UANI Calls For Investigation Into Iranian Agent’s Participation At U.S. Strategic Command’s Annual Symposium

(New York, N.Y.) — United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace released the following statement today calling for investigations by the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, and U.S. House Armed Services Committee into the participation of former Iranian Ambassador Hossein Mousavian at the 2023 U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium earlier this month.

“It is alarming, inappropriate, and inexcusable that amid serious and credible threats from Iran to kidnap or assassinate former U.S. officials and American activists on U.S. soil, General Anthony J. Cotton and U.S. Strategic Command would host Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, an agent of the Iranian regime, as a keynote speaker at its annual symposium.  

“A German court found that the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Bonn, overseen by Mousavian, served ‘as the headquarters’ for the terrorists responsible for the 1992 Mykonos restaurant bombing that killed four Iranian Kurdish dissidents. More recently, he attended, and appeared in a documentary about, the funeral of Iranian Commander Major-General Qassem Soleimani, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American service members. In that documentary, Mousavian gleefully recounts the death threats against Americans issued by Iranian regime officials.

“He is not estranged from the Iranian regime as he suggested to the assembled audience. Nearly a decade after Ambassador Mousavian says he was forced to retire, former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told reporters that Mousavian is ‘completely tied to the regime and the country…and he has worked, and is currently working hard, [for it].’ There is no doubt that Mousavian has strong, ongoing ties to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

“The U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, and U.S. House Armed Services Committee need to investigate the circumstances that led to General Cotton inviting Ambassador Mousavian, the potential contacts and interactions between uniformed military personnel and the ambassador, and whether U.S. taxpayer funds supported the ambassador’s participation. 

“Mousavian takes pleasure in death threats against Americans and has honored a terrorist leader with the blood of hundreds of military personnel on his hands. He should not be at Princeton University, where he is presently employed. He should not be at an event hosted by the U.S. military. He should not be welcome in the United States.”

To sign UANI’s petition calling for Mousavian’s termination of employment at Princeton University, please click here. 

To read Ambassador Wallace’s May 2022 op-ed in The Jerusalem Post, “Elite Universities Are Protecting Iranian Agents,” please click here. 

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