Princeton University is facing demands to fire a tenured professor once accused of being part of an Iranian campaign to murder the country’s enemies, The Post has learned.
The school is also facing a Congressional probe into why it hired the professor, Seyed Hossein Mousavian who lectures on Middle East security and nuclear policy despite him being a former top Iranian diplomat steeped in Tehran’s regime of fear.
Mousavian was hired by the Ivy League school in 2009. Before that, he was a prominent 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. 5 Princeton hired Mousavian in 2009 as a tenured professor of Middle East security and nuclear policy but is now facing demands to fire him for his past as a key part of the Iranian regime and allegations he was involved in its crimes. Getty Images
He was Iran’s ambassador to Germany in 1992 when four dissidents were murdered in the back of a restaurant in Berlin in 1992, leading to an anti-regime group demanding he be stripped of his role at the Woodrow Wilson school of government.
The House Education and the Workforce committee, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-NC), is demanding to know what checks Princeton made and whether the Obama administration lobbied the school to give Mousavian a job.
“Mousavian’s troubling history of association with state-sponsored terrorism and human rights abuses demands decisive action from Princeton University’s administration,” said Lawdan Bazargan, a former political prisoner, human rights activist, and member of the US-based Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists.
When The Post reached out to Mousavian for comment he declined to be interviewed but provided links to a previous interview which suggested “Zionists” were targeting him.
The group demanding that he be fired by Princeton alleges that when he was ambassador to Germany, 23 Iranians were killed in Europe for being enemies of the mullahs.
They included four Iranian Kurdish leaders gunned down by Hezbollah at a Greek restaurant in Berlin in 1992. 5 Three of the four victims of the Iran-organized murder plot in 1992 were (top) former Iranian Kurdish leader Sadiq Sharafkindi, (front) Fettah Abduli, general secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party and (right) Humayan Erdalan, the deputy European leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party. Associated Press
In 1997 a German court concluded that the Iranian leadership, including the foreign ministry, masterminded the murders and that the headquarters for plotting them was the Iranian embassy.
During the trial, Tagesspiegel reported that a former Iranian spy, Abolghasem Mesbahi, said under oath, “Mousavian was involved in most of the crimes that took place in Europe.
“Specifically, in Germany, it concerns the crimes that were committed against Iranian opposition members.
“Iran was always involved, even if German authorities were not always able to determine that the Iranian government had a hand in it.” 5 Iran used Hezbollah death squads to commit murders in Europe, including of four Kurdish Iranian political leaders in Berlin when Mousavian was the regime’s ambassador to Germany. AFP via Getty Images
The verdict resulted in nearly all of the members of the European Union recalling their ambassadors from Tehran, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported, and Mousavian being returned to Tehran.
The court’s final opinion did not name Mousavian, a point made in his defense by another Princeton professor, Frank von Hippel, in September last year when the House Armed Services committee asked why Mousavian was invited to an event held by the military’s Strategic Command, which runs the US nuclear deterrent.
Bazargan wrote to Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber this month that Mousavian’s “role in orchestrating violence against innocent civilians is a testament to his complicity in Iran’s nefarious activities, further highlighting the dangers of his continued presence at Princeton University.”
An online petition urging Princeton to remove Mousavian from his post was started by the group earlier this month.
The move came after Rep. Foxx demanded that Eisgruber tell her why Princeton is employing Mousavian, who she warned, “worked for the Iranian regime his entire professional life.” 5 Republican Rep Virginia Foxx is chairing the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that is probing Princeton University’s relationship with Iranian professor Seyed Hossein Mousavian. AP
In a four-page letter sent to Eisgruber in November, Foxx and other Republican committee members demanded to know of any communications Mousavian has had with Iran and whether a foreign government is paying for Mousavian’s salary.
His position with the school over the last 15 years “raises significant concerns about the influence of foreign hostile regimes on American institutions,” the committee wrote.
Mousavian was arrested by Iran in 2007, accused of “espionage” and described as a danger to its national security, but allowed to leave to take up the role at Princeton.
The House committee said his relationship with the regime is “unclear,” and said that he had been able to travel back to Iran freely in recent years. 5 Mousavian was Iran’s ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997 when he was recalled to Iran after a German court found his embassy was used to plot the murder of four dissidents. picture alliance via Getty Images
Mousavian refused comment Tuesday. In a 2022 interview for Iran’s Arman Melli newspaper, Mousavian claimed the murders had been carried out by Israeli and US operatives.
In an email to the Daily Princetonian last year, Mousavian said 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.
Princeton did not respond to a request for comment.
Foxx’s committee is also probing Ivy league antisemitism, an investigation which has cost the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard their jobs after they testified early in December that it depended on “context” whether calling for the genocide of Jews their colleges’ rules.
Last week the committee demanded answers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology about antisemitism on its campus in the wake of the October 7 massacre of hundreds of Israelis by Hamas.
