Two weeks ago, as Israeli warplanes pounded targets in Tehran and Iranian missiles screamed back in retaliation, Washington scrambled to revive a tool President Donald Trump had recklessly destroyed via executive order three months earlier: Voice of America’s Persian Service.
On March 15, Trump had ordered the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America and was established to push back against censorship and disinformation worldwide, to shut down VOA’s programming in all 49 of its broadcast languages, including Persian. Thus, Trump crippled a key pillar of U.S. soft power.
As soon as the missiles began flying and Washington realized it had no way to reach the Iranian public, it made a cynical about-face.
But as soon as the missiles began flying and Washington realized it had no way to reach the Iranian public, it made a cynical about-face. On June 13, the day Israel launched its attack on Iran, VOA Persian journalists — who’d been left on administrative leave for months with no clarity about their future — were abruptly called back. One journalist told me they were lured back with vague suggestions that cooperating might look favorable during an upcoming restructuring.
On June 20, Kari Lake, Trump’s USAGM adviser, laid off most of the Persian journalists anyway, including my source, and 639 others across VOA. This wasn’t mismanagement; it was sabotage — of staff morale, institutional integrity and America’s global credibility.
The next day, VOA Persian Service attempted to livestream Trump’s remarks on Iran but couldn’t. As Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House correspondent and a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Trump administration, explained in a social media post: the audio failed within seconds, and the full video of Trump’s remarks wasn’t uploaded for hours.
But by then the damage was done. Tehran’s state media had flooded the information space and shaped the narrative without challenge.
Wednesday, for the first time in four years, a source told me, the VOA Persian team didn’t broadcast Trump’s NATO speech live. That’s a glaring sign of just how badly Trump and Lake have deteriorated the operation.
During my 20 years inside USAGM newsrooms — most notably at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), VOA’s sister agency — I worked alongside the fearless journalists of its Persian-language service, Radio Farda, who pushed back against the Iranian regime’s censorship day in and day out.
During the 2009 post-election protests — widely known as the Green Wave or Persian Spring — Radio Farda amplified the voices of a nation in defiance by reporting on hunger strikers, protesters marching straight into gunfire, students standing their ground against armed forces and families demanding justice for their murdered loved ones.
Before the war began, more than 6.6 million Iranians accessed Farda each week to get news that was not produced by Iran’s state-controlled propaganda networks.
No other outlet had the access, the credibility or the reach. With trusted sources on the ground, we didn’t report from a safe distance; we stood with the Iranian people, armed with facts, grounded in courage and committed to truth.
A journalist I reached out to for this column told me, “VOA Persian journalists who have family members living in Iran have always faced pressure through their relatives from Iranian authorities. After the Israeli and U.S. bombing raids on Iran, the relatives of several Persian-language journalists have been threatened again. This is important because not only have we lost our jobs, but we are also under renewed pressure from the Iranian regime.”
During this month’s Israel-Iran conflict, even with its resources gutted, Radio Farda’s Instagram profile attracted 62.5 million video views, a spike of 344%, and traffic to its website rose by 77% compared to its 30-day average.
Even before the war began, more than 6.6 million Iranians, 10% of the adult population, accessed Farda each week to get news that was not produced by Iran’s state-controlled propaganda networks. In a media environment dominated by fear, censorship and digital barriers, that level of trust and reach isn’t just remarkable — it’s irreplaceable. Even so, Lake is tearing it all down. And VOA Persian, what was once a full-day broadcast lifeline for Iranians, is now down to 30, maybe 45, minutes a day. And Lake, a former broadcast journalist herself, had the gall to celebrate such destruction as “efficiency” when she testified to Congress on Wednesday. Lake even pointed to a dubious note — allegedly from someone who remains on staff — suggesting that getting rid of 75% of VOA Persian Service’s staff had made things run better. No credible journalist would say that. And no credible journalist would believe that. Despite her suggestion that the slashed staff is more efficient, during Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Lake called for USAGM to be abolished entirely, its editorial firewall shredded, its remnants folded into the State Department and its journalists replaced with freelancers who’d produce patriotic puff pieces about America’s founding fathers, civil liberties and “what this country is about.” That’s not journalism; that’s state-sponsored propaganda at its laziest and in its most unserious form. “I feel like I am suffering through a propaganda war through your testimony,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., told Lake during Wednesday’s congressional hearing. “For those of you who think this is about reform — it’s not. It’s about shutting down media.” Lake’s plans reveal her dangerous ignorance (or disregard) of history. VOA broadcasts were never meant to glorify the USA. but to to confront lies and support democracy. From exposing Nazi propaganda in World War II, pushing back against Soviet disinformation during the Cold War and challenging Tehran’s theocratic censorship, USAGM’s mission has always been clear: deliver the truth where it’s forbidden to exist. Iranians who once tuned into VOA Persian now have nowhere else to go but the state-owned disinformation networks. America has willingly shut off its microphone as its adversaries are broadcasting loud and clear.
Muhammad Tahir
Muhammad Tahir is a nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. He previously held key roles at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Washington, D.C., and Eastern Europe and served as bureau chief for IHA, the Turkish media, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most recently, he led media strategy at the nonprofit Corus International. His work has been published by CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post and The New Atlanticist, among others. 
