Early career

Fassihi worked as an investigative reporter and roving foreign correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey.^[2] She covered the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the war in Afghanistan, Second Palestinian Intifada and Iraq under Saddam Hussein for The Star-Ledger. She was also a reporter for The Providence Journal in Rhode Island covering local news.^[1] She led the paper's award-winning coverage of the crash of Egypt Air flight 990, traveling to Cairo to investigate the story.

She worked as a stringer for Western media organizations in Iran, including The New York Times^[1] at the age of 19, when she was studying in Iran.^[3]

The Wall Street Journal

Fassahi spent 17 years covering wars and uprisings across the Middle East as a senior writer and war correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based Baghdad, Iraq, and then in Beirut, Lebanon, from 2003 to 2006, as deputy bureau chief for Middle East and Africa.^[4] She was sent to Afghanistan to cover the US-led invasion there, and covered topics such as elections in Zimbabwe, war in Gaza and the Arab Spring protests. She was one of the lead reporters for The Journal's 2011 award-winning investigative project titled "Censorship Inc.," a series of enterprise stories examining how western technology enabled censorship in authoritarian countries.^[5]

In 2004 she became more widely known, after a private email she had written to family and friends about the deteriorating situation in Iraq went viral on the Internet.^[3] It included criticism of U.S. activities in Iraq, saying "The genie of terrorism, chaos, and mayhem has been unleashed... as a result of American mistakes".^[6] It was published in newspapers, websites and blogs around the world^[7] and became the subject of a Doonesbury cartoon.^[8] The email later became the kernel of her book about life in Iraq for ordinary Iraqis, Waiting for an Ordinary Day (2008),^[3] and was published in full in the book.^[8]

Moving back to the United States, she worked in WSJ's Washington, D.C. office from 2015 to 2019, covering US foreign policy and diplomacy at the United Nations.^[4] She wrote about U.S. foreign policy and global diplomacy of some of the biggest stories: the missile crisis with North Korea, Myanmar's ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority, Venezuela's political upheaval, the Syrian civil war, Iran's nuclear deal, the refugee crisis and climate change.

The New York Times

Fassihi joined The New York Times as a reporter in July 2019,^[9] based in New York City.^[5]

Fassihi reported in November 2019 uprising in Iran and broke the story of the massacre of people in Mahshahr,^[9] reconstructing in detail how the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a passenger plane, with missiles on a night that the U.S. and Iran went to the brink of war, and lied about it for three days.^[10]

Also in November 2019, Fassihi was one of the reporters on a joint investigative project, "The Iran Cables", between the NY Times and The Intercept about a find of intelligence cables revealing how Iran wields influence in Iraq.^[11]

In October 2020, Fassihi's investigation into Iran's MeToo movement revealed allegations of sexual misconduct against prominent artist Aydin Aghdashloo.^[12]

In August 2021, it was reported that Fassihi had been the target of a series of cyber attacks and violent threats by certain Iranian opposition groups and internet trolls over several months. She was doxxed and threatened with death and rape. The New York Times put out a statement on Twitter on August 6 in support of her.^[13] The Coalition For Women In Journalism condemned the attacks, which they called "deeply gendered and misogynistic".^[14]

In October 2021, Fassihi and the New York Times were accused and called out in an open letter by critics for "fake news" reports for "[denial of (DARVO)] and normalizing Iranian government brutality", which The New York Times Editorial board, public relations and Fassihi rebutted in an official public statement.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

In April 2022, The New York Times announced that Fassihi would be covering the United Nations in addition to continuing to cover Iran.^[3]

Monograph

• Waiting for An Ordinary Day: the Unraveling of Life in Iraq (2008)—Fassihi's memoir of four years spent covering the Iraq war, and its impact on ordinary Iraqis^[28]

Contributing author

• Women's Letters, America from the Revolutionary War to the Present—Fassihi's famous email from Iraq is included in this anthology of historical letters written by American women.
• What Orwell Didn’t Know, Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics—Fassihi contributed an essay about the Iraq War and US administration's propaganda.
• Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food during Wartime by the World's Leading Correspondents—Fassihi contributed a chapter on sharing meals in Iran with student activists.