Saharkhiz was born in 1953 in Abadan, in the province of Khuzestan, in southwestern Iran. In 1959 his family moved to Karaj, close to the capital, Tehran. Saharkhiz went to secondary school and passed the national entrance examination for admission to Iranian universities in Karaj and then studied economics at the University of Tehran where he graduated in 1979. For three years, he was active in the movements that had begun after the Revolution to increase the rate of literacy, and to reconstruct the rural areas (Jihad of Construction). From 1982 to 1992 he worked in Iran for Iran's official news agency, the IRNA, as a reporter and economics expert, but also reported on the Iran–Iraq War "directly from the front line" for the last two years of the war. In 1992, the relatively liberal head of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Mohammad Khatami, resigned. The ministry was in charge of IRNA and Saharkhiz had gotten to know Khatami. After Khatami resigned, Saharkhiz moved to the United States for five years to run IRNA's office in New York.Courageous & Principled: Journalists Isa Saharkhiz and Ahmad Zeidabadi by MUHAMMAD SAHIMI| tehran bureau| 21 Nov 2009
