Farnaz Fassihi (; born 1971) is an Iranian-American journalist who has worked for The New York Times since 2019. She is the United Nations bureau chief and also writes about Iranian news. Previously she was a senior writer for The Wall Street Journal for 17 years and a conflict reporter based in the Middle East. Fassihi's memoir, Waiting for An Ordinary Day, is based on her four years covering the Iraq War and witnessing the unraveling of social life for Iraqi citizens. Early life and education Farnaz Fassihi was born in 1971 in the United States to Iranian parents. She grew up in Tehran, Iran, and Portland, Oregon in the US. She earned a Master of Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City. Career Early career Fassihi worked as an investigative reporter and roving foreign correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey. 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. 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 at the age of 19, when she was studying in Iran. 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. 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 Journals 2011 award-winning investigative project titled "Censorship Inc.," a series of enterprise stories examining how western technology enabled censorship in authoritarian countries. 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. 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".