An Iranian Education
This is a post by Robin Simcox, crossposted at The Spittoon
The merits of Columbia University hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007 have always been somewhat dubious. So it is interesting that it has now emerged that the university was paid $100,000 by the Alavi Foundation, an alleged Iranian front group, two months before agreeing to host the dictator.
The Alavi Foundation – an organisation based in the United States which declares itself ‘devoted to the promotion and support of Islamic culture and Persian language, literature and civilization’ – is accused by the US government of funnelling money to Iranian spies based in Europe and Islamic schools backed by the Iranian government. Federal prosecutors are currently attempting to seize up to $650m in assets from the foundation, with Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, saying that they have ‘found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation’. Alavi also regularly donated to Harvard, Portland State and Rutgers. The latter received $351,600 from the foundation between 2005-2007 to fund its Persian Studies Program.
The concept that top US universities are being funded by an Iranian front is troubling enough. However the possibility that Iranian money is influencing academia is not only restricted to America, but is a problem in the UK as well.
The Iranian government announced last year that it was in talks with ’several British universities’ in order to fund Islamic studies programmes which would ‘train and educate experts on Islam’. It barely needs pointing out that the Iranian government’s understandings of Islam have not been working out too well for those being forced to live under it.
Furthermore, the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews was founded after a 2006 donation of over £100,000 by the former Iranian deputy foreign minister. Its opening lecture was delivered by former leader Mohammed Khatami, the supposed ‘moderate’ whose government still managed to rack up over 200 executions and the torture of thousands of Iranians.
Another university to receive money from Iran is the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) who, within weeks of receiving a donation from the Iranian Government, ran a conference celebrating the life of Ayatollah Khomeini. The event featured a keynote speech by the Iranian Supreme Leader’s representative to the UK.
The issue of huge cash donations from foreign tyrannies to UK universities, and the pernicious impact this can have, is one that I covered in a report earlier this year. I am somewhat skeptical of the impact that these donations have on the way students are actually taught – many academics don’t need the incentive of a huge donation to proselytise on how, for example, western foreign policy is the source of all the world’s evils – but the trend of top universities relying on dictatorships’ foreign aid programmes in order to sustain their running contains obvious problems.
Neither the Government or the Conservatives have offered much on how such problems can be rectified. The legalities of the matter are admittedly complex. However an acknowledgement that universities should be setting their standards a little higher than donations from Iran is a simple enough start.
Comments
| 25 November 2009, 11:13 am |
1. Hold on just a moment, here. Shouldn’t we be focusing our energies on the nefarious globe-ensnaring Zionist-Jewish-Israel Lobby?
2. As long as Iran (along with her allies, friends and sympathizers) is committed to destroying the State of Israel and delivering the Palestinians from oppression, shouldn’t we be supporting her? Hence, any criticism of Iran is a distraction and merely serves the Zionists (see #1, above). In other words, even if Iran may now and then, here and there not prove to be entirely perfect, her noble aims ought to earn the support of all right-minded people.
Or do you have a problem with that?….
| 25 November 2009, 11:45 am |
Good piece.
I recommend anyone to read Robin Simcox’s book “A Degree of Influence”:
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/publications
with a related piece here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/31/university-funding-china-iran
and here:
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/blog/2009/05/british-universities-bought-and-paid-for.html#more
| 25 November 2009, 1:02 pm |
These kinds of donations should be well publicised. Therefore prospective students can decide if they want to study at an institution bought by foreign dictatorships, or somewhere else.
| 25 November 2009, 8:25 pm |
A very good and timely piece, and with so many universities in dire trouble financially at this time, a subject which the government needs to address urgently.
| 26 November 2009, 7:57 am |
The Alavi Foundation to anyone who knows anything abot Iran was started by the Shah in the 1970s in the days when Iran was flush with petrodollars and was running in effect a precursor to the Soverign Wealth Funds that exist today wit the monies in couldnt invest elsewhere. Its original remit was investing in NYC property and funding cultural events linked to Persian arts and Heritage – things close to the heart of Farah Diba the Queen.
It was originally named the Pahlavi foundation
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF001975/Crowe/Crowe10/Crowe10.html
After the Islamic Revolution is morphed into a source of covert funding for Islamist organisations and supporters in the USA – usually under teh cover of Iranian Nationalism.
See Trita Parsi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trita_Parsi
Iran’s Oil Mafia
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=25959
In the UK there are similar influence peddling organisations – like Iran Heritage Foundation
http://www.iranheritage.org/organisation.htm
who have a Persian Nationalist front but are in fact led by Iranian Oligarchs with deep ties to the Bonyad Mostasafin and the Revolutionary Guards.
Which has on occasion got Iran Heritage’s Chair Vahid Alaghband jail time.
Which he has happily served in order to protect his sponsor Mohsen Rafiqdoost the ex-head of the Revolutionary Guards an erstwhile Presidential candidate and head of the highly corrupt Iranian Bonyad Mostasafin – which was also the inheritor of the Pahlavi Foundation’s Iranian holdings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonyad-e_Mostazafen_va_Janbazan
They influence peddle by funding Universities like SOAS and Durham where there are “Iranian Studies” and “Islamic Studies” Chairs handed out to Islamists who soft peddle the agenda of the fascist Islamic Republic.
| 26 November 2009, 7:58 am |
The Alavi Foundation to anyone who knows anything about Iran was started by the Shah in the 1970s in the days when Iran was flush with petrodollars and was running in effect a precursor to the Soverign Wealth Funds that exist today with the monies in couldnt invest elsewhere.
Its original remit was investing in NYC property and funding cultural events linked to Persian arts and Heritage – things close to the heart of Farah Diba the Queen.
It was originally named the Pahlavi foundation
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF001975/Crowe/Crowe10/Crowe10.html
After the Islamic Revolution is morphed into a source of covert funding for Islamist organisations and supporters in the USA – usually under teh cover of Iranian Nationalism.
See Trita Parsi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trita_Parsi
Iran’s Oil Mafia
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=25959
In the UK there are similar influence peddling organisations – like Iran Heritage Foundation
http://www.iranheritage.org/organisation.htm
who have a Persian Nationalist front but are in fact led by Iranian Oligarchs with deep ties to the Bonyad Mostasafin and the Revolutionary Guards.
Which has on occasion got Iran Heritage’s Chair Vahid Alaghband jail time.
Which he has happily served in order to protect his sponsor Mohsen Rafiqdoost the ex-head of the Revolutionary Guards an erstwhile Presidential candidate and head of the highly corrupt Iranian Bonyad Mostasafin – which was also the inheritor of the Pahlavi Foundation’s Iranian holdings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonyad-e_Mostazafen_va_Janbazan
They influence peddle by funding Universities like SOAS and Durham where there are “Iranian Studies” and “Islamic Studies” Chairs handed out to Islamists who soft peddle the agenda of the fascist Islamic Republic.
| 26 November 2009, 8:12 am |
More here on the Fascist Islamic Republic Lobby and Hassan Alaghband.
http://hakemiat-e-mardom.blogspot.com/2009/09/iranians-who-are-selling-out-iran.html
Shockingly, Balli Group represents the US Corporations Xerox and Caterpillar in Iran, and has numerous partnerships with other US corporations. How could US companies enter the Iranian market while there are now more sanctions against Iran than there were a decade ago? These companies have profited from the loopholes in the sanction laws. Their actions have been possible because of the lack of political will in the US in enforcing the sanctions and closing its loopholes. The indifferent and unconcerned attitude in the US roots back to the efforts of the Iranian lobby in the US for the past decade.
In 1997, many US corporations, including Caterpillar, came together and started to fight the ILSA (Iran Libya Sanction Act). This fight reached its summit in 2001 when the Act came back to the Congress for its renewal. It passed by a large majority in the Congress and the Senate, and was extended for years. In the midst of despair, Bob Ney came up with an encouraging and visionary idea:7
“The ILSA vote doesn’t look very promising, but that doesn’t mean the struggle should stop on this entire issue. It is a matter of education and re-education and people getting together and forming a citizen’s lobby to make sure those members of Congress and their offices are educated on this issue.”
A year later, Ney’s Iranian advisor, Trita Parsi, became the president of an organization called the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). As I have explained in detail,8 Parsi and his Iran based partner Siamak Namazi, unmasked a roadmap in 1999 to create an Iranian lobby in the US to influence the Congress.
To this date, NIAC has not diverted a bit from the roadmap. Namazi, along with his father, brother and sister, are notorious proprietors of numerous key enterprises in Iran facilitating the mullahs’ financial and business affairs. The NIAC’s role in lobbying for relieving pressure off Tehran’s rulers, under the disguise of empowering Iranian-Americans, is now well exposed. Even the Iranian pro-government newspaper Aftab, described these activities as the “Iranian lobby” acting as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.”10
In addition to this “classic” lobbying effort, mullahs have now focused on using the mafia web of businesses connected to them to influence the US policies towards their interests. Naturally, some American businesses which see financial benefits in dealing with Iran and entering Iran’s markets have not resisted lining up with Iran’s financial Mafia.
| 26 November 2009, 8:17 am |
More here on Trita Parsia and Hassan Alaghband (who contributed $170,000 to McCain’s Presidential campaign and runs Balli Group with his brother)
http://hakemiat-e-mardom.blogspot.com/2009/09/iranians-who-are-selling-out-iran.html
Shockingly, Balli Group represents the US Corporations Xerox and Caterpillar in Iran, and has numerous partnerships with other US corporations. How could US companies enter the Iranian market while there are now more sanctions against Iran than there were a decade ago? These companies have profited from the loopholes in the sanction laws. Their actions have been possible because of the lack of political will in the US in enforcing the sanctions and closing its loopholes. The indifferent and unconcerned attitude in the US roots back to the efforts of the Iranian lobby in the US for the past decade.
In 1997, many US corporations, including Caterpillar, came together and started to fight the ILSA (Iran Libya Sanction Act). This fight reached its summit in 2001 when the Act came back to the Congress for its renewal. It passed by a large majority in the Congress and the Senate, and was extended for years. In the midst of despair, Bob Ney came up with an encouraging and visionary idea:7
“The ILSA vote doesn’t look very promising, but that doesn’t mean the struggle should stop on this entire issue. It is a matter of education and re-education and people getting together and forming a citizen’s lobby to make sure those members of Congress and their offices are educated on this issue.”
A year later, Ney’s Iranian advisor, Trita Parsi, became the president of an organization called the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). As I have explained in detail,8 Parsi and his Iran based partner Siamak Namazi, unmasked a roadmap in 1999 to create an Iranian lobby in the US to influence the Congress.
To this date, NIAC has not diverted a bit from the roadmap. Namazi, along with his father, brother and sister, are notorious proprietors of numerous key enterprises in Iran facilitating the mullahs’ financial and business affairs. The NIAC’s role in lobbying for relieving pressure off Tehran’s rulers, under the disguise of empowering Iranian-Americans, is now well exposed. Even the Iranian pro-government newspaper Aftab, described these activities as the “Iranian lobby” acting as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.”10
In addition to this “classic” lobbying effort, mullahs have now focused on using the mafia web of businesses connected to them to influence the US policies towards their interests. Naturally, some American businesses which see financial benefits in dealing with Iran and entering Iran’s markets have not resisted lining up with Iran’s financial Mafia.
| 26 November 2009, 9:51 am |
Fascinating and informative comments, Rostam Farrokhzad.
Thank you.
| 26 November 2009, 3:04 pm |
No problem Adrian. If interested have a read through this piece by Robert Kaplan
A Bazaari’s World
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199603/kaplan-iran
Its an excellent one that goes a long way towards expaining to the uninitiated the nature of the links between a the Alaghband brothers who made a $170,000 donation to John MCain’s Presidential Campaign and their partners the Rafiqdoost brothers who are closely tied with the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamaeni, his chosen President Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards. (not even 6 degrees of seperation there just 3) :-) .
The Alaghbands and Rafiqdoosts have a few things in common.
(1) They are from Bazzari Families
(2) In both cases one brother did time in jail on corruption charges. Vahid Alaghband in Germany and Morteza Rafiqdoost for bank fraud
(3) Both brothers got out of jail after political strings were pulled (allegedly)
(4) They have done extremly well out of the Islamic Revolution
(5) They mix politics with business and have vast mutual financial interests. With the Alaghbands acting as brokers for many of teh commodities that Iran exports and imports.
(6) Between them they form one of the main back channels between the political leadership in the fascist Islamic republic and the United States
They are denizens of what Kaplan terms labels the future “Bazzari Islamic State.”
Nevertheless, while observing and listening to Rafiqdoost, I wondered, Might this be normality? Might this be it ? Might Iran constitute a culture that is too urbane and sophisticated for a one-man thugocracy like the ones that obtain next door in Iraq and Syria, yet not sophisticated enough for a reasonably functioning and stable democracy? Is Iran—like so many other entities in the Middle East and Central Asia—evolving into something neither authoritarian nor democratic nor even organized the way a state is ordinarily thought to be? I could not escape the conviction that the twenty-first century will see the implosion of political Islam and the rise of the Islamic bazaar state.
A quick google search within HP comments will lead you to what I have written before on CASMII and the whole host of front organisations that they have funded in addition to scholarships and chairs at several UK Universities who have then run their agenda in forums etc. I specially remeber commenting about Durham University.
I see that HP has just reposted Potkins piece on Kaveh Afrasiabi one of their innumerable academic minions.
I often wondered why the Obama campaign didnt make hey of the fact that the McCain campaign had recieved funding from the main business partner of the ex-head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and the CEO of teh Corrupt Mostasafin Bonyad which is the the largest holding company in the Islamic Republic and possibly in the Middle East with assets of between $15-$25 billion. I can only think that it because Obama’s Campaign must have recieved an equal or greater donation from the Alaghbands.
If the Obama administartion manages against the odds to reach a grand bargain with the fascist Islamic Republic (a bargain that will be to teh great long term detriment of both the US and the Iranian people) it wil probably be through the “good” offices afforded by these corrupt Bazzari families.
One o the main chants in the recent demonstrations in Iran was:
“Obama Obama ya ba Ounha ya ba ma”
Obama Obama you are either with them (Khameni-Ahmadinejad hardline Leadership) or with us (Iranian people) .. I think given the opportunity Obama will throw in his lot with Khameni and allow Khamaeni to cash in his numclear chip in return for safeguards for the political survival of the Islamic dictatorship.
One doesn’t hear too much about the “Iran Lobby” however.
In related news, Iran’s proxy militia in Lebanon is at work in the US as well:
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AN5E520091124