DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A court in Iran has imposed a ten-year prison sentence on Reza Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist, following his conviction for alleged collaboration with a foreign adversary, according to information provided by his lawyer on Saturday.

Valizadeh, who previously worked for the U.S.-funded Voice of America’s Farsi service, as well as Radio Farda—a branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty associated with the U.S. Agency for Global Media—was judged by the Tehran Revolutionary Court. His lawyer, Mohammad Hossein Aghasi, stated that the court’s ruling was related to charges of “collaborating with the hostile U.S. government.”

Aghasi mentioned that the decision could be contested within a 20-day period, starting from when they received the ruling about a week ago. He noted that he had not been able to meet with Valizadeh since the court’s decision was rendered.

In August, Valizadeh appeared to share two messages indicating that he had returned to Iran, despite Radio Farda being designated as an adversarial entity by the Iranian regime. In part, one of the messages stated, “I arrived in Tehran on March 6, 2024. Before that, I had unfinished negotiations with the (Revolutionary Guard’s) intelligence department. Eventually, I came back to my country after 13 years without any security guarantee, even a verbal one.”

His lawyer reported that Valizadeh had been free for the first six months of his return before his subsequent arrest.

Additionally, in early November, Kianoosh Sanjari, a former journalist associated with VOA’s Farsi service, tragically took his own life by jumping from a building in Tehran as a protest against the country’s supreme leader amid a crackdown on dissent within the Islamic Republic. Iranian officials indicated that Sanjari, who was 42, had vocally demanded the release of four prisoners and had threatened self-harm if his pleas went unheard.

In a related incident from 2007, Parnaz Azima, another former Radio Farda journalist, briefly visited Iran to see her sick mother. Upon arrival, her passport was confiscated, and she was barred from leaving as she faced repeated interrogations by security forces. Ultimately, after eight months of being held on bail, she was permitted to depart from the country.

For years, Iran has experienced significant turmoil, further exacerbated by rising tensions with Western nations. The nationwide protests that erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 are a notable example, alongside an ongoing economic crisis that keeps jobs scarce and the Iranian rial struggling against the U.S. dollar, intensifying the hardships faced by the Iranian populace.