A prominent group of Iranian Americans urged US Attorney-General William Barr in a letter this past week to investigate Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian ambassador to Germany and currently an academic at Princeton University, for alleged complicity in crimes against humanity.
“We are Iranian Americans who are deeply concerned about the presence of Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a known agent of Iran’s regime, on American soil,” wrote 25 members of the US-Iranian community.
Reza Behrouz – an Iranian-American physician and dissident based in San Antonio – along with Peter Kohanloo, president of Iranian-American Majority, who signed the letter, also authored an opinion article in the New York Post titled “Teaching at Princeton — with blood on his hands.”
The letter states that “Mousavian’s presence on US soil serves no purpose but to promote the ideology and interests of America’s staunchest enemy and sow fear and division within the Iranian-American community.”
Seyed Hossein Mousavian was Tehran’s ambassador to Germany in 1992 when Iran’s regime authorized the assassination of four Iranian dissidents in the Greek restaurant Mykonos in Berlin.
A Berlin court found that Iran’s embassy at the time in the city of Bonn “served as the headquarters for the terrorists involved” in the murder of the Iranian dissidents, according to the letter.
Behrouz and Kohanloo wrote in the New York Post that as ambassador to Germany, Mousavian was “running interference for the regime, he dismissed the charges as a ‘joke’ and predicted that ‘the judges are sure to vote in Iran’s favor.’ The judges didn’t, in fact, rule in Iran’s favor, and the German government eventually requested the removal of Mousavian along with others attached to the intelligence section of the Iranian embassy. The Germans expelled four Iranian diplomats, and Mousavian quietly decamped on his own accord.”
In 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration released two convicted Iranian-regime terrorists who assassinated the four Iranian opposition figures in the Berlin restaurant. The Israeli government and Iranian exiles at the time protested Merkel’s decision.
Germany is widely viewed as the Islamic Republic of Iran’s most important ally within the European Union.
Mousavian oversaw the foreign-relations committee of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami. Khatami has praised and defended French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.
Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs appointed Mousavian a visiting scholar in 2009.
“Given his history, we, the undersigned, believe that Mr. Mousavian is a threat to the US national security and a danger to dissidents in the Iranian-American community,” wrote the 25 signatories.
The Jerusalem Post’s press queries to Princeton University and Mousavian were not immediately returned.
Writing in the New York Post, Behrouz and Kohanloo noted: “With his close ties to the Iranian regime, and diplomatic role at a time when Tehran was murdering dissidents abroad, Mousavian is a menacing presence to Iranian-Americans. How did he come to be here? And how does he get to stay? And what role is he playing? Team Trump must find out.”
