An Iranian Princeton scholar has sparked fury for smirking during an interview where he discussed how a US diplomat's wife was unable to sleep over fears she'd be murdered in revenge for the assassination of an Iranian general.
Hussein Mousavian, 65, gave a smile during a recent interview on Iranian TV while discussing the terror former US special envoy for Iran Brian Hook and his spouse are said to fear in the wake of the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Solemani.
Mousavian said: 'I went to America and an American told me that Brian Hook's wife can't sleep, she cries and trembles, she told Brian, 'They'll kill you,' since Hook was a partner in the death of Haj Qassem [Soleimani], that's how much they were trembling,' Mousavian said.
He was referring to Iran's vow for revenge after the Trump administration carried out drone strikes that killed Iranian extremist officer Qasem Soleimani two years ago.
Mousavian, the former senior negotiator of Iran's nuclear committee who now works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University. There have been repeated calls for the Ivy league college to fire him, with Mousavian's latest interview already stoking those further.
Princeton University's Middle East expert, Hussein Mousavian, formerly an Iranian official, smirked after saying in a recent interview that his country's government sent death threats to Brian Hooks, a former top Trump administration official, and his family, making them tremble with fear and sleepless
Brian Hook, former U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State, has received targeted threats from the Iran government since Soleimani's assassination in 2020
Mousavian's comments came after he appeared in a documentary, titled 72 hours, that was released this month by a company with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (ICRG). Soleimani was the general of one of its divisions: the Quds Force, from 1998 until his assassination in 2020.
The Quds Force is primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations. In his later years, Soleimani, nicknamed the 'Shadow General,' was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, as well as the second-most powerful person in Iran behind him.
He was assassinated in a targeted American drone strike on January 3, 2020 at Baghdad International Airport, in Iraq, on the orders of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The strike was strongly condemned by some, including the Iranian government. Hours after his burial three days later, the Iranian military launched missiles against U.S. military bases in Iraq; while no lives were lost in the second attack, the Pentagon reported that 110 American troops were wounded in the strikes.
Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in airstrikes launched by the Trump administration in 2020, removing what many called 'Iran's second-most powerful person' behind the Ayatollah
The wreckage of Solemani's car is pictured after the US-ordered drone strike at Baghdad Airport in January 2020
Mousavian's comments have stirred a debate on his employment at Princeton, which many Iranians activists against the regime have criticized due to his alleged role in human rights abuses within Iran.
Mousavian, who frequently travels back and forth between Iran and the U.S., has been part of Princeton's faculty since 2009 and has served as an Iranian official since 1990, when he was first appointed as the country's ambassador to Germany.
Mousavian's knowledge regarding threats made towards Hook and his
