In 1996, Bakhtiar joined
CNN and held multiple positions in her nine years at the cable news network, including anchoring
CNN Headline News Tonight on the
CNN Headline News network. She has co-anchored CNN's
Emmy nominated CNN Newsroom and worked as a dedicated correspondent for
Anderson Cooper 360. She has reported on assignments from numerous countries in
Europe,
Africa, and the
Middle East, including
Rwanda,
Ethiopia,
South Africa,
Iran,
Israel, and
Palestine. She also anchored the start of CNN's Headline News coverage of the
September 11 attacks. She had left CNN to care for her dying father after almost 10 years in cable news. In January 2006, Bakhtiar joined
Fox News Channel as a general correspondent, reporting on major international news stories such as the
Ahmadinejad-
al-Maliki summit in
Tehran in September 2006 and the
trial and
execution of
Saddam Hussein later that year. In 2007, Fox News terminated its contract with Bakhtiar after she made a complaint of sexual harassment against then Fox Washington Bureau Chief,
Brian Wilson. In 2008, Bakhtiar switched careers to become the first public relations director for the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, an organization dedicated to building an inclusive and representative voice for Iranian Americans in the public and political arena. There she produced mini documentaries called
Profiles of Iranian Americans, which focused on the lives of successful Iranian Americans. She also created and produced the organization's signature star-studded community event
Passing the Torch of Success, before being pushed out of the organization owing to her strong stance on Iran's human rights violations. In May 2011, Bakhtiar testified before the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Iran's human rights crisis, claiming under the leadership of
Ayatollah Khamenei "Iran has become one of the worst violators of human rights in the world...egregiously violating virtually every article of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Iran is a member state." Bakhtiar worked on an unfinished documentary on Turkey after the failed
2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt and before
Michael Flynn was officially named National Security Advisor for President
Donald Trump. A Turkish businessman had paid the
Flynn Intel Group, a lobbying group in the United States, more than for the making of the film but he was adamant no one knew who they were. Bakhtiar complained she was not being given the opportunity to show a balanced view of the events and said the documentary was going to destroy
Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric whom Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed for the coup attempt and would like to see deported to Turkey from the U.S. In June 2017, Bakhtiar said she had not been contacted by people investigating Mr. Flynn, but by November 2017, it was reported that
FBI agents investigating Flynn had contacted Bakhtiar. ==Personal life==