Hossein Mousavian, The Princeton Professor Quietly Working For Iran’s Regime

Updated April 10, 2024 at 11:05 p.m.*

-OpEd-

When Princeton University recruited the former Iranian diplomat Seyed Hossein Mousavian in 2009, I thought he had taken his distance from the Islamic Republic, and would work against the regime that was threatening to try him as a suspected spy. I was wrong.

Mousavian has been in the news recently, after a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives launched an investigation in November into his role at the university. In a letter to Princeton, 12 Republican lawmakers also questioned whether Mousavian had made any efforts to help free two of the school’s graduate students who have been imprisoned by the Iranian regime.

Mousavian has continued to serve the regime that had given him every opportunity. From his days as a governing board member of the conservative daily Resalat and as managing editor of the Tehran Times, to his time as Iran’s Ambassador to Germany (1990-1997), and his move to the U.S. to lobby for a nuclear deal with Western powers, Mousavian has remained a faithful servant of the Islamic Republic. This did not end with the end of his formal services.

Former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking on Iranian state television, described Mousavian as a perfect defender of the regime’s positions; he “used to be our colleague” and is now, while working abroad or giving conferences, “defending the Islamic Republic of Iran’s positions beautifully,” Zarif said.

No evidence of targeting

Mousavian has also done a fine job of presenting himself as a regime critic or outsider.

He claimed he was on the hit list of regime opponents in the 1990s, which is nonsense. There is no solid evidence that Iran’s Ministry of Information had added him to its list of targets, and were planning to kill him in Germany in January 1996. His only proof is claims by the former intelligence agent and leftist politician Ali Rabii.

I have seen two of the hit lists — one of which was given to me by the reformist and former intelligence agent Saeed Hajjarian — and I did not see Mousavian’s name in either. Moreover, the series of assassinations of critics, known as “the chain murders” was carried out inside Iran, not the EU. Even after 1992 Mykonos restaurant assassinations in Berlin (in which four Kurdish activists were killed), there was no specific plan to kill opponents abroad.

The chain murders aimed in part to undermine the reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

Ideology and terror

In the 1980s, the regime’s agenda was not rampant anti-semitism, Shia imperialism and building a nuclear bomb. The conservative daily Resalat did not call Israel a “Zionist regime” or “child killers;” The most conservative elements of the ruling clergy had other priorities: the war with Iraq (1980-1988); pacifying the country through terror and the execution of opponents; ending secularism; and grappling with the power of Islamic leftists.

With the Iraq-Iran war war at a bloody stalemate, the regime felt precarious. Prominent Iranians, keen to topple the regime, were hiding abroad, and the country’s prisons held at least 5,000 political opponents. Domestic terror and foreign terrorism were seen as crucial tools of power. Senior officials began to envisage the murder of prisoners in Iran and opponents abroad.

Mousavian has had a role in most of the crimes that have taken place in Europe.

It is important to remember that Islamists do not consider murder to be entirely reprehensible. Rather, it is a legitimate tool if the target is seen as an enemy of religion and once the required writ or fatwa is issued.

But how is it legitimized and normalized among ordinary Iranians? That is what Mousavian and his colleagues at Resalat did. The daily became an eloquent mouthpiece for the supporters and perpetrators of Islamist terror, even when Mousavian had gone to Berlin.

Praise of violence

While a German court found, an 1997 ruling, sufficient evidence of Tehran’s involvement in the 1992 Mykonos incident, Mousavian (who was then ambassador to Germany), has vigorously rejected those findings, saying “I personally had more than 300 meetings with the German foreign ministry, judiciary, parliament, Chancellor’s office and even media chiefs to show that the Iranian government had no hand” in the killings.

A Mykonos trial witness said under oath in February 1997 that “Mousavian has had a role in most of the crimes that have taken place in Europe.” That statement was reported in German media at the time, yet Mousavian neither protested nor threatened legal action over that testimony.

When he is in Tehran, Mousavian says nothing about working for Princeton and gives full praise for the regime’s violence abroad. During an interview on Iranian state television, he smirked when discussing the fears of former U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook and his spouse in the wake of the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

“Brian Hook’s wife can’t sleep, she cries and trembles, she told Brian, ‘They’ll kill you’… that’s how much they were trembling,” Mousavian said with a smile.

Originally published April 8, 2024, this article was updated April 10, 2024 with enriched media.