Jim Geraghty of National Review Online assesses Americans’ ability to help Iranian people struggling under a nefarious government regime.
The need to get information into and out of Iran, against the wishes of the regime, is one of the reasons we want to keep having a Persian-language Voice of America beaming its signals into Iran. The Trump administration shut it down in March, then restarted it in June.
Restarting it was a wise choice. As Israel and Iran clashed in June 2025, “Iranians surged to RFE/RL’s Persian-language Service, Radio Farda, for responsible news and information. Since Friday, Farda’s extremely popular Instagram profile attracted 62.5 million video views, a spike of 344 percent, and traffic to its website rose by 77 percent compared to its 30-day average. Farda is increasing its coverage to include ten-minute audio news bulletins at the top of the hour 24/7 to meet the needs of our audiences. Even before the war began, more than 6.6 million Iranians, ten percent of the adult population, accessed Farda each week to get news that was not produced by the state-controlled propaganda networks.”
Voice of America Persia costs a little under $20 million per year, or less than half of this year’s base annual salary of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, not counting his prorated $80 million signing bonus. There are people who will argue that the U.S. government cannot afford to continue to pay the $20 million — with an “M” — for Voice of America Persia because the national debt is too high, while refusing to make any changes to entitlement programs, which will cost $4.26 trillion — with a “TR.” This is like trying to lose weight by eliminating the use of breath mints while continuing to eat extra-large meat-lovers pizzas and milkshakes at every meal.
The United States is best served by having institutions that can communicate the truths that hostile regimes want to cover up and deny.
