After a top reporter at the BBC drew outrage for publishing a quote demanding Iran be nuked, she’s been revealed as a dedicated regime change activist whose career was launched by a CIA-founded propaganda network. Serious questions remain about the BBC’s editorial process.
At the ripe old age of 27, Ghoncheh Habibiazad has already achieved more than most British journalists will in their lifetime. After just four years in the field, she has already risen to the position of ‘Senior Reporter’ at BBC Persian – a prestigious and influential role which requires a “minimum of 8 – 10 years of experience in journalism,” according to a BBC job listing.
Following four years of higher education on the Iranian government’s dime, Habibiazad graduated from the University of Tehran in 2020, and immediately began aligning herself with her country’s enemies. In October 2021, she was brought on as an intern at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a CIA propaganda project founded by notorious spymaster Allen Dulles which nominally separated from the Agency in the 70s. During her time at the network’s studio in Prague, Habibiazad’s LinkedIn page notes that she conducted such groundbreaking investigations as “an article on “hidden disabilities”” while “working remotely for Radio Farda,” an RFE/RL subdivision that serves as Washington’s official Persian-language mouthpiece.
The same month she began interning for RFE/RL, Habibiazad joined forces with Marjan TV, another outlet founded by expat regime change activists. She would spend the next year and half developing social media content for the outlet and its subsidiary, Manoto TV. The broadcaster has been described by Iranian academic Shahab Esfandiary as “a pro-monarchy network with the mission of glorifying the Pahlavi dynasty, one of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century.”
A quick glance at Manoto’s YouTube channel reveals the depths of the organization’s obsession with the widely-despised former ruling family. Nearly every other video greeting visitors to the page features the face of Reza Pahlavi, the would-be king who openly seeks to start a civil war in Iran.
Habibiazad frequently collaborates with Deepa Parent, the disgraced former fashion blogger turned Iranian protest-whisperer who deleted her Twitter account this February after The Grayzone exposed her role in fabricating protest death tolls. Like Parent, Habibiazad rocketed to mainstream media prominence during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests which shook Iran in 2022.
In her current position as BBC Persian Senior Reporter, Habibiazad freely admits that she has no contact whatsoever with any Iranians who support their government, and communicates exclusively with anti-government figures instead. “All those I talk to [inside Iran] are against the current establishment,” she revealed on April 4.
