While the Iranian regime continues to attack the United States — either directly or through proxy terrorist organizations — some of the regime’s leaders have sent their own children to the United States, and a number have made themselves at home at American universities.
The New York Post shared a list of several prominent Iranian leaders who have children teaching at universities in the United States — and although the report noted that none of those employed in the United States have been linked to any nefarious activity, allowing people with such close ties to regime leadership to teach American students could eventually present a risk.
Janatan Sayeh, an Iran analyst at Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, explained: “I would think that there would be a security risk as Iranian academics have been critical in forming public opinion on the left in the US, essentially deceiving liberals into thinking that the regime is more progressive, when it’s still advancing the same hardline agenda.”
Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, for example, initially came to the United States for cancer treatment. A medical doctor who worked at Emory University in Atlanta until January, she is also the daughter of Ali Larijani — an Iranian leader who was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday.
Lawdan Bazargan, with the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists, noted the irony of rdeshir-Larijani’s presence in the United States — especially given who her father was. “The daughter of Ali Larijani came to the United States for cancer treatment, the very country her family’s system condemns, while millions of Iranians are denied access to basic health care and opportunity.”
Larijani’s employment at Emory University was terminated in January, amid protests calling for her to be fired, deported, or both. Her dismissal came just weeks after her father was sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department “for coordinating the response to the protests on behalf of the Supreme Leader of Iran” and because he “has publicly called for Iranian security forces to use force to repress peaceful protesters.”
Leila Khatami, the daughter of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, teaches math at Schenectady’s Union College. Her ties to the regime run even deeper, as her aunt was the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who claimed the title of Supreme Leader from 1979 until he died in 1989.
Khatami’s photo and bio were removed from Union’s faculty website after the United States and Israel began their joint campaign against the Iranian regime. The page listing her as a professor of mathematics shows only her name and title.
According to the Post’s report, thousands of children of Iranian elites are currently living in the United States.
