Jason Rezaian is one of the few Western journalists to have been based in Tehran in recent years. From 2009 until his arrest in 2014 he covered a wide range of stories that often sought to explain Iran to a general American audience, first as a freelancer for a variety of outlets and later as The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief.

He reported on two presidential elections, Iran’s nuclear negotiations with global powers, the effects of one of the most punitive sanctions regimes in modern times and environmental issues.

In between these momentous events he told the stories of everyday Iranians which sought to make them more accessible to readers, reporting on Iran’s small community of baseball players, the quest for the best hamburger in Tehran and a clinic for female drug addicts.

He is currently on a leave from The Washington Post and is a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and a Terker Distinguished Fellow at George Washington University.