With the Trump administration seeking to deport non-citizen students and professors who support American-designated terrorist organizations, fresh scrutiny is being placed on Princeton University’s employment of a former Iranian official, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who has been accused of promoting Iran’s terror agenda on American soil. 

“The Islamic Republic’s former ambassador to Germany works at Princeton University and attended the funeral of Qasem Soleimani in 2020. And yet he remains here on a green card,” Jason Brodsky, the policy director of Iran watchdog group, United Against Nuclear Iran, posted on X. “It’s the craziest most unacceptable situation I’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Mousavian, who was hired by Princeton in 2009, currently serves as the university’s research fellow for Middle East security and nuclear policy. His research interests, according to the university website, include “Iran Nuclear Dossier,” “WMD Free Zone in the Middle East,” and “Crisis in the Middle East and US-Iran Conflict.” 

Before joining the Ivy League school, however, Mr. Mousavian was a prominent political figure in Iran, both as the Iranian ambassador to Germany and as head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. He also edited the Tehran Times, a newspaper which serves as a mouthpiece for the regime. 

During Mr. Mousavian’s multi-year stint as Iran’s ambassador to Germany, he oversaw the embassy that a German court later concluded “served as the ‘headquarters’ for the planning of the 1992 assassination of four Iranian dissidents at the Greek restaurant Mykonos in Berlin.”

Mr. Mousavian raised eyebrows in 2020 after he was spotted attending the funeral of an American-designated Iranian regime terrorist, Qassem Soleimani, and two years later, when he was featured in a televised tribute to the fallen regime officer. He told Fox News at the time that the interview with Iranian TV was “taken out of context.” Mr. Mousavian claimed that he was in Iran to visit his mother but chose to attend the funeral as a “researcher” looking “to see the reaction” to Soleimani’s assassination. 

Soleimani, who served as the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was assassinated by the American military over allegations that he was involved in planning an “imminent” attack that would put American lives at risk. 

Amid concerns that Iran was supporting the virulent anti-Israel protests that exploded on college campuses after October 7, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in November 2023 launched a probe into allegations that Mr. Mousavian was using his position at the university to advance Iran’s agenda. 

“Individuals who are aligned with malignant regimes continue to permeate America’s postsecondary education system,” said erstwhile chair of the committee, Representative Virginia Foxx. “Seyed Hossein Mousavian’s refuge at Princeton for 15 years is a textbook example.”

Ms. Foxx continued: “These individuals pose a grave threat to America’s national security posture, and they are left to fester without any intervening action or diligent oversight efforts. It’s time for some much-needed sunlight to expose the blatant corruption and influence peddling that has become far too commonplace.”

The committee issued a letter to the university president, Christopher Eisgruber, seeking answers to ten questions regarding Mr. Mousavian’s employment at the New Jersey school. Twelve Republican committee members signed the letter. None of the committee’s Democrats pitched their support. 

Mr. Mousavian maintained, however, that he had “nothing to do with the U.S. or the Iranian or any other government,” he told Fox in 2023. “I was arrested in 2007 and ultimately deprived from diplomatic work. So, I retired from the Iranian foreign ministry 13 years ago and, since then, I have not been engaged with any government, including the government of Iran.”

Renewed focus on Mr. Mousavian’s checkered past comes as the Trump administration has sought to deport non-citizen professors and students who support American-designated terrorist groups. According to a report from Radio Free Europe, Mr. Mousavian obtained his green card after moving to America to work at Princeton in 2009. 

Just last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had revoked the visa of a professor at Brown University who held “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders on her phone and recently attended the funeral of assassinated Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. 

“Last month, Rasha Alawieh traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah— a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree. Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah,” the Department of Homeland Security stated on Monday.

The department continued: “A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security.” 

Ms. Alawieh, a Lebanese national who had worked as a kidney doctor and professor at Brown under an H-1B visa, was deported from Boston’s Logan Airport on Friday after she returned from a trip to Lebanon. Immigration officials said that they had found pictures on her phone of Hezbollah terrorists and that Ms. Alawieh told them that she had attended Nasrallah’s funeral. 

During the probe, Ms. Alawieh reportedly acknowledged that she supported Nasrallah “from a religious perspective” but not necessarily a political one. She claimed that the pictures found on her phone of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei were from a Whatsapp group chat with Shia Muslim family members. 

According to court papers filed on Monday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Sady, “CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined.”