Radio Farda’s future: US 'shooting itself in the foot' by silencing key voice for Iranians

In the coming weeks, one of the most trusted independent news sources for Iranians faces the prospect of going silent.

Radio Farda, a nearly three-decade old US-funded Persian-language broadcaster, is expected by its own staff to shut down following budget cuts ordered by President Donald Trump. The move, which is part of broader reductions to US-funded overseas media, could also result in Voice of America Persian and other foreign-language outlets either closed down or significantly scaled back.

The closure would be a major victory for the Iranian regime, analysts have told The National. Tehran has long sought to jam or block Radio Farda's broadcasts, which promote a liberal, pro-democracy agenda that challenges the regime's narrative.

Mr Trump, a heavy critic of the Iranian regime, has pursued a policy of "maximum pressure" to weaken it. However, slashing funding for Persian-language media – one of the few sources of independent information for Iranians – appears to contradict this strategy, and could hand the Iranian regime an unexpected win.

"It has been a dream of the leaders in Iran to see Radio Farda gone," said Omid Memarian, an Iran expert at DAWN, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on US policy in the Middle East. "I'm sure the propaganda machine in the Islamic Republic would never have thought this day could come."

Accessible and popular

Turning on Radio Farda is one of the first things that Mr Memarian, who lives in the US, does in the morning – as do his family and friends back in Iran, he said. "I wake up and see what's the reading of Radio Farda about what's happening in the US and Europe," he said.

Funded by the US Congress, Radio Farda – which in Persian means radio tomorrow – was launched in 2002 as part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has operated since the 1940s from Prague. It is overseen by the US Agency for Global Media, which had its funding cut on March 14 to "the minimum required by law" by Mr Trump, as part of efforts to curb government spending. Its budget is estimated at $142 million a year.

RFE/RL has sued the Trump administration to challenge the funding cut, but its chief executive, Stephen Capus, told NPR this week that it was now living off its savings. "We're going to have to take some pretty drastic actions in the not too distant future," he said.

The loss of high-quality independent media would be particularly harmful to the Iranian public, where trust in national media is low, analysis shows. The Dutch think tank Gamaan, which specialises in studying Iranians' social and political thinking, found in 2023 that only 20 per cent of Iranians use state television as a source of information, while around 40 per cent trust Radio Farda and Voice of America Persian. Iran International, Manoto and BBC Persian, which are all broadcast from outside Iran, are among the favourite media channels for the Iranian public.

Today, Radio Farda has 4.5 million followers on Instagram – social media is one of the Iranian public's favourite ways of accessing information, but it is heavily censored. This figure suggests deep penetration into Iran, said Mohammed Ghaedi, a lecturer at George Washington University's department of political science.

"The platform is highly active, boasting over 118,000 posts on Instagram and a strong presence on other platforms like Telegram," Mr Ghaedi said. "Its format provides an alternative for those unable to access satellite TV, such as BBC Persian, making it accessible to drivers and workers. In terms of content, Radio Farda focuses on democratic values, freedom and human rights, covering stories that state-controlled media ignore and giving a platform to individuals who might otherwise struggle to have their voices heard."

Radio Farda has been a particular target for the Iranian government. In 2008, an Iranian court sentenced one of its journalists, Parnaz Azima, for her "anti-revolutionary" work. At the time, she was told that her problems would be solved if she quit Radio Farda, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Radio Farda's managers said that Iran spent "millions of dollars annually" to jam the station's signals and disable its website, while also launching an intimidation campaign against its 40-person staff, the newspaper wrote. The National has reached out to RFE/RL for comment. Radio Farda journalists said they were not authorised to speak due to the sensitivity of the situation.

Lives at risk

Should they lose their jobs and their Czech work permits, many Iranian Radio Farda journalists may be at risk of persecution if they have to return to Iran, said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at Crisis group said. "This really puts the lives of some of these individuals at risk", Mr Vaez said. "If you were the Islamic Republic, you couldn't have dreamt of a situation in which the US would shoot itself in the foot by ... dismantling democracy-promoting institutions overnight."

Shutting Radio Farda down will not "leave Iranians in the dark all of a sudden", but its absence will make it harder for Iranians to access information about what is happening in the world, said Mr Vaez. "Radio Farda was particularly popular because it also had a major entertainment element attached to it," he said.

Gutting Radio Farda and its parent company, RFE/RL, is not a question of cost for the US, Mr Memarian argued. It's part of an ideological war against anything that is perceived as liberal and anti-Trump. "The truth is that weakening these publications is not a Democrat or a liberal agenda – it's a global agenda to fight authoritarian regimes," Mr Memarian said.

The bottom line is that the Trump administration may not care about fighting the Iranian regime with soft power. "We have not seen a deliberate plan to accompany maximum pressure, which is a coercive economic approach, with a soft approach as well" towards Tehran, Mr Vaez said. "Because there is no strategy, I would not be surprised if opportunism determines who gets funded in the future."

The setbacks to RFE/RL have caused concern in the Czech Republic. The country's Minister for European Affairs, Martin Dvorak, this week raised the issue in Brussels, where he gathered signatures from nine other EU countries in support of finding alternative funding. In a statement, they cited the station's role "in providing independent, unbiased and fact-based information to citizens, particularly in regions where freedom of the press is under threat."

But the bloc's foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, appeared doubtful the EU could replace US funding. "We have a lot of organisations who are coming with the same request to us," she said on Monday. "This is the task [on] our side; to see what we can do."