Children of high-ranking officials and influential figures in Iran’s regime are employed at prestigious universities across the United States, including the University of Massachusetts, Union College in New York, and George Washington University, reports the New York Post.
The daughter of Iran’s de facto leader Ali Larijani, who was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday, is a medical doctor who taught at Emory University in Atlanta. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani worked until recently at the university’s renowned Winship Institute, until the collaboration was reportedly ended in January following pressure from dissidents.
Ardeshir-Larijani herself is a cancer survivor and initially came to the U.S. for treatment, according to Iranian dissidents monitoring the regime. A petition on Change.org, signed by over 156,000 people, calls on the Trump administration to deport her.
In New York, Leila Hatami, daughter of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, teaches mathematics at Union College. Following recent U.S. airstrikes on Iran last month, her photo and biography were removed from the college’s website. Another petition, signed by over 84,000 verified users, urges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to review her immigration status.
Zahra Mohageg Damad, daughter of Ayatollah Mostafa Mohageg Damad and cousin of Ali Larijani, serves as a professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She also leads a unit analyzing the risks of “complex technological systems,” including commercial nuclear plants and reactors.
Isa Hashemi is an associate professor at the School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, based in Los Angeles. His mother, Masoumeh Ebtekar, was an Iranian parliamentarian and spokeswoman for the students who held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days during the 1979 revolution. U.S. media at the time nicknamed her “Screaming Mary” for her sharp English-language statements.
Zeinab Hajarian, daughter of Said Hajarian, a key figure in Iran’s post-revolution security apparatus, works as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
At George Washington University, Ehsan Nobakht is an associate professor of medicine specializing in kidney disease and hypertension. He is the son of Ali Nobakht, a prominent physician and former reformist parliamentarian in Iran.
Experts and dissidents estimate that between 4,000 and 5,000 relatives of Iran’s high-ranking officials and bureaucrats live in the U.S., with hundreds more in Canada and Australia.
In Iran, they are known as “agzade” (“noble children”) and often draw public resentment for living in the West while their powerful relatives at home implement anti-Western policies.
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