After finishing his education he began a career as a freelance journalist, contributing articles about the Middle East and, in particular, the Iran–Iraq War to news outlets including "The Observer" and the BBC. In 1989 he was invited by the Iraqi government to come to Iraq along with other journalists to report on elections being held in Kurdistan. Before Bazoft set off, he learned about a mysterious explosion that had occurred on 19 September 1989 at the al-Iskandaria military complex, south of Baghdad. The heavy detonation was heard as far away as Baghdad. Despite Saddam Hussein's personal order to keep the matter secret, rumours began to spread that the accident happened in a rocket factory's assembly line, killing dozens of Egyptian technicians involved in Iraq's secret development of medium-range ballistic missiles.