Sazegara earned his master’s degree in history at Shahid Beheshti University in Iran, and went on to complete his doctoral thesis on religious intellectuals and the Islamic revolution at the University of London 1996. After the 1997 election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Sazegara published several reformist newspapers including Jamee, Toos, and Golestan-e-Iran, all of which were closed by the hard-line regime.