Lawdan Bazargan is an activist and former political prisoner from Iran who is organizing a push for Princeton to fire Seyed Hossein Mousavian, currently on staff at Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security. Mousavian is a former Iranian diplomat who has been accused of involvement in the assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Germany. Late last year, Bazargan succeeded in a similar campaign to get Oberlin College to fire Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, another former official who was involved in the killings. The Tory spoke with her about her background, the University’s relationship with Iran, and what Bazargan is up to now. The interview is abbreviated for clarity. The opinions expressed are the interviewee’s own.
Thanks for talking with me today. Can you give me a brief summary of your upbringing?
I was nine when the revolution in Iran happened. My brother was a college student in London at the time, and he was a leftist. So he, like thousands of others, he came back to Iran because he wanted to make a difference and participate in the rebuilding of our country.
Two years later, in 1981, he was arrested. For four months, we didn’t know where he was or what was happening. There was no indictment. After four months we found out he had been arrested. Finally, they gave him a 10-year sentence for distributing pamphlets, giving his pocket money to his [political] group, and for his leftist views.
We waited years for his release, but in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, after Iran accepted peace with Iraq, they decided to just erase the question of political prisoners. So he was executed along with about 5,000 other political prisoners.
I was 16 when I was arrested in 1985 for writing slogans on walls against the Iran–Iraq war. I spent three and a half months in prison, in solitary confinement, with a three-and-a-half-year conditional sentence that they would apply if I got arrested again.
So we had to put our house as collateral. I couldn’t leave the country for three years. So as soon as those conditions were removed, I just left the country. And here I am in the United States of America.
When you were imprisoned, were you part of any resistance or ideological groups?
In 1981, there was a great push by the regime to dismantle the political opposition. A scholarly group just studied the 1981 executions in Iran – 3,500 people were killed, 104 of them children. So by 1985, when I was arrested, almost no [opposition] political party existed to join, and if there was, it was in hiding.
Since my father was a leftist as well, we were receiving these anti-regime newspapers. I had read those and I became opposed to the [Iran–Iraq] war. I felt all these young men were dying for no particular reason. They were sending these very young children to the war fronts, giving 13 year-olds a plastic key and telling them “this is the key to your home in Paradise. If you die, you’ll go there.” Imagine that.
So I was just on my own. I would just write slogans against the war – things like that.
Let’s fast forward to today. What are you doing now?
Three years ago, in 2020, I was reading the report Amnesty International issued for the 30th anniversary of the 1988 massacre. And in Chapter 6, they highlighted all the people who were involved in the atrocity: the Supreme Leader, the Prime Minister, the President of Iran, and so on. I already knew all of them, and I knew they were involved.
But it also mentioned the ambassador of Iran to the UN in Geneva, the ambassador of Iran to New York, and the attaché of Iran to London. These three were named as orchestrating the campaign to cover up and deny the atrocity.
These names were new to me. So I started Googling. Two were in Iran, but Mohammad Jafar Mahallati was teaching at Oberlin University in Ohio. This was a shock to me: how can somebody like him be teaching at such a liberal school? So I talked to other faculty members and we started a campaign, and on October 7, 2020, we issued a letter to Oberlin College demanding that he be fired.
So, of course, they ignored us. It was COVID time, so we kept the story alive on social media. On November 10, 2021, we held our first protest in front of Oberlin College. We continued that campaign and after three and a half years, finally, Mahallati was removed. He put on permanent leave in November 2023, which was a great victory for our campaign.
So now we have decided to bring our attention to Seyed Hossein Mousavian at Princeton to try to get him fired.
Before we get to that, I wanted to find out about the Iran Center here. Who funds it? What do you think is its purpose? And what is its role in relation to Tehran?
In the early 2000s, the people of Iran were tired of the tyranny. So in a turn of events, the regime really tricked the world and the people of Iran by [elevating] Khatami, the so-called “reformist of Iran,” with the message of hope and change and democracy. His slogan was “Dialogue Among Civilizations,” because at the time [Samuel Huntington] wrote a book [Clash of Civilizations] about the dangers of Islam. I mean, imagine somebody is speaking out against a religion that supposedly one billion people believe in, and somebody else says, “Oh, let’s have a talk, let’s have a dialogue between civilizations” – of course people favor the second person. So that moment really helped [the regime].
These guys were able to take over all the Middle East Centers of universities around the world. Firstly, they used our ancient culture: Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest religions of the world, and great poetry like Shahnameh or Hafez, our other poet.
Second of all, they had a lot of money. Most of these centers, including the one in Princeton, are backed with dubious petroleum money. That’s another problem – most oil companies wanted to have good relations with Iran and access to lucrative deals.
The goal of the cultural centers was, first of all, surveillance of Iranians abroad. It was secondly to enter the universities and make alliances. There are also these leftist professors in the US that are all upset by colonialism, racism, and all the rest of it. And so they joined the Islamists, not considering the dangers that they pose to our liberal values, to our democratic values.
This alliance is one of the worst things that could have happened, and I really think that September 11 helped [Iran] a lot to use that. President Bush had to calm the country to ensure there wouldn’t be retaliation against Muslims. Everybody was feeling sorry for them about Islamophobia.
The fear we have about Islam is not a phobia. It’s a rational fear based on our [Iranian citizens’] lived experiences – because we know what they are capable of and what they can do. Every time we speak out against forced hijabs, against all the rules of Islam, we get attacked by [American] leftists, even though they should be our allies.
Let’s talk a little more about Mousavian. [In 1992, Mousavian was Iran’s ambassador to Germany. After Iran conducted assassinations of political dissidents on German soil, Germany put the perpetrators on trial. The killings were plotted in the Iranian embassy – where Mousavian was stationed as ambassador. He was later dismissed.] A key witness claimed that Mousavian participated in the killings. Another witness of the assassinations said that “the German government’s decision not to pursue a legal case against Mousavian was driven by political considerations rather than the absence of criminal culpability.” Why do you think Germany didn’t even name Mousavian in that court decision?
At the time of these killings in Europe, they were first of all kidnapping and ransoming citizens of many countries. They had killed hundreds of US citizens in bombings in Lebanon. European leaders were honestly scared. They knew that these guys were capable of putting a bomb in a mall and killing hundreds of people.
German reporters totally put this in context. The Iranian regime had two Germans in jail. As soon as the court wanted to issue its verdict on the Mykonos killing, the regime right away issued a death sentence on one of them. If you are a German chancellor, who do you think about? Your own citizens’ life, or the Iranian refugees getting killed on German soil?
Germany was the biggest trade partner of Iran at the time: about $5 billion. Now they were scared of the Islamic regime.
Mousavian was actively trying to stop the trial and its verdict, according to his own words. He met with German leaders 300 times to ask them to stop the trial. He worked for the Foreign Ministry. His boss is implicated, so of course he’s implicated. So what if they didn’t mention him? In the media, he said “I vouch for my regime that we weren’t involved in this at all.” And then it was proven that his regime was involved, and he’s still denying it.
I don’t understand why Princeton University has somebody on staff who doesn’t believe in liberal values, a liberal court system, and the findings of a panel of six judges. This is outrageous. It’s shameful to have this guy here who goes against everything we believe in and what we stand for.
Why do you think the University hired Mousavian and why are they still employing him?
They have this misplaced judgment that dialogue with and access to the Islamic regime of Iran are good. He is basically an extension of the Islamic Republic of Iran – he is their unofficial lobby.
In my understanding, the reason Mousavian left Iran was an internal power struggle. His patron, Rafsanjani, opposed Ahmadinejad when he was being appointed. So Rafsanjani was asked to leave, and he in turn advised Mousavian to leave. Mousavian became persona non grata after this conflict within the government. Why would the regime today want Mousavian to be involved again? And why would he want to serve a regime that ousted him?
Unfortunately, foreigners compare the differences between the factions in Iran with their own differences. They think, oh, this is Democrats against Republicans, or different European parties against one other.
It’s not. These guys are a bunch of murderers who have the blood of Iranians on their hands. Their fights and their differences are not real. At the end of the day, they all have the Holy Quran that directs them, just the same way the Taliban is. In the big picture, they have no problem with each other. It’s just that each one of them thinks that they can govern better than the other.
Mousavian wasn’t asked to leave the country. He went to Iran. He participated in Ghassem Soleimani’s [funeral] ceremony. Right now, Mousavian is facing fraud charges in Iranian court because he stole a lot of money. But he’s not in exile like us. If I go back to Iran, I will get arrested. Even if he gets convicted, he gets a year in jail or something. It’s not that they’re going to murder him.
So again, these are all games that they create to give him more credibility in the West. It gives him an extra measure to say, “Oh, look at me, my life is in danger in my own country, and that’s why I am here.” But these are all facades. How successful this regime has been at tricking the US.
What do you think your chances of success are with Mousavian?
I have no doubt that we will succeed.
You know, Mahallati was a [US] citizen and he had tenure. Everybody was telling me, “There is no way you will succeed” – and we succeeded. So Mousavian will be much easier. He doesn’t have citizenship. He is not a real professor. He works for one of the think tanks [a Princeton research center without teaching obligations]. If we can get the support of Princeton students, like what we got from Oberlin students, I’m sure we will win.
On April 26, we will organize a protest in front of Princeton. We are hoping to meet students, professors, and Princeton residents. They should be worried about having a murderer living among them as well. So hopefully that will help, and they will get the media attention they deserve and go from there.
(Photo credit: Reddit, r/NewIran)
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