Seyed Hossein Mousavian (Persian: سید حسین موسویان, born in 1957 in Kashan) is a former Iranian diplomat and scholar who served on Iran's nuclear Spokesperson team in negotiations with the EU3 (2003-2005) and International Atomic Energy Agency. He retired after 15 years as a Middle East Policy and Nuclear Specialist at Princeton University. He is a visiting research collaborator at Princeton University.
Early life and education Mousavian was born in 1957 to a prosperous carpet-dealing family in Kashan, a major carpet-manufacturing center. His family had close ties to the Motalefeh, a religiously oriented revolutionary movement that dated back to the early 1960s and was eventually absorbed into the Islamic Republican Party (IRP). Mousavian studied at the Iran University of Science and Technology, as well as Sacramento City College and Sacramento State University in the United States. In 1981 he was awarded a Bachelor of Science in engineering from Sacramento State University of California. He was awarded an MA in International Relations from the University of Tehran in 1998 and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 2002.
Early career in Iran Reuel Marc Gerecht of The Weekly Standard has speculated that Mousavian's father's connections in Motalefeh helped him win access to leading IRP figures and led to his being named editor-in-chief of the Tehran Times, the revolution's English-language newspaper, which was established by IRP founder Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti. During his editorial tenure, from 1980 to 1990, Mousavian authored more than 2,000 articles. He also held several positions in the Iranian government in the 1980s, including a stint as Vice President of the Islamic Propagation Organization (1981–1983), worked with future President Hashemi Rafsanjani as Chairman of the Parliament Administration Organization (1983–1986), and was Head and then Director General of the West Europe department of the Foreign Ministry (1986–1989). During the 1980s, Mousavian played a major role in what he later described, in a 2012 book, as “Iran's humanitarian intervention to secure the release of Western hostages in Lebanon.” However, the hostage-takers (Hezbollah), had acted on instructions from the government in Tehran.
Ambassador to Germany Mousavian was Iran's Ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997. Four Iranian dissidents were murdered at Berlin's Mykonos restaurant in 1992, and five years later, a German court concluded that Iran's Special Affairs Committee had ordered the murders and that the supreme leader, president, foreign minister, and intelligence minister of Iran were all active members of that committee. The court found an Iranian intelligence officer and three Lebanese men guilty and issued an arrest warrant for Iran's intelligence minister. Also, Germany expelled four Iranian diplomats and asked that Mousavian be recalled to Iran; he did return to Tehran shortly thereafter. After the issuance of the arrest warrant for the intelligence minister, which Mousavian described as an insult to the entire population of Iran, Iranian news agencies made veiled threats against Germans abroad. Mousavian echoed, saying that if European nations kept treating Iran as America and Israel did, then they would be treated the same way by Iran. In 1995, a dossier published in Berliner-Zeitung reported that Iranian intelligence service members from the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran resided at the Iranian embassy in Bonn and were "active throughout Europe". The US State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the court ruling "corroborates our long-held view that Iran's sponsorship of terrorism is authorized at senior levels of the Iranian government." The EU invited its other 14 members to recall their ambassadors from Tehran similarly to Germany. This marked the first time that a Western court directly implicated Iran's top leadership in the killing of Iranian dissidents who have sought refuge in the Europe. Iranian opposition figures say at least 20 people in European countries have been killed by hit squads operating on Tehran's instructions since the Islamic theocracy took power in 1979. On February 6, 2022, in an article published at at The Daily Princetonian, Frank N. von Hippel, a professor at Princeton University and former White House nuclear policy advisor wrote: "the reality is that the German government thoroughly investigated the Mykonos assassinations and the 395-pages explanation of its verdict does not mention Dr. Mousavian. Indeed, Dr. Mousavian has been frequent visitor to Germany since, and he has been involved in high-level policy discussions with senior German officials and parliamentarians and the colleagues from other European governments. These simple, easy to verify facts speak for themselves". During Mousavian's ambassadorial tenure, the Salman Rushdie affair took place, and Mousavian went on German radio to announce that Iran would not lift its fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In the same interview, he expressed skepticism that Germany would risk its trade relations with Iran by protesting the Rushdie fatwa. Because of this statement, Social Democratic politician Freimut Duve called for Mousavian's expulsion, saying that he had, in effect, publicly expressed agreement with the fatwa; politicians from other parties echoed Duve's call. The German Foreign Ministry, moreover, summoned Mousavian to a meeting. During Mousavian's tenure, 24 Iranians were assassinated in Europe. In 1997, a German court concluded that the Iranian leadership, including the foreign ministry, masterminded the murders and that the headquarters for plotting them was the Iranian embassy. During the trial, Abolghasem Mesbahi, a former spy from the Islamic Republic of Iran, testified that “Mousavian was involved in most of the crimes that took place in Europe." In a 1997 interview with the German Taz Daily, Mousavian expressed support for Hamas and Hizbullah.
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