17.12.25
By Ofira Seliktar, Professor Emerita, Gratz College
In recent decades, Qatar—and before it, Saudi Arabia—have emerged as two of the most significant foreign financiers of American universities, channeling hundreds of millions of dollars into academic programs, research centers, endowed chairs, and cultural initiatives. While universities present these funds as benign contributions to global education, critics argue that such largesse is part of a broader soft-power strategy designed to shape academic narratives, influence Middle East scholarship, and indirectly bolster the geopolitical interests of the donor states. As a result, the scale and intent of Gulf funding have become a major point of debate, raising questions about transparency, academic independence, and the growing role of foreign influence within U.S. higher education. As a result, as IAM noted, anti-Israel academics were constantly recruited while pro-Israel academics pushed away.
For instance, Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism recommended that the university should hire more pro-Israel professors (or at least not explicitly anti-Zionist) to add ideological diversity to the faculty.
However, Iran—despite channeling substantial sums into Western academic and cultural institutions, often through obscure organizations, diaspora networks, or state-linked foundations—has managed to remain largely under the radar. Its financial footprint is less visible, more diffuse, and frequently embedded in research partnerships, cultural exchanges, and individual academic appointments rather than headline-grabbing endowments. This lower profile has allowed Tehran’s influence efforts to attract far less scrutiny than those of Qatar or Saudi Arabia, even as they quietly advance the regime’s ideological narratives and foreign-policy objectives within segments of the American academic landscape.
A recent example of Iranian influence is Dr. Vahid Abedini, an Iranian national and assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. On November 22, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Abedeini for three days, exposing his employment at the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian & Persian Gulf Studies. The Farzaneh Family Center coordinates teaching, research, and outreach on the history, language, culture, society, and politics of Iran and the Persian Gulf. It runs lecture series, conferences, prizes, language instruction (Persian), student awards, and other academic programming in Iranian/Persian-Gulf studies. The funding is a major gift from the Farzaneh family, which supports faculty appointments, visiting scholars, and political programs. The Farzaneh Center is among the institutions supported by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and wealthy bonyads [charitable foundations] abroad. They influence the research agenda and, by embedding themselves in a reputable Western academic institution, seek to shape pro-Iranian foreign diplomacy.
A more troubling aspect of this scenario is the alleged connection between Abadeni, who is the son-in-law of Mohsen Armin, a controversial political figure with early-career ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Although Armin has denied these claims, critics have long accused him of having held a supervisory role over parts of the notorious Evin Prison during the 1980s. Some exile and opposition sources further allege that he bore indirect responsibility for conditions surrounding the 1988 mass executions, or at the very least, failed to oppose the killings.
The anti-Israel credentials attributed to Abedini are further underscored by his academic connection to Joshua Landis, a prominent Middle East scholar at the University of Oklahoma and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—an organization frequently called out for its sharply critical stance toward Israeli policy. Quincy was co-founded by Trita Parsi, a longtime pro-Iran activist in the United States and the former head of the National Iranian American Council, accused of being a pro-Iran lobby. Quincy Institute advocates a U.S. foreign policy doctrine of “restraint” and often contends that Washington’s close alignment with Israel contributes to a deeper American entanglement in Middle Eastern conflicts. Landis represents the standard Quincy Institute position on Israel, namely, highly critical of American support for Israel while taking a lenient view toward Iran. For example, he acknowledges that Iran has a destabilizing effect on the Middle East but blames it on American and Israeli pressure.
Prof. Shirin Saeidi is another scholar with an attachment to Iran. She is a political scientist at the University of Arkansas and the head of its Middle East Studies program, who allegedly supported a convicted Iranian regime war criminal, Hamid Nouri. Nouri, who was convicted by a Swedish court in 2022 of ordering the execution of thousands of political prisoners at Gohardasht Prison in 1988, served as the assistant deputy prosecutor at the Karaj prison, outside of Tehran. He was released in a prisoner swap between Iran and Sweden last year. Saeidi used the school’s letterhead to appeal for his release in a post shared on X in November. Saeidi praised Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offering prayers for his protection and stating he is “the leader who kept Iran intact during the Israeli attack, May god protect you,” and called Israel on X a “terrorist state” and a “genocidal state. Saeidi also endorsed two petitions in 2023 and 2025 against Israel.
The University spokesman disclosed that Saeidi is no longer in the Middle East Studies Department and that the school is investigating “in accordance with university policies” Saeidi’s apparent use of the department’s letterhead.
Whatever the ultimate disposition of the cases against Abedini and Saeidi will be, the episodes once again demonstrate Tehran’s considerable efforts to position “regime-friendly” professors in the American academy.
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Ofira Seliktar is a Professor Emerita of Political Science at Gratz College. Her upcoming book, Unintended Consequences: How Iran’s War on Israel Destroyed the Axis of Resistance, will be published next year.
REFERENCES:
Id : 15869726 November 2025 – 10:15
US immigration authorities detain Iranian academic with valid visa
US immigration officials have detained Iranian national and University of Oklahoma assistant professor Vahid Abedini even though he holds a valid visa allowing him to stay in the United States.
US immigration authorities detain Iranian academic with valid visa
TEHRAN (Iran News) Abedini, the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies at the Boren College of International Studies, was detained on November 22 while traveling to an academic conference in Washington, DC, HuffPost reported. He is currently in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
According to an official at the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, Abedini was booked into the facility on Saturday and transferred to ICE custody at the Oklahoma City field office on Monday morning, HuffPost reported. No details were provided on why he was detained or handed over to ICE.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have made no official comments, and Abedini’s current whereabouts have not been disclosed.
Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American political scientist and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, posted on X late Monday calling for Abedini’s immediate release.
“He is a respected scholar and teacher, and according to his employer, the University of Oklahoma, his visa is valid. I and all his friends, colleagues, and students call for his immediate release and his return to his work at the university,” Nasr wrote.
Wrongful detention
Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma, described Abedini’s detention as wrongful, noting that he holds a visa issued to individuals in specialized occupations.
“Dr. Abedini was boarding a flight on his way to attend the Middle East Studies Association conference in Washington, D.C., when he was detained and put in jail on Nov. 22,” Landis wrote on X.
“He has been wrongfully detained because he has a valid H-1B visa — a non-immigrant work visa granted to individuals in ‘specialty occupations,’ including higher education faculty. We are praying for his swift release,” he added.
U.S. immigration crackdown
The administration of President Donald Trump is pressing ahead with plans to deport what it calls undocumented immigrants as part of the Republicans’ hardline immigration agenda. The plan, in full force since Trump returned to office in January this year, has drawn widespread criticism over heavy-handed tactics and the detention of individuals who have legal rights to remain in the United States.
- source : irna
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How Did an Islamic Republic Apologist and Suspect in a Massacre Gain Employment at University of Oklahoma?
Vahid Abedini, an Iranian National and Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies, Called Israel ‘The First-Degree Enemy’ of Islamists and Arabs
November 29, 2025
On November 22, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Vahid Abedini, an Iranian national and assistant professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Oklahoma; he was released three days later.
Abedini’s commentary is pro-regime. Within the context of the Islamic Republic, Abedini positions himself as a reformist who criticizes the hardliners and praises his own camp. He spoke of former President Hassan Rouhani’s “expanding internet freedom” and criticized then-President Ebrahim Raisi’s reversal of that “accomplishment.” In reality, Freedom House assessed Iran’s internet freedom as “not free” throughout Rouhani’s term. Abedini’s Persian writings similarly defend the reform movement. In 2024, he endorsed Masoud Pezeshkian for president.
Within the context of the Islamic Republic, Abedini positions himself as a reformist who criticizes the hardliners and praises his own camp.
Hardliners and reformists set aside their disputes when it comes to Israel, and Abedini fits the mold. In a 2024 interview with an Iranian newspaper, Ensaf News, he accused Israel of genocide. In a separate Persian interview on May 9, 2025, he emphasized Iran’s right to conduct uranium enrichment. His English academic activism promotes the idea that the Islamic Republic is liberalizing, but U.S. pressure on the regime impedes progress, and Iranians prefer participating in elections to effect slow change rather than regime change. Polls contradict this claim. He has been silent on the 2022 protests.
Most telling is a 2019 essay he published for the regime’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, in which he condemned the anticipated Middle East Peace and Security Conference in Warsaw for attempting to contain Iran’s regional influence. He attacked Saudi Arabia for participating in a conference together with Israel, calling the Jewish state “the first-degree enemy in the Islamic world and the Arab world.” Ironically, he mocked President Donald Trump’s base for being “backwards” and “religious,” while excusing Iran’s literal clerical regime. Most importantly, he called the Islamic Revolution of 1979 “a popular revolution and undoubtedly a progress … toward modern republicanism.”
Abedini’s family connections raise further questions about his presence in the United States to begin with. His father-in-law is Mohsen Armin, a reformist figure who co-founded the Islamist-Marxist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization. After a schism within the organization, he joined its pro-Islamic Republic wing. According to Fars News, a website affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Armin was a manager at the Evin prison during the 1988 massacres, an allegation he denies. Hossein Fadayi, currently an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, recounts, “Managing the main part of the prison’s Ward 209, which was the [Mojahedin’s] ward, belonged to the attorney general and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … and I and Mr. Armin and Mr. [Mohammad-Baqer] Zolghadr, and other guys [managed it] together,” adding that Armin advocated for reintegration of the prisoners who repented but was unpersuasive. One of the prisoners was his brother, Mahmoud Armin; the regime executed him, but his body remains missing. Some allege that Mohsen Armin personally tortured his brother.
Armin was a member of the Sixth Parliament, dominated by the reformists. He was sidelined during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and detained in the aftermath of the 2009 fraudulent election. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and a five-year ban from politics. After signing a letter objecting to violence against protesters in 2019, he was sentenced to one year in prison. Despite these, in a recent speech to the Reform Front, he proposed reforms within the system to preserve the regime and again condemned advocates of regime change.
If Abedini failed to disclose his family ties in his visa application, the United States should deport him.
Abedini’s views and family raise two questions—one on the state of the U.S. academy and the other on his visa admission. First, his appointment is at Oklahoma’s Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies, supported by two Iranian American brothers. Iranian studies are under-resourced, and too often the diaspora, whose interests are advocacy and not necessarily honest scholarship, supports them. The center is run by Joshua Landis, a fellow at the isolationist Quincy Institute, and an apologist for Bashar al-Assad. Someone so partisan and without a scholarly approach should not teach American students about Iran.
Second, if Abedini failed to disclose his family ties in his visa application, the United States should deport him. If he did, it is a scandal worthy of congressional investigation that someone with close and continuing family ties to an enemy regime was allowed entry to the United States.
During the Cold War, it would have been unacceptable that a supporter of Nikita Khrushchev or even Mikhail Gorbachev, whose father-in-law was an adviser to the Soviet leader, would teach Russian studies at an American university. Abedini is exactly such a person, and that the University of Oklahoma is not embarrassed by his employment is scandalous. Then again, perhaps the money behind the Farzaneh Family Center trumps the democratic and liberal values that the University of Oklahoma publicly expresses.
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MESA Board Statement concerning the detention of Dr. Vahid Abedini
- November 25, 2025
- Letters and Statements from the Board
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) was disturbed to learn of the detention of Dr. Vahid Abedini, the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU). Dr. Abedini was detained on November 22 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before boarding a flight to attend the MESA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
Dr. Abedini is a political scientist working in the U.S. under an H-1B visa. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Florida International University and served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas prior to his employment at OU, where he currently teaches.
MESA remains deeply concerned about the circumstances of the detention of Dr. Abedini, a MESA member.
Update: Dr. Abedini has been released from detention.
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https://nypost.com/2025/12/13/world-news/university-of-arkansas-prof-canned-over-alleged-support-iranian-regime-anti-israel-stance/University of Arkansas prof. canned over alleged support for Iranian regime, anti-Israel stance
By Isabel Vincent and Benjamin Weinthal
Published Dec. 13, 2025, 9:01 a.m. ET
A political science professor at the University of Arkansas stands accused of praising Iran’s Supreme Leader using the school’s letterhead and attacking Israel, The Post has learned.
Shirin Saeidi, head of the school’s Middle East Studies program, also allegedly supported a convicted Iranian regime war criminal, evidence shows.
Now, lawmakers and a group of Iranian dissidents are demanding administrators at the university further discipline Saeidi, who was removed from her position as director of the Middle Eastern Studies department Friday, although she has retained her position as a professor at the school, according to a spokesman.
Shirin Saeidi, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas is under probe by the school for using their letterhead to support a convicted Iranian war criminal.University of Arkansas
Saeidi used the school’s letterhead to appeal for the release of Hamid Nouri, who was convicted by a Swedish court in 2022 of ordering the execution of thousands of political prisoners at Gohardasht Prison in 1988, according to the US-based Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA), which provided a copy to The Post.
Nouri served as the assistant deputy prosecutor at the Karaj prison, outside of Tehran. He was released in a prisoner swap between Iran and Sweden last year.
In posts shared on X in November Saeidi praised ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offering prayers for his protection and noting that he is “the leader who kept Iran intact during the Israeli attack, May god protect you,” referencing the attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas terrorists.
She has called Israel a “terrorist state” and a “genocidal state” on X. Saeidi did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
On Friday, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, denounced Saeidi’s “hate-filled antisemitic venom” in an email to The Post.
“Whether Shirin Saeidi should be fired is a decision for the administration and the UA board. But praising the Iranian leader — who calls not only for the slaughter of Jews but also calls for the destruction of America — makes me think this deranged professor would probably be better suited to being given a one-way ticket to Tehran and taking a job of teaching in their hate-infested schools,” he said.
A spokesman for the university told The Post Friday Saeidi is no longer at the Middle East Studies department and the school is investigating her apparent use of the letterhead “in accordance with university policies.”
Shirin Saeidi used University of Arkansas letterhead to back Hamid Nouri, who presided over the execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran in 1988.
Before then, AAIRIA activists collected 3,782 signatures on a Change.org petition, urging the university to take action.
“For forty-six years, Iranians have resisted this erasure of their memories, their testimonies, and their courage,” said Lawdan Bazargan, a former political prisoner in Iran and a human rights activist.
“That is why the regime relies on ideologues and useful idiots in Western institutions to launder its image.
Shirin Saeidi praised Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khameini in social media posts.ZUMAPRESS.com
“Dr. Saeidi’s work is part of that machinery, an academic façade built on falsified narratives to soften the truth about Iran’s prisons and the resistance that takes place inside them.”
Bazargan told The Post the FBI had contacted her in May regarding allegations against Saeidi, which made her and the AAIRIA look into her more closely.
Republican Arkansas State Rep. Mary Bentley told The Post that she was “deeply disturbed” by the allegations against Saeidi.
Iranian human rights activist Masih Alinejad was targeted for death by Iran’s Supreme leader, Ali Khameini. She recently compared Saeidi to Hezbollah terrorists on X.Gabriella Bass
“I can assure you that my constituents do not want their tax dollars being used to support unethical and antisemitic behavior from professors at our public universities,” she said.
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian dissident based in Brooklyn, who was a target of the regime in 2021, called on President Trump to stop the “infiltration” of Iranian regime apologists.
“She regularly attacks me and other human rights activists who dare to stand up to the same dictator,” said Alinejad in a post on X, referring to Saeidi.
Saeidi also endorsement two petitions in 2023 and 2025 against Israel, according to the AAIRA.
“You can’t get any more antisemitic that,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center. Only a week after the horrors on Oct 7, Saeidi chose to whitewash the terrorist crimes of Hamas.”
israel-academia-monitor.com 