When people talk about the Iranian regime’s influence campaign in the United States, the way they typically imagine it is Tehran surreptitiously planting undercover agents in the American political, media and academic institutions to mislead the public and politicians and to push the agenda of the Islamic Republic.
But in reality it is not that easy to infiltrate, as the agent needs to cross many immigration and security barriers first to be able to enter these institutions. Especially if the targeted position is a federal job, a painstaking process of getting a security clearance is in place that few agents are likely to complete. These hurdles cannot be surmounted only through infiltration and influence.
An Iranian influence campaign won’t work, at least not on such a far-reaching level that we are witnessing today, unless there is at least some degree of acceptance and tolerance from within the U.S. political system.
In my opinion, an Iranian influence campaign won’t work, at least not on such a far-reaching level that we are witnessing today, unless there is at least some degree of acceptance and tolerance from within the U.S. political system. And I am highly confident that this is the case when I say this. It is based on decades of meticulous observation and research.
The way it works is, at least part of the American political establishment likes to keep the nations’ enemies close so that it can maintain a degree of leverage over those enemies that public diplomacy under the ever-watchful eye of the media won’t allow. And that’s why they deliberately hire people who are in some way connected to the regime. In other words, this looks like an informal and undeclared approach by at least part of the U.S. political system to welcome Iranian regime’s agents and lobbyists to be able to later use them in a double game of influence.
A notorious example of the application of this approach is the case of Seyed Hossein Mousavian. At a time when the Iranian regime was systematically assassinating its opponents on European soil, Mousavian was Tehran’s ambassador to Germany and in charge of the embassy at the center of the regime’s terrorist operations in Europe. Many prominent Iranian dissidents were assassinated under Mousavian’s watch.
In the legal proceedings to the terrorist attack at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin in 1992, when a number of leading figures of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan were massacred, the German federal court found that Mousavian was implicated in that terrorist attack as well as several others across Europe, which led to Germany practically expelling him. Ironically, later, under Hassan Rouhani as chair of Iran’s National Security Council, Mousavian became a key figure in the first round of negotiations with Europeans over the Iranian regime’s nuclear program.
Since Mousavian was an acolyte of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran who had fallen from the Supreme Leader’s favor, his position became shaky with the advent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who at the time had Khamenei’s full support. Ahmadinejad’s Ministry of Intelligence accused Mousavian of spying for Britain and placed him under arrest. He was eventually sentenced to a term in prison, but never served time and instead emerged in the United States. Mousavian has settled in the U.S. since 2009, and as a so-called “researcher” at Princeton University has pushed the Iranian regime’s agenda.
Mousavian has also been lying about the regime’s hegemonic ambitions and trying to protect the Revolutionary Guards. An obvious example was his efforts to prevent the IRGC’s terrorist designation by the Trump administration, which failed.
Mousavian told the Iranian media in 2006 that he had deceived the Europeans and bought time for Tehran to develop its nuclear program. Since his arrival in the U.S., he has been one of the primary agents of influence to push for a nuclear deal. To make his agenda palatable to the American public and politicians, he even lied that Khamenei had issued a fatwa, a religious decree, that banned any military use of nuclear technology, including in the form of an atom bomb. Back then in 2013, Azad Farsani and I wrote a detailed article and argued that contrary to Mousavian’s claim the regime was seeking to build a nuclear arsenal.
Mousavian has also been lying about the regime’s hegemonic ambitions and trying to protect the Revolutionary Guards. An obvious example was his efforts to prevent the IRGC’s terrorist designation by the Trump administration, which failed. Later, Mousavian made sure to attend the funeral of Qasem Soleimani, the killer of American soldiers in Iraq as commander of IRGC’s notorious Quds Force, and has only had acclaim for that criminal.
Another notable example of this trend is Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s former special envoy for Iran and the lead negotiator to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran, along with his aides Ali Vaez and Ariane Tabatabai. It was obvious for years that Malley and his team were on a pro-Tehran trajectory, and it is very unlikely that the Biden administration was unaware of their close relationship with at least part of the regime. About the nature of this relationship I and others had warned many times, but the Biden administration ignored the warnings and for a long time even defended the conduct of the State Department’s Iran Desk.
Only when powerful parties opposed to the deal produced strong evidence of Malley and his team’s possible passing of classified information to the Iranian regime was the Biden administration forced to officially oust him. Even then, the State Department did not fully clarify the reason(s) for his sacking, and Malley was merely sent to Princeton University to accompany Mousavian. Malley was indeed dismissed as an individual so that, while he becomes the fall guy, the DOS’ institutional issue at stake can be overlooked so that those who authorized him can stay in the shadows and continue their outreach to Tehran.
I must also add this in parentheses, that it looks like the evidence of Malley and his team’s connection to the Iranian regime was intentionally leaked by Tehran to expose them and block their channel. Malley and his apprentices are close to the coterie of Hashemi Rafsanjani and former foreign minister Javad Zarif. Apparently, the Revolutionary Guards and other Russian-affiliated elements in Tehran who oppose putting the regime’s nuclear program under the IAEA’s supervision and pursue an escalation of conflict with the U.S. and Israel were happy to see any backchannels for compromise with the West decisively shut.
Washington’s gambit to keep America’s enemies close in order to influence the Iranian regime, usually through behind-the-scenes means, has more often than not been exploited by Tehran. It acts like a double-edged sword.
Therefore, Washington’s gambit to keep America’s enemies close in order to influence the Iranian regime, usually through behind-the-scenes means, has more often than not been exploited by Tehran. It acts like a double-edged sword. Although it keeps the channels open towards Tehran, it also enables Islamists to negatively influence Washington by feeding it misinformation and disinformation that is detrimental to U.S. national security. (Ed. And US citizens know nothing of this sordid, devious and backfiring gambit.)
In the end, Washington needs to learn from this endless string of failed experiments and come to the realization that one cannot continuously appease an unscrupulous, apocalyptic regime and expect to solve the problems that arise from it. Instead of giving leverage to the regime’s lobbyists and agents of influence, Washington must employ and empower democratically minded Iranian-American experts who consider their two homelands’ best interests in Iran’s return to the US-led liberal world order.
