran in 2009, Iranian officials have repeatedly told me and the Journal that I am not allowed to go back as a reporter. When I inquired about making a personal visit, I was told that I was welcome to do so but that they couldn’t guarantee my safety.  Journalist friends and activist sources jailed during the 2009 protests contacted me after they were released to warn me against going back to Iran. They said that during interrogations in the Revolutionary Guard’s notorious ward in Tehran’s Evin Prison, they were questioned for hours about my work.  Being smeared as a spy has taken a personal toll too. I was raised to take pride in the homeland that my family left behind shortly after the start of the Iran-Iraq War. I miss Iran—the majestic Alborz Mountains, the ancient chenar trees that form a canopy over Valiasr Street in Tehran. It is heartbreaking to think that I may never again have tea and sugar cookies with my aging grandmother or be able to place flowers on my father’s grave.  I take comfort in knowing that even my grandmother, who longs to see me one more time, has never asked me to stop doing what I do.  Write to Farnaz Fassihi at farnaz.fassihi@wsj.com
Veteran Iranian-American foreign correspondent Farnaz Fassihi now finds herself targeted as a spy by mouthpieces for Tehran’s regime