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Dr. Seyed Hossein Mousavian speaks at Chatham House.

The attack on Dr. Mousavian

Frank N. von Hippel

Guest Contributor

Recently, a group called United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), wrote a letter to President Eisgruber declaring it will campaign against all grants and government contracts to Princeton University until my esteemed colleague, Dr. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a researcher in the University’s Program on Science and Global Security, is dismissed. UANI’s letter was copied to 19 large foundations, the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Health and Human Services, and Princeton’s Board of Trustees.

UANI’s attack on Dr. Mousavian should be understood for what it is: a hatchet job against a political opponent.

First, some background. On its website, UANI says it “educates the public, policymakers, and businesses about the danger posed by the Iranian regime.” In the past, it has received a large share of its funding from Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire and largest funder of Donald Trump. In a 2013 talk at Yeshiva University in New York, Adelson proposed that, to make Iran more cooperative, the United States should detonate a nuclear weapon over a desert area in Iran and threaten that the next one would explode over Iran’s capital, Tehran.

As a hardline anti-Iranian organization, UANI has campaigned against diplomacy with Iran and especially against the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. In 2018, UANI praised President Trump as “correct and courageous” when he took the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. UANI now opposes the Biden Administration’s effort to bring Iran and the United States back into the deal.

For his part, since coming to Princeton in 2009, Mousavian has worked tirelessly for a peaceful solution of the confrontation between Iran and the United States. Based on my personal observations, Dr. Mousavian, as an advisor to the negotiators on both sides, was as responsible as anyone for the creative ideas that bridged the gaps in the Iran Nuclear Deal.

During the Biden Administration, Mousavian and UANI have been on opposite sides once again, with Mousavian encouraging the administration to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal and UANI in opposition.

Fortunately, thus far it appears that Mousavian’s arguments have been more persuasive than those of UANI and other U.S. hardline organizations, and we may escape another war in the Middle East. That war would start with Israel or the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and most likely lead to the nuclear-armed Iran that UANI claims to be against. As Robert Malley, the White House special envoy leading the negotiations with Iran, recently reiterated, reviving the Iran Nuclear Deal remains in the “mutual interest” of the United States and Iran.

That is the political disagreement behind the UANI letter to President Eisgruber.

But the letter does not present UANI’s arguments against the Iran Nuclear Deal. It engages instead in what has become known in recent decades as “the politics of personal destruction.” When you can’t win the political argument, attempt to destroy your opponent with accusations of criminality.

At the core of the UANI letter is the accusation that, in 1992, while Dr. Mousavian was Iran’s ambassador to Germany, he oversaw the assassinations of four Iranian opposition figures in a Berlin restaurant, “Mykonos.” The reality is that the German government thoroughly investigated the Mykonos assassinations and the 395-page explanation of its verdict does not mention Dr. Mousavian. Indeed, Dr. Mousavian has been a frequent visitor to Germany since, and he has been involved in high-level policy discussions with senior German officials and parliamentarians and their colleagues from other European governments. These simple, easy to verify facts speak for themselves.

What UANI does not understand — or does not want to understand — is that, when Dr. Mousavian was ambassador to Germany, he served under an Iranian president who wanted Iran to join the world as a normal country. Iran had, in effect, two parallel governments with its hardliners operating by their own rules, using the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence agency.

Dr. Mousavian has been attacked by Iranian as well as US hardliners. Before he came to Princeton in 2009, for example, he was accused by Iranian intelligence under Iran’s hardline President Ahmadinejad of being a foreign agent and interrogated in the notorious Evin prison.

UANI’s letter makes much of a 10-second snippet from an Iranian documentary. This 10-second clip was part of a larger 90-minute interview with Mousavian. While that interview was not published in its entirety, Mousavian has said that he criticized both US and Iranian hardliners in the interview. He said that he criticized the Trump Administration for its assassination of Revolutionary Guard General Qasem Soleimani and Iran’s government for threatening Brian Hook and other Trump Administration officials who reportedly approved that assassination. For Mousavian, violence and threats of violence put at risk the meaningful diplomacy required if the United States and Iran are to resolve their long-standing, deeply held mutual grievances.

In summary, in going after Dr. Mousavian, UANI’s strategy appears to be to kill the messenger when you cannot counter the message. Sadly, such demonization of political enemies is a growing manifestation of America’s current political distemper.

Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist, is a Professor of Public and International Affairs emeritus and an affiliate of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, which he co-founded. During the 1980s, he worked with Mikhail Gorbachev’s advisors to end the Soviet-US nuclear arms race. In 1993, he was awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. From 1993-1994, he served as a White House nuclear-policy advisor. In April 2021, his career was profiled in Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Why is Princeton harboring a man who condones threats against American diplomats?

Gabriel Noronha and Morgan Ortagus

Guest Contributors

Princetonians should learn the name Brian Hook. He served as the top U.S. diplomat for Iranian affairs from 2018–2020. Hook also helped negotiate historic peace treaties in the Middle East, collectively known as the Abraham Accords.

Hook’s work also bears directly on the Princeton community. In 2019, as State Department officials, we saw Hook lead secret negotiations for the release of Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang, held by the Iranian government. Wang had been held hostage in the notorious Evin Prison for three years.

Hook’s efforts on Wang’s behalf were heroic. Unfortunately, Princeton University continues to support a scholar — Dr. Seyed Hossein Mousavian — who amplifies the Iranian regime’s death threats against Hook and his family.

Princeton University administrators have chosen to ignore the matter, not even deigning to respond to a letter on the issue sent by former U.S. Ambassador Mark Wallace, the CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). We call on the University to firmly condemn the threats condoned by Mousavian, and to promptly respond to the UANI letter, which calls for Mousavian’s termination.

Mousavian is employed by Princeton as a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at the Program on Science and Global Security. Mousavian’s career has been marked by the shadow of controversy, dating back to his tenure as the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Germany. Despite Mousavian’s past claims that he is an exile of the Iranian government, former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif stated in 2016 that Mousavian has remained a loyal friend of the Iranian regime.

In a documentary released earlier this year paying homage to UN-sanctioned Iranian general and US-designated terrorist Qasem Soleimani, Mousavian smiled while referring to death threats made by the Iranian regime against Mr. Hook. He said [in Farsi]: “An American told me that Brian Hook’s wife can’t sleep, and she cries and trembles as they say they’ll kill Hook…that is how shaken they are!” Mousavian’s recounting of the regime’s threats and their impact was cold, sneering, and callous. It is baffling that Princeton University leadership remains silent in the face of Mousavian’s amplification of threats made against Hook and his family.

These threats are no joking matter. Even though Hook has left government service, he — along with other current and former U.S. government officials — is still being targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime. Given Mousavian’s long service to and affiliation with the Iranian regime, he certainly knew that his words would be used for propaganda. They are an affront to basic decency and must be condemned without hesitation.

Princeton’s top leadership and Mousavian’s direct employers are aware of these remarks. UANI flagged them for University President Christopher Eisgruber in the public letter earlier this month.

Consistent with Princeton’s guidelines for complaints against faculty, we also personally relayed these facts to Dean Amaney Jamal of the School of Public and International Affairs and Professor Alex Glaser, co-Director of the Program on Science and Global Security, which directly employs Mousavian. More than a month has passed since we reached out to Jamal and Graser, but our repeated requests have been met with total silence.

This silence is especially outrageous given Hook’s pivotal role in the release of a Princeton community member from an Iranian prison. In 2016, Xiyue Wang, a Princeton doctoral student in history, traveled to Iran for research. He was taken hostage by Iranian government police and charged with bogus “national security” crimes, while the regime hoped to extract ransom payments for his release. Princeton asked for the assistance of the U.S. government to release Wang from prison (though Wang recently filed a lawsuit against Princeton University accusing them of severe negligence in the matter).

We personally witnessed Hook working from early morning to late night on the secret negotiations with the Iranian government through foreign intermediaries that finally led to Wang’s release. On Dec. 7, 2019, Wang was flown out of Iran on a Swiss government plane that landed in Geneva. Hook organized a U.S. government plane to fly to meet Wang at the same time and finalized his release.

Those details are public, but as State Department employees, we had an insider picture into Wang’s release. Once freed, Hook gave Wang an American flag, took him out to eat, and asked if there was anything — anything — he could get for Wang. He asked for a phone and laptop so that he could reconnect with the world he had been separated from for the past 40 months. So, Hook went to the nearest Apple store, took out his personal credit card, and bought Wang an iPhone and laptop.

Yes, Hook was doing his job as a public servant, but he went above and beyond to help Princeton resolve one of their most vexing challenges — the unlawful detention of one of their students by a foreign government.

We take to the pages of The Daily Princetonian to demand an answer from the University: why are you refusing to acknowledge the threats made against U.S. diplomat Brian Hook and his family? Why have you not condemned Mousavian? And is complicit silence a fitting response to Hook’s service to the nation and the University?

We eagerly await Princeton’s response.

Morgan Ortagus served as the Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo. Gabriel Noronha served as the State Department’s Special Advisor for Iran under Secretary Pompeo.

Editor’s Note: In the process of publishing this piece, the ‘Prince’ took several steps to corroborate the authors’ account of the content of the documentary and Brian Hook’s role in Xiyue Wang’s release, including independent translation from Farsi to English.

Xiyue Wang has named Dr. Seyed Hossein Mousavian in his lawsuit against Princeton University, alleging Dr. Mousavian did not use his contacts in the Iranian government to aid Wang’s release.