Hooman Majd

According to Newsweek, "Majd's Iran is a land where ayatollahs criticize each other and young people flout rules about wearing chadors. It's a land where Majd—who makes no secret of his admiration for the reformist President Mohammad Khatami—could go on to serve as the official translator for Khatami's successor and archrival, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the latter visited New York in September. But Majd is no Iran apologist: he ridicules Ahmadinejad's officials for their Holocaust deniers' conference in 2006. Majd's subtle central point is that "the lack of meaningful relations between Iran and the United States … has brought little advantage to either nation."

In October 2013, Majd referred to Iranian-American Wall Street Journal (WSJ) assistant books editor Sohrab Ahmari as "WSJ's (Iranian) 'House Negro'" in a post on Twitter. Majd acknowledged the statement was insult, but said he stood by it.

In July 2012 a tweet from Majd's Twitter account was made about Iranian-born Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a human rights advocate and the wife of Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay. The tweet read: "Fucking a Canadian minister doesn’t make you Canadian, azizam. Come back to papa …" Majd has denied making it, and in a later public tweet directed at Afshin-Jam Majd said his account had been hacked: "@NazaninAJ A recent series of tweets were made in my name as a result of a hack. Not my words, and tweets have been removed." Before the tweet Afshin-Jam had been calling on the Canadian government and the Canadian Assembly of First Nations to cut diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Afshin-Jam described the matter as serious but added that "unless I can verify exactly who sent it, I can't really comment."

Following the 2009 election in Iran, which he "concedes [. . .] fielded only regime-vetted candidates and was stolen", Majd continues to enjoy access to its politicians and officials, especially to former President Khatami. Admittedlly "emotionally invested in the politics of the country", a stated goal of Majd's is to shed light on the elusive "truth about Iran" that is fair for all of its people.

Raised in a family involved in the diplomatic service, Majd lived from infancy abroad, mostly in the US and in England but attending American schools in varied places, such as Tunis and New Delhi. He boarded at St Paul's School in London, England until 1974 and attended George Washington University for electrical engineering in Washington, D.C. and graduated in 1977. He studied operations research at GWU for two more years but did not complete. He stayed in the US after the 1979 revolution.

Hooman Majd (born 1957 in Tehran) is an Iranian-American journalist, author, and commentator who writes on Iranian affairs. He is based in New York City and regularly travels to Iran.

Majd's maternal grandfather was the Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Assar (1885–1975), who was born to an Iraqi mother and an Iranian father. The Ayatollah, along with other contemporary ulema, overcame traditional opposition to serve as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran. His own father, whose origins were in the village of Ardakan, Iran, became representative of a "middle class" that was "pro-democratic and pro-modernization".