Saman Arbabi

Saman Arbabi (Persian: سامان اربابی‎‎; born 1973) is an Iranian-American award winning international journalist, video director, cartoonist, host, creator and Executive Producer of Voice of America's most popular satirical television shows Parazit and OnTen. His work has been called “civic satire”, comedy with a political and media mission. He was born in Tehran, Iran in 1973, moved to France in 1984, and then the United States in 1986. He has a Bachelor of Science in Communications with a Minor in Art from the University of Maryland.

Saman Arbabi started his career as an intern for the popular DC-based radio show Diamond in the Morning after an ABC radio show producer, who liked his sense of humor, invited him to leave his job as a cook at Hooters and work with the station. In 2003, he was hired at Voice of America (VOA) as the first Iranian video journalist. As a video journalist and war correspondent, he covered Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, UAE and the 2006 IAEA talks in Vienna, Austria. He produced and reported over 100 stories from the Middle East and North Africa.

"Our job is to present the facts and highlight the hypocrisy,” says Saman Arbabi, one of the show’s presenters. “We’re not here to lead any movement, to lead any regime change." If the people of Iran want to topple the regime, he says, they must do it themselves.

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