His father, ʿAbbās-Qoli, was a judge and his mother, Sorur Mahkāma, was the principal of Rasht's first girls' school and was a respected poet and literary figure in her own right.

[2] In 1972, the weekly magazine, Jeune Afrique invited him to Paris and he began to produce satirical drawings and cartoons for this journal.

[2] By the mid-1970s, he had come under pressure from Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and the Secret Police, who took exception to his political commentary and satire, and in 1977 he fled Iran, and went to New York.

[3] Although he hoped to return to Iran, the revolution of 1979 and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini led to his settling permanently in New York.

[5] In 2008, in the aim to "increase awareness of the complexity of modern history and life in Iran," the Asia Society in New York organized another exhibition of Mohassess' satirical cartoons and illustrations.