Activists demand Iranian professor with regime ties be removed from Ivy League’s Middle East talk

· New York Post

Activists and a Nobel Laureate are demanding an Ivy League school cancel a panel featuring a controversial Iranian professor who they accuse of promoting terrorism and supporting the fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, The Post has learned.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Middle East security expert at Princeton, is scheduled to headline the panel “Israel and Iran: The Future of the Middle East” at Dartmouth’s Haldeman Hall Monday evening.

Opponents of the Iranian regime in the US and Europe want the event cancelled, noting Mousavian’s past working on behalf of the Iranian regime and alleged ties to terror acts and the deaths of four students in Berlin in 1992 at the hands of Hezbollah.

Detractors also accuse Mousavian of being a lobbyist for the current Iranian government, which he denies.

“The ‘discursive tools’ of the Islamic Republic can be as dangerous as deadly weapons,” wrote Shirin Ebadi, a former Iranian judge who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, in a post on Telegram Friday.

Syed Hossein Mousavian is a former spokesman for Iran with the international community with respect to nuclear weapons, and now works on policy initiatives at Princeton. Photothek via Getty Images
Activist Lawdan Bazargan, whose brother was murdered while he was a political prisoner in Iran in 1988, posted graphic images of the murder of dissidents ordered by the Iranian regime. @LawdanBazargan/X

“The discourse of whitewashing and normalization paves the way for the regime’s crimes inside the country and its other actions in the region.”

Ebadi goes on to point out Mousavian was the head of the “First Western Europe Office” of Iran’s foreign ministry “during the darkest period of the Islamic Republic’s rule.” He also claims he supported the fatwa against author Rushdie, issued in 1989 over his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Mousavian was Iran’s ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997 when four dissidents were murdered in the back of a Greek restaurant in Berlin in 1992. Five years later, a German court concluded Iran’s Special Affairs Committee had ordered the murders, but did not name Mousavian.

“During his tenure, at least 24 Iranian dissidents were assassinated on European soil by Iranian agents, including the notorious 1992 Mykonos restaurant massacre in Berlin,” claimed the activist group Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists in a press statement Sunday.

“Mousavian defended these actions and also endorsed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, reflecting the regime’s blatant opposition to free expression and dissent.”

Mousavian blamed all the murders on Israeli and US operatives, according to a 2022 interview with Iran’s Arman Melli newspaper.

More than 2,000 people from Boston to Iran have signed a Change.org petition against Mousavian’s talk at Dartmouth.

Mousavian in 1996 when he was the Iranian ambassador to Germany. picture alliance via Getty Images
Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi spoke out against Dartmouth College’s decision to allow Syed Hossein Mousavian take part in a panel discussion on Israel and Iran. @shirinebadiofficial/telegram

“In place of providing a platform for someone linked to the repressive Iranian regime, we encourage Dartmouth College to engage with local activists and individuals from the New England area who have personally endured the regime’s brutality,” they wrote.

Activists have also called on Princeton to fire Mousavian, which is facing a congressional probe into why the school hired the former top Iranian diplomat.

New York-based Iranian scholar Majid Mohammadi posted a photo of Mohammadi on X Monday, noting: “This image alone is a disgrace to Princeton U. Mousavian sells political propaganda, his defense of the assassination of writers, terrorism & cover-up for the 1988 massacre with the banner of Princeton.”

The discussion on “The Future of the Middle East” will also include a speaker from the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC-based think tank, providing their perspective on the matter.

Mousavian was arrested by Iran in 2007, accused of “espionage,” for sharing nuclear information. That charge was dropped but he was convicted of going against the regime. He says he has not been back to Iran since 2021 Getty Images

Mousavian is a specialist in nuclear policy at Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security. He currently proposes “policy initiatives” over Iran’s controversial nuclear project, according to his bio on the Princeton website.

Before coming to the US, Mousavian was an important figure in the Iranian government, both as a diplomat and editor of the Tehran Times, the English-language newspaper which is a mouthpiece for the regime.

Mousavian was arrested by Iran in 2007, accused of “espionage” and described as a danger to its national security, for allegedly leaking information to European members of an Iranian nuclear negotiation team, which he was also was part of.

He was later cleared of the spying charges, but found guilty of working against the regime, according to CNN.

However, he was allowed to leave the country to take up the role at Princeton in 2009. Mousavian and Princeton University did not return requests for comment Monday.

In an email to the Daily Princetonian in 2023, Mousavian claimed: “I have not been able to go to Iran since June 2021 and I have not been engaged with any government including the government of Iran since the Iranian court convicted me in 2008.”