Does Iran Even Need Spies in Academia?

[Valin]

Middle East Forum

A.J. Caschetta

The Hill

April 8 2021

The Justice Department recently indicted professor Kaveh Afrasiabi, charging that for decades his persona as a neutral, mild-mannered scholar was a cover and that, in reality, he was an agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran. If the allegations are true and this seasoned academic (Boston University, Harvard and UC Berkeley) was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote Iranian interests in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe and to appear on television, it was wasted money.

Perhaps Iran got lucky and a man with a good cover offered his services, or perhaps he is one covert operative in a much larger operation to infiltrate American academia. But the sad truth is that Iran really doesn't need agents to pose as neutral experts because American academics long have done Iran's public messaging free of charge.

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Columbia University appears to have many professors devoted to promoting Iran. Seven of the 73 academic signatures on the letter urging Congress to pass the JCPOA belong to Columbia professors. One of them, Robert Jervis, is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science. Last year, when Iran used the coronavirus pandemic to get sanctions removed, Jervis endorsed the idea in an interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency that later became a headline in the Tehran Times: "Columbia university professor urges removal of Iran sanctions."

At Rutgers University, Hooshang Amirahmadi makes claims that would make Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei proud. A founder of the American Iranian Council, former director of the Rutgers's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and currently a professor at Rutgers's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Amirahmadi has said in public: "Iran has not been involved with any terrorist organization. Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas are terrorist organizations."

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