I have dedicated much of my life to sharing my thoughts and experiences through my art. I am not accustomed to staying silent in the face of wrongdoing and indignities perpetrated against others but have been forced to do so as I myself have been defamed and attacked. After much reflection, it was important that I address my experience with Farnaz Fassihi.
I did not know who Farnaz Fassihi was until two years ago, and had no idea she reports on Iran for the New York Times. Unlike today, she was not yet a familiar name in Iran, where her name has become synonymous with fame-seeking journalistic malpractice. Years of reports and investigations have proven where her loyalties lie — with the leadership regime of Iran and not with its people or the ideals of journalism — as well as who her financial backers are and the sources she tries to pass off as credible. Of immense concern, it has been my experience that the only people who are still in the dark about her misguided ambitions and hidden agenda are her superiors at the New York Times.
My battle to bring truth to lies perpetuated by Farnaz Fassihi began in August 2020, when my lawyers in the United States engaged Farnaz Fassihi’s editor at the New York Times in response to false and slanderous tweets she began publishing about me. The tweets included baseless and fabricated claims by a known Iranian conspiracy theorist and extortionist blogger based in the United States named Afshin Parvaresh, who has a documented and criminal history of slandering hundreds of Iranian artists and intellectuals under a self-proclaimed title of “investigative journalist.” Driven by the financial support of leaders in the Iranian regime, he is well-known for attacking those who fall outside the ruling party’s graces. Despite the fact that Parvaresh has been found guilty in numerous court cases for a variety of crimes, including defamation, and is accused of rape by an Iranian-Canadian human rights activist, Fassihi admittedly relied on him as her main source.
Following the outreach of my legal team, and perhaps to seek vindication against her editor’s questions about her unprofessionalism and smear campaign against me, Fassihi emailed a number of questions to me that were clearly composed by Parvaresh as they continued to focus on the same baseless and obscene lies and fabrications that Parvaresh was already spreading against me and many others on social media.
The questions attempted to twist and poison my life and work. One inquired about non-existing ties to the Iranian regime and Astan Qods Razavi. This absurd claim was based on a so-called “connection” that was a book introduction I had written years ago on a masterpiece of Persian calligraphy by the great 15th-century calligrapher, Prince Ibrahim Sultan. This classical Persian artwork happens to belong to the permanent collection of a museum that is a subsidiary of the Astan Qods Razavi organization. Fassihi used this detail as a pretext to falsely associate me with the Iranian regime. This is a particularly outrageous lie given the fact that since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, I have been under constant persecution and intimidation by the Iranian regime due to my official cultural positions in the pre-revolution era and my intellectual views.
I am not the first subject to be attacked and maligned by Fassihi’s false reporting. She was called out for her dangerous coverage of the 2022 Iranian protests and their causes, as she blamed the United States government. She also claimed that the Ukrainian flight 752 tragedy was just an accident and that the plane was not deliberately shut down by an Iranian missile, which investigations have proven. While each of these examples of egregious reporting targeted governments and institutions, in my case, it was my entire life and livelihood that was singled out for destruction.
Fassihi’s published article against me claimed that thirteen – which was later reduced to eight – predominantly anonymous women, had spoken to her about my “misconduct” throughout the years. Of these claims, one person who worked for the Islamic Republic Broadcasting Company clarified and retracted her baseless tweet, and another individual who was identified in the article publicly denied and protested against Fassihi’s distorted account of her story, denying any misconduct had taken place. She clarified that what Fassihi had exaggerated as “sexual misconduct” in the article, was only a joke I had told to a group of people which she found unpleasant.
Other major inaccuracies discrediting Fassihi’s article included the rebuttal of my art school’s only teacher’s assistant, Ms. Hoori Bidad, in a public statement. Fassihi had quoted an anonymous individual who had apparently made some fictitious claims as the “long-term teacher’s assistant” of my school. Regarding the untrue accusation by Sara Omatali claiming I tried to kiss her during a work meeting in 2007, there has been a barrage of evidence published contesting this claim. I wish we had the opportunity to assess Omatali’s allegation in the court of law of her preference to prove no such thing ever occurred.
The volume of these accusations would lead some to question my innocence. That was Fassihi’s intention — to bury under mountains of lies the fact that there has never been a single complaint filed against me in any court anywhere in the world.
One may ask why I was targeted in such a way. For that answer, we look to Parvaresh as it is not a coincidence that shortly before the publication of Fassihi’s article, a voice note was leaked in which Parvaresh clearly confessed to a plot to defame and fabricate claims against me, stating: “After the story I have planned for him, [Aghdashloo] will be destroyed in a way that he can’t survive. Neither him nor his family. No one can follow this up or sue.”
The planning of this character assassination was so blatant. Not only did Fassihi refuse to pay any attention to dozens of pieces of evidence provided to her by myself and others, but she omitted every single existing detail that could cast doubts over the validity of the narrative she published – including the statement of more than 150 of my students in rejection of these fabricated claims. In the face of credible facts contrary to her lies, Fassihi published a misguided, rancorous, and fictional clickbait article to millions of people around the world via the New York Times.
As I stated, I am just one of many examples of Fassihi’s biased and dangerous reporting. It seems certain that this type of false reporting, which often falls through the cracks of fact-checkers at the New York Times, could result in irreversible reputational damage to individuals and institutions, and irrevocably misguide the public. Even more challenging is the reality that taking on a tremendously powerful corporation such as the New York Times seems futile. A highly experienced and capable legal team is ready to defend the newspaper and its staff, easily crushing any vulnerable plaintiff. Furthermore, through their multimillion-dollar legal budgets provided by their insurance companies, financial means of suing a newspaper such as New York Times is beyond the reach of a regular citizen like myself.
In Billy Wilder’s brilliant 1951 film Ace in The Hole, an opportunist journalist keeps on stalling the rescue efforts to save a man trapped in a tunnel, so it takes longer; to keep the headline news “alive” for longer! The film confronts the notion of ruthless sensationalist journalism, and it is a dark example of the media’s appetite for scandal. I would like to use this reference to point to the significance of “narrative” or “controversy” in this form of reportage that is new to our [Iranian] culture. Such a wicked journalist is capable of completely forging a story. In some cases however – especially with help from a strong public demand – the law is successful in confronting these news fabricators. A great success story was the lies and false accusations of another “investigative journalist,” Alex Jones, which was published on a mass scale and in the end, after the families of victims took legal action, was ordered to pay close to a billion dollars in damages.
The origins of the fabricated article conceived by Fassihi and Parvaresh against me go back to the recent universal permeation of the American #MeToo movement – a pivotal and necessary movement – and the efforts to establish a similar Iranian adaptation. As Walter Lippmann points out in his still relevant 1921 book “Public Opinion,” which is a critique of functional democratic government, “journalism is not a public service; it’s a business.”
Sometimes the business side of this essential profession can eclipse the truth with devastating consequences. Fassihi’s agenda was to become the face of Iran’s #MeToo movement and secure much-needed stature for her troubled career. This is how Omatali – apparently after waiting for fourteen years – prepares a fabricated story with the help of a disgraced slandering blogger, Afshin Parvaresh, and hands it to Fassihi, curator of biased news stories, in hopes of organizing their own MeToo movement and making a name for themselves.
Around a year-and-a-half ago, my lawyers filed my legal complaint against Afshin Parvaresh in the State of Ohio, close to where he lived at the time. But as expected, he fled soon and is still running away from the law, without appearing in court. The judge consequently announced Parvaresh’s failure to appear and defend himself against the charges. My lawyers are still working hard on bringing him to justice.
I would certainly sue Farnaz Fassihi and the New York Times to stop her – and her Iranian propagandist backers’ – lies and fabrication machinery. However, I am aware of my financial and time limitations to achieve this. Despite these heartbreaking realities, it is a consolation that time, in the end, is itself the most meticulous examiner and the ultimate revealer, it only requires patience.
– Aydin Aghdashloo
February 2023