In November 2023, a group of Iranian-Americans, some of whom had been incarcerated in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison or were relatives of executed political prisoners, launched a campaign to secure the dismissal of Princeton University academic Seyed Hossein Mousavian for his alleged role in the assassinations of at least 24 Iranian dissidents in Europe.
Just weeks ago, it was revealed that Mousavian is also one of the fathers of Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program.
The efforts of the Alliance Against the Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists bore fruit. AAIRIA disclosed on August 9 that Princeton had quietly announced Mousavian’s “retirement” effective June 1 in a notice on its Inside Princeton webpage.
Mousavian was also in the crosshairs of a 2023 congressional investigation for advancing the Islamic Republic’s agenda at Princeton and participating in the funeral of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, whose assassination President Trump ordered in January 2020. In April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) urged his alma mater, Princeton University, to fire Mousavian. He later took to X to urge the Trump administration to deport Mousavian.
Mousavian’s forced retirement coincided with the publication by the Middle East Media Research Institute of a 2004 interview with Mousavian in the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick, in which Mousavian declared to German journalist Bruno Schirra: “After Iraq’s attacks, we announced our defensive chemical and nuclear programs. We will continue to do so in the future.”
Schirra and many Iran experts view Mousavian, who is fluent in English, as having been the key negotiator for the Islamic Republic in its nuclear negotiations with the international community (2003–2005).
During that period, Mousavian stressed that the theocratic state would never abandon its right to enrichment of uranium. “Even if we are dragged before the UN Security Council, that will not change our stance,” he said in the 2004 interview. The Trump administration insists that Iran must walk away from the right to enrichment — the process that enables the clerical regime to build a nuclear weapons device.
The telling Swiss interview demonstrates that Iran has not deviated since 2004 from its two principal goals: the development of atomic weapons and the right to enrich weapons-grade uranium for nuclear missiles.
Since Mousavian arrived at Princeton in 2009 and attended meetings at the Obama White House to help seal the woefully flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal, he has used his Princeton shingle to make Iran’s nuclear program socially and politically correct for Americans.
His latest sales pitch is a nuclear consortium on Iranian soil that enables Tehran to continue to enrich, but with the involvement of Sunni Gulf countries.
Mousavian’s tenure in Europe as Iran’s Ambassador to Germany (1990-1997) is remembered for his alleged role in the regime’s “Chain Murders” of Iranian dissidents across Europe.
According to an archived 1997 article from the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Abolghasem Mesbahi, a former top-level Iranian intelligence official, told a Berlin court during the Mykonos trial: “Mousavian participated in most of the [Iranian regime’s] crimes that took place in Europe.” Iranian dissidents have accused Mousavian of coordinating the assassinations of Iranian Kurds in a joint Iran–Hezbollah operation in the West Berlin restaurant Mykonos in 1992.
Mohsen Rafiqdoost, a founding member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its minister from 1980 to 1999, recently described his role in funding covert operations abroad. His statements indicated that Iran was directly involved in orchestrating political assassinations beyond its borders, including the 1992 murder of dissident Iranian singer Fereydoun Farrokhzad in Bonn, Germany. Farrokhzad was an international star. Iranian dissidents in Germany are pushing for the German authorities to prosecute Mousavian for the murders of the dissidents in Bonn and Berlin.
Mousavian has also declined to renounce his reported support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and for the fatwa issued by Iran’s then-Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to assassinate British-American author Salman Rushdie.
The confluence of the Trump administration’s suspension of research grants amounting to $210 million to Princeton for allegations of antisemitism on campus and Mousavian’s reported role as one of the masterminds of the “Chain Murders,” along with the AAIRIA campaign, seems to have contributed to the breaking point of the previously recalcitrant Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber.
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The defiant Eisgruber, who has faced criticism from Princeton alumni and students for failing to counter antisemitism, likely viewed Mousavian as causing irreparable damage to the reputation of his elite university. The Iranian-American activist organization now seeks Mousavian’s deportation to Europe, where he could face prosecution for his alleged role in the “Chain Murders.”
The 24 victims of Mr. Mousavian’s scorched-earth campaign on European soil deserve genuine accountability.
Benjamin Weinthal is a Writing Fellow for the Middle East Forum.