Seyed Hossein Mousavian (, born in 1957 in Kashan) is an Iranian policymaker and scholar who served on Iran's nuclear diplomacy team in negotiations with the EU and International Atomic Energy Agency. He resides in the United States and is a visiting research scholar at Princeton University.
Early life and education
Mousavian was born in 1957 to a prosperous carpet-dealing family in Kashan, a major carpet-manufacturing center. His family had close ties to the Motalefeh, a religiously oriented revolutionary movement that dated back to the early 1960s and was eventually absorbed into the Islamic Republican Party (IRP). Mousavian studied at the Iran University of Science and Technology, as well as Sacramento City College and Sacramento State University in the United States.
In 1981 he was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Sacramento State University of California. He was awarded an MA in International Relations from the University of Tehran in 1998 and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 2002.
Early career in Iran
Reuel Marc Gerecht of The Weekly Standard has speculated that Mousavian's father's connections in Motalefeh helped him win access to leading IRP figures and led to his being named editor-in-chief of the Tehran Times, the revolution's English-language newspaper, which was established by IRP founder Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti. During his editorial tenure, from 1980 to 1990, Mousavian authored more than 2,000 articles. He also held several positions in the Iranian government in the 1980s, including a stint as Vice President of the Islamic Propagation Organization (1981–1983), worked with future President Hashemi Rafsanjani as Chairman of the Parliament Administration Organization (1983–1986), and was Head and then Director General of the West Europe department of the Foreign Ministry (1986–1989). During the 1980s, Mousavian played a major role in what he later described, in a 2012 book, as “Iran's humanitarian intervention to secure the release of Western hostages in Lebanon.” However, the hostage-takers (Hezbollah), had acted on instructions from the government in Tehran.
Ambassador to Germany
Mousavian was Iran's Ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997. Four Iranian dissidents were murdered at Berlin's Mykonos restaurant in 1992, and five years later, a German court concluded that Iran's Special Affairs Committee had ordered the murders and that the supreme leader, president, foreign minister, and intelligence minister of Iran were all active members of that committee. The court found an Iranian intelligence officer and three Lebanese men guilty and issued an arrest warrant for Iran's intelligence minister. Also, Germany expelled four Iranian diplomats and asked that Mousavian be recalled to Iran; he did return to Tehran shortly thereafter. After the issuance of the arrest warrant for the intelligence minister, which Mousavian described as an insult to the entire population of Iran, Iranian news agencies made veiled threats against Germans abroad. Mousavian echoed, saying that if European nations kept treating Iran as America and Israel did, then they would be treated the same way by Iran.
During Mousavian's ambassadorial tenure, the Salman Rushdie affair took place, and Mousavian went on German radio to announce that Iran would not lift its fatwa against the writer.
In the same interview, he expressed skepticism that Germany would risk its trade relations with Iran by protesting the Rushdie fatwa. Because of this statement, Social Democratic politician Freimut Duve called for Mousavian's expulsion, saying that he had, in effect, publicly expressed agreement with the fatwa; politicians from other parties echoed Duve's call. The German Foreign Ministry, moreover, summoned Mousavian to a meeting.
Return to Iran
Subsequently, he headed the Foreign Relations Committee of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) of Iran during the eight years of Mohammad Khatami's presidency. Mousavian meanwhile continued his education in the late 1990s, receiving a master's degree from the University of Tehran in 1998, and a Ph.D. from the University of Kent in the UK in international relations in 2002.