TV REBELS WITH A POLITICAL CAUSE VALLEY IS VENUE FOR LIBERATE-IRAN CAMPAIGN.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

A filmmaking duo that once made popular action flicks for a generation in Iran now works from a satellite TV studio in Chatsworth, producing 24- hour coverage they hope will liberate their homeland.

Prominent former Iranian media personalities run another station in Reseda, while a former Iranian pop star takes to the air from his North Hollywood TV studio to encourage his countrymen's struggle for freedom.

Think of it as live, call-in TV that's not about dating or diets, but the on-the-street protests to free a nation.

As Iranian students recently waged anti-government rallies unseen since a bloody showdown with authorities four years ago, they've found encouragement and logistical support coming from exiles running 24-hour satellite stations from the heart of the San Fernando Valley.

It's just what former action film producer F. Abbassi, owner of Chatsworth-based Azadi TV, had in mind when he started his station last year.

``They start first, and then we go out and push it. Now they are thousands, thousands, thousands all over the country,'' said Abbassi, whose one-time movie star, actor Reza Fazelli - now known as Ray Fazelli - is one of the station's on-air personalities.

``That was my goal,'' Abbassi said, explaining the station's name in his native Persian. ``Azadi is freedom.''

No one can say how many of the 80 million Persian-speaking Iranians across the globe - 70 million of them in Iran, where satellite dishes are outlawed but plentiful - tune into the Valley stations.

But judging by the stacks of faxes, hundreds of daily e-mails and nonstop phone calls to the Valley stations, they have become a lifeline to a nation hungering for freedom and information.

In recent weeks, Iranian citizens have been flooding the stations daily with telephone calls, faxes and e-mails describing the scene on the streets. Anchors then go on air relaying the information to viewers back in Iran - protesters in one spot need help, those in another are gaining in numbers.

Always, they rally those watching to lend support.

They've apparently hit such a nerve with viewers glued to their sets back home that the hard-line Islamic regime in Iran has lashed out at the stations, according to reports.

``There must be substantial numbers,'' said professor Hossein Ziai, director of Iranian studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

``The broadcasts here do affect what is going on with the population there because the cause for all this is rather obvious: There's lack of a real free, print, voice and/or television media.

``And they come from a place called Los Angeles that everybody knows.''

Abbassi, long active in politics, had been thinking during the past few years about starting a station that could reach out to his homeland, which he fled in 1978, a month after the revolution that deposed the Shah and instituted what has become, for many, a despised Islamic fundamentalist regime.

He gathered his friends in L.A. - ``the center of the expert people,'' as he puts it - brought in former actor Fazelli, who runs a company selling gelati-like ice cream on the East Coast - and gathered the $2 million needed to launch the dream.

He sold his import-export business of Italian ceramics, four of his six homes, secured investors and relocated his family from San Francisco to the Valley to launch the station that went on the air in December.

``We were talking about this for a long time,'' said station administrative director Shirin Neshat, a single mom from Pasadena who had worked for the queen under the previous Iranian regime.

``This way, we can help people in Iran and we can send their voices out of the country. We really want the people all over the world to hear our voice.''

Fazelli, who compared his acting career to that of Sean Connery, said no sooner did he get his American citizenship in 2000 than he set out to help his former film partner raise money to launch the station.

``Television is like a base of an army. The first thing the revolutionary does, they go and occupy a television and radio station,'' said Fazelli, 68, who attended UCLA in the late 1950s and has long been involved in politics.

Fazelli's son was killed by a bomb intended for him when the family was living in England in the 1980s, and now his family remains on the East Coast while he works here, living in a hotel room.

``The day Iran is free, I'm going to be retired the next day,'' he said. ``My goal is a free Iran. I don't want to be anything. ... I don't want to return. I'm going to return for two weeks to pay a visit to my mother's grave.''

The first of the Valley stations to beam into Iran is National Iranian Television, NITV, launched from North Hollywood in 2000 by former Iranian pop star Zia Atabay.

Like most of the stations, NITV struggles to pay its bills - Atabayfinances his operation with subsidies from his wife's P&A Surgery Center in the Valley.

Most stations run ads to help pay the bills - including typical spots for products, as well as infomercials featuring local lawyers, doctors, a carpet company - and receive support from donors. They have a few dozen employees along with volunteers.

Most stress they have no political bent, despite the individual political beliefs of those involved, and simply want to work for freedom of their homeland and the ability to provide Iranians with a voice and information.

Azadi TV is calling for a referendum overseen by the United Nations to let Iranians choose their government. Channel One, the year-old Reseda station, says liberate the country first, hold free elections, then talk politics. NITV has a long list of freedoms and human rights it seeks for the Iranian people.

``When the Iranian government changes, most of these Iranian television (stations) will be disappeared,'' said NITV's Atabay, 60.

At the year-old Channel One, Vice President Kambiz Mahmoudi, a well-known Iranian media executive unwelcome in his country after the revolution, said Channel One started with more entertainment programming, which had been about 40 percent of its broadcasts, but pulled back after viewers in Iran started clamoring for political coverage.

Now, station founder Shahram Homayoun can be on the air up to 10 hours a day, talking directly to citizens halfway around the world as the protests unfold - it's an exchange unexpected even for Mahmoudi, who banters easily about media's historical power in images like the Nixon-Kennedy debates or the McCarthy hearings.

``It is amazing,'' the 67-year-old said.

``Even when I was teaching ... I couldn't believe it could be used this way. This was the people of Iran, they really led us into this. We responded.''

Ziai, the UCLA professor, said overseas radio has long kept Iranians in touch with the outside world and the Internet increasingly plays a role. But television brings an immediacy into the living room.

Station operators said satellite technology has become cheaper in the past few years, allowing more stations to get started, and Ziai said even villages in Iran have cobbled together funds for a communal satellite dish.

The UCLA professor compares today's interplay of Iranian protesters and the foreign-based press to what happened in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe a decade ago.

``The role of the foreign media in both comparisons was very, very positive. It was instrumental for the people to gain access to what they believe to be true,'' he said.

``What happens in Iran in terms of the democratic process is going to have an enormous impact on the entire region. It's like the enormous impact of (Poland's Solidarity movement) on all of the satellite countries. It's like the glasnost on the falling of the communist empire. We're seeing the beginning of it.''

Late morning and midday are busy times at the studios, as the evening news programs prepare to take to the air, but for Abbassi, it's just the start of what will be a long, 16-hour day.

But he says he won't be doing this forever.

``My plan is to free Iran, go back to my country and die there,'' he said. ``That's the end of the story.''

Lisa Mascaro, [phone]

lisa.mascaro(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Azadi television station's manager and political reporter Reza Fazelli expresses his opinions during a satellite broadcast that reaches Iran.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer

(2) Valley-based Channel One broadcasts ``Last Moment,'' a political talk show with station founder and host Shahram Homayoun, left, and producer Darush Bagheri to Iran via fiber-optics.

(3) Channel One vice president Kambiz Mahmoudi looks through faxes sent by Iranian viewers to the Valley-based TV station.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer