Experts Want Iranian Scholar At Princeton Kicked Out

A rhubarb has erupted among Iran watchers in the United States following comments made recently by Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs who was close to the parliamentary speaker and later president of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Yossi Melman reported for the Israeli daily Haaretz.

Photo Insert: Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Mousavian was editor-in-chief of the Tehran Times, an English-language regime daily, and in 1990, at the age of 33, he became Iran’s ambassador to Germany, where he served for seven years.

Mousavian was interviewed for an Iranian documentary film about Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps general and commander of its Quds Force, who was assassinated two years ago by the CIA in an operation in which Israel was also involved.

Considered to be an influential figure in Iran, Mousavian spoke with a smile and a smirk of satisfaction about the threats directed against US official Brian Hook following the Soleimani assassination, and about how Hook’s wife couldn’t sleep, cried and trembled, and suffered from anxiety as a result of the threats.

Hook was an advisor to former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and served as Trump’s special envoy for Iran. Mousavian studied engineering at Sacramento State University of California and later returned to Iran, where he took a second degree at the University of Tehran. He studied for a Ph.D. in International Relations at Kent University in the United Kingdom, obtaining his doctorate in 2002.

Hook is well known to decision-makers in Jerusalem who served in the years 2017 to 2020, and to the heads of the security establishment. He visited Israel several times. He refused to discuss Mousavian’s comments in the documentary. Mousavian is adept at juggling stances.

He is considered a member of the pragmatic camp in Iran but is sparing in his criticism of the regime of the ayatollahs, and at the same time manages to enjoy the prestige of American academia.

“He is a chameleon who knows his boundaries. He will try to keep everyone happy but at the end of the day, he is a propaganda agent of the Iranian regime,” said a former senior Israeli intelligence officer who knows Mousavian well.

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