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By Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) July 14, 2022 is a historic day for the world’s Justice Seeking Movement, especially for the Iranian people. Today, Hamid Nouri, one of the perpetrators of the 1988 Massacre of the political prisoners in Iran, was sentenced to a life sentence in a Swedish District Court in Stockholm. The verdict was issued in the trial against Hamid Nouri for allegations of war crimes and murder committed concerning the killing of 1000s in Iran’s jails in 1988 under the universal jurisdiction. This is the first-ever trial against an individual for core international crimes committed by representatives of the Islamic Regime of Iran. The court lasted for nine months, and in its 92 sessions, 58 former political prisoners and family members of the 1988 Massacre victims testified against Nouri. This verdict opens the door for the families of the victims of the 1988 Massacre to seek justice in the western countries’ courts against other perpetrators of this crime against humanity, such as Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, the so-called peace professor at Oberlin College. In his interview with Masih Alinejad on Voice of America, Mahallati repeated his false claims that the massacre was a secret. The findings of Swedish court and the articles from different US and British newspapers show that the massacre was not a secret and the world knew about it as it was happening. Since October 2020, our campaign against Mahallati has demanded Oberlin College to “fire Mahallati, apologize to the family members of the 1988 Massacre for hiring Mahallati, and review the process by which Mahallati was hired at Oberlin and the process by which he was granted tenure. We must know what due diligence was conducted on Mr. Mahallati before his hiring, whether human rights organizations were ever consulted on the role Iran’s former representative to the UN may have played in that country’s human rights crisis, and whether such widely available information was ignored.” We also like to know the connection between Mrs. Nancy Dye, Oberlin College’s President trip to Iran in 2004, and her decision to hire Mahallati. We, a group of former political prisoners in Iran, families of executed political prisoners, human rights activists who work for justice and accountability, and international jurists who have examined the record of Iran’s gross human rights abuses repeat our demands and hope that with this new verdict we can also continue our efforts against Mahallati in the courts of law. For more information contact: Lawdan Bazargan (562) 212-9546 lawdanbazargan@gmail.com

July 24,  2022 is a historic day for the world’s Justice Seeking Movement, especially for the Iranian people. Today, Hamid Nouri, one of the perpetrators of the 1988 Massacre of the political prisoners in Iran, was sentenced to a life sentence in a Swedish District Court in Stockholm. The verdict was issued in the trial against Hamid Nouri for allegations of war crimes and murder committed concerning the killing of 1000s in Iran’s jails in 1988 under the universal jurisdiction. This is the first-ever trial against an individual for core international crimes committed by representatives of the Islamic Regime of Iran. The court lasted for nine months, and in its 92 sessions, 58 former political prisoners and family members of the 1988 Massacre victims testified against Nouri. This verdict opens the door for the families of the victims of the 1988 Massacre to seek justice in the western countries’ courts against other perpetrators of this crime against humanity, such as Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, the so-called peace professor at Oberlin College. In his interview with Masih Alinejad on Voice of America, Mahallati repeated his false claims that the massacre was a secret. The findings of Swedish court and the articles from different US and British newspapers show that the massacre was not a secret and the world knew about it as it was happening. Since October 2020, our campaign against Mahallati has demanded Oberlin College to “fire Mahallati, apologize to the family members of the 1988 Massacre for hiring Mahallati, and review the process by which Mahallati was hired at Oberlin and the process by which he was granted tenure. We must know what due diligence was conducted on Mr. Mahallati before his hiring, whether human rights organizations were ever consulted on the role Iran’s former representative to the UN may have played in that country’s human rights crisis, and whether such widely available information was ignored.” We also like to know the connection between Mrs. Nancy Dye, Oberlin College’s President trip to Iran in 2004, and her decision to hire Mahallati. We, a group of former political prisoners in Iran, families of executed political prisoners, human rights activists who work for justice and accountability, and international jurists who have examined the record of Iran’s gross human rights abuses repeat our demands and hope that with this new verdict we can also continue our efforts against Mahallati in the courts of law. Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists http://www.aairia.org For more information contact: Lawdan Bazargan (562) 212-9546  lawdanbazargan@gmail.com

by Marilyn SternMiddle East Forum WebinarJuly 1, 2022 Susannah Johnston, investigative reporter for Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), a new Middle East Forum media outlet reporting on lawful Islamism in the West, spoke to a July 1st Middle East Forum Webinar (video) about an Oberlin College academic accused of ties to the Iranian regime, in an interview with Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch. Johnston said Mohammed Jafar Mahallati, a professor at Oberlin College who served as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) in the late 1980s, is being targeted by protesters for his part in “the Iranian regime’s efforts to infiltrate and influence Western society … through campus academics.” Iranian dissidents are protesting Mahallati’s presence at the college because of Iran’s extrajudicial execution of several thousand political prisoners under orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988. The political purge occurred during Mahallati’s ambassadorship. His purported claim of ignorance about the massacre was exposed as a lie by an Amnesty International 2017 report that points to his complicity in a coverup. The dissidents’ protest is part of a “global movement” to remove Mahallati from his position. The varied groups of dissident protesters range from Iranian leftist groups to a group they “would traditionally not work with,” the controversial Mujahidin e-Khalq (MEK). The MEK was “designated as a terrorist group in the West” but removed from the U.S. government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) in 2012. Westrop said the FTO designation was made under “murky” reasoning, but asked Johnston if fractious groups opposing Mahallati and the “soft power elements of Iranian networks here in our universities” have sufficient common cause to overcome the divisions between them. Johnston responded positively, as the groups are now united not only by the fury they share over the 1988 executions, but also over “what’s happening now in Iran and wanting genuine positive Iranian regime change.” Johnston investigated the current ties of Mahallati, the former “senior regime figure,” now an academic. Mahallati serves on the board of Sepehr-e-Siasat, an Iranian-based journal, which praised Hezbollah, and includes fellow board members tied to Tehran. One of them works for Iran’s foreign minister and has an “INTERPOL red notice” issued against him; another belongs to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) [the ayatollah’s internal security force]; and yet another praised Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force [the IRGC’s military intelligence branch specializing in unconventional warfare], who was assassinated by the U.S. military in 2020. In 2018, an Iranian authored an article in Farsi “smearing” Mahallati, which landed the former on Iran’s “national suspect” list. In response, Mahallati wrote a letter to Ali Larijani, the former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, objecting to the accusations in the article by underscoring “the importance of Shiite supremacy in the West,” and boasting of his “crucial” role “in fulfilling the mission.” His letter to Larijani also claimed he was “persecuted” as a Shiite professor and inferred that there were others like him. Johnston sees Mahallati as the “tip of the iceberg” of a network of academics in the U.S. who are here to expand Iranian influence in the West. She said that Iran’s interest in working through the universities is to take advantage of American naiveté in academia. Professors who are sympathetic to the regime present a narrative to students who may not know how to question the narrative. Tehran’s goal is to advance its foreign policies with university graduates who gain employment in political positions “shaping future foreign policy.” In the early 2000s, Mahallati founded the Ilex Foundation in Boston and hosted Seyyed Mohammed Khatami, the former president of Iran. Called “the silver-tongued Ahmadinejad” [a former Iranian president known for his hatred of the U.S. and Israel], Khatami “bragged” about developing Iran’s nuclear program and held several positions in the Iranian government in the 1980s. Johnston said Khatami would have “been involved” during Khomeini’s state-sponsored “slaughter” of political prisoners. Mahallati and the Ilex Foundation’s association with Khatami raises skepticism as to Mahallati’s protestations of innocence regarding these massacres. Johnston said that the Alavi Foundation in the U.S., begun as the Pahlavi Foundation under the former Shah, was “rebranded” when it came under the control of the Iranian government after the Shah fell. The Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecuted the foundation, exposing it as a “front group for the regime” that has given “thousands of dollars to Ivy league schools.” The Alavi Foundation funding influenced Columbia university to hire Mahallati as a professor after it received generous funding from his brother, who was president of the Alavi Foundation at that time. Johnston said the DOJ should investigate Mahallati’s connection to two other schools where he worked, each having received monies from the Alavi Foundation. In light of the myriad examples cited by Johnston of Mahallati’s apparent role as “an agent of a hostile foreign power,” she is very critical of the U.S. government. She said Washington should be “upholding the laws” in the U.S. regarding foreign agents and the “restrictions on financing of universities.” Johnston said it is “too easy” for foreign money to be “filtered” to academic institutions and warned that there are other conduits for foreign funding from “Shia networks,” such as “mosques [and] private grant-making foundations.” Yale university “didn’t report hundreds of thousands” of dollars they received in foreign funding. Universities such as Princeton and Georgetown received foreign funding that advances the foreign sponsors’ interests, many of which are at odds with those of America’s. Johnston urges greater media coverage of the Mahallati case which serves as an important insight into “how Iranian infiltration works in the U.S.” She said it is not only Tehran’s infiltration and funding of academic institutions that is worth the DOJ’s scrutiny, but also monies run through disingenuous “medical aid organizations,” and “mosques that are not serving appropriate religious purposes.” The Mahallati example is “just another piece of the puzzle.” Please Click Here for the article.

دوشنبه ۶ تیر ۱۴۰۱ برابر با ۲۷ ژوئن ۲۰۲۲ – لادن بازرگان: «سال گذشته به کالج اوبرلین نامه‌ای نوشتم و گفتم وقت تلف کردن به نفع شما نیست، هرچه زودتر محلاتی را اخراج کنید بهتر است. اما گوش نکردند و الان بیش از ۱/۲ میلیون نفر مصاحبه مسیح علینژاد با من و محلاتی را دیده و فهمیده‌اند کالج اوبرلین استادی دارد که در جنایات علیه بشریت دست داشته.  این تازه آغاز راه است، وقتی کنگره آمریکا درگیر شود، اوضاع بدتر از این خواهد شد.»– کاوه شهروز: گذشته از ۱۶ هشدار سازمان عفو بین‌الملل در زمان وقوع کشتار زندانیان سیاسی، اگر آقای محلاتی واقعاً از «جزئیات» اطلاع نداشت، می توانست در پاسخ به سوال سازمان ملل در مورد آنها اظهار بی‌اطلاعی کند، اما چنین نکرد. او عمداً دروغ جمهوری اسلامی ایران را تکرار کرد و مدعی شد که اعدام شدگان تلفات میدان جنگ بوده‌اند.»– نازنین بنیادی: «عجب! استاد محلاتی با طفره رفتن مکرر از پرسش در مورد جنایت علیه بشریت به وضوح از جمهوری اسلامی دفاع می‌کند.»– پویان تمیمی عرب: «در پس صحبت‌های محلاتی درباره جهان، مردی قرار دارد که واقعیت را انکار می‌کند و یاد نگرفته به ندای وجدان خود گوش فرا دهد.»– لن خودورکوفسکی: «پس از این مصاحبه با مسیح علینژاد، بیش از هر زمان دیگری متقاعد شدم که «استاد صلح» کالج اوبرلین، محلاتی، نه تنها در کشتار ۱۳۶۷ دست داشته، بلکه احتمالاً هنوز هم عامل رژیم ایران است. آیا ریاست اوبرلین از استخدام چنین فردی خجالت نمی‌کشد؟» Please Click Here for the article.

Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio called the regime-sanctioned massacre of 5,000 Iranians “little details.” By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL Published: JUNE 23, 2022 00:43 Updated: JUNE 23, 2022 08:07 Oberlin College’s Islamic Studies professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati’s alleged interview with Voice of America’s Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist on Friday, revealed a number of instances in which he covered up crimes against humanity during his time serving as Iran’s ambassador to the UN in 1988, according to lawyers and human rights experts. Iranian human rights activist Lawdan Barzargan has, in recent times, emerged as the pivotal leader of a dynamic international campaign called Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists to dislodge Mahallati from academia. The writing on the wall Bazargan told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday: “Last year, I wrote to Oberlin College that ‘time is not your friend. The sooner you fire Mahallati, the better it is.’ They didn’t listen and now more than 1.2 million people have seen the interview of Masih Alinejad with me and Mahallati and learned that Oberlin College has a professor that is involved in crimes against humanity. This is just the beginning, once the Congress gets involved, it will get worse.” Prominent Iranian-Canadian lawyer Kaveh Shahrooz wrote on Twitter: “Mahallati begins by saying that as UN ambassador in NYC he couldn’t know all the  (little details) of what was happening back home in Iran. The ‘little details’ he refers to was the massacre of at approximately 5000 people.” In a highly detailed Amnesty International report on the clerical regime’s mass murder of 5,000 innocent Iranian prisoners in 1988, published in 2018, the London-based human rights organization said Mahallati committed “crimes against humanity” by covering up the slaughter of Iranian political prisoners. When international crimes aren’t so secret Shahrooz, who is part of a campaign seeking to secure Mahallati’s dismissal from Oberlin College in Ohio, added that Mahallati said that “the massacre was a secret when it was happening. This is a big huge lie on two fronts. First of all, the preparation for the massacre was a secret. But once the killings began, the killings were well-known. Amnesty International issued **sixteen** urgent alerts about the killings as they were happening. The UN asked about them. It was not secret.” The lawyer added: “Secondly, if Mr. Mahallati genuinely didn’t know about the ‘little details,’ he could have pleaded ignorance when asked about them by the UN. He didn’t. He deliberately repeated the [Islamic Republic of Iran] IRI’s lie, claiming that the people being executed were battlefield casualties.” Reverberating across the web The Voice of America Farsi interview with Mahallati has electrified Iranian diaspora social media and reached inside the highly repressive theocratic state.   British-Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi, who is an Amnesty International Ambassador for human rights, tweeted: “Wow. Prof. Mahallati is so clearly defending the Islamic Republic by repeatedly evading questions about their crimes against humanity.” The misery and bloodshed Mahallati and other officials of the clerical regime reportedly caused during the murder sprees of the summer of 1988 remain largely unpunished.  The US government has sanctioned Tehran’s current president Ebrahim Raisi for his role in the infamous “’Death Commission” that determined who would face the lawless system of the regime’s judiciary. Shahrooz wrote: “Mahallati is then asked whether the people who actively perpetrated the 1988 massacre (e.g. IRI prez  Ebrahim Raisi, who sat on the ‘Death Commission’) should be prosecuted. His answers is revealing and dispels all the Oberlin College lies about him promoting peace.” Mahallati and The Jerusalem Post  The Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists wants Mahallati to not only be fired but to face crimes against humanity charges in court.  Mahallati denied that he covered up the 1998 massacre in an email to The Jerusalem Post in 2020. ”Behind the universal messages [Mahallati] refers to is a man who is in denial and who hasn’t learned to listen to his conscience.”Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Mahallati lashed out at Barzargan in the VOA interview: “Of course, I have nothing to say to Ms. Bazargan, who, with the support of an Israeli newspaper, wants to blackmail a university professor without any documents.” Bazargan’s older brother Bijan, an advocate of trade unions, was executed by the regime in 1988 for his left-wing views. The “Israeli newspaper” that Mahallati apparently referenced was The Jerusalem Post due to its extensive coverage of the Mahallati affair. The Post revealed last year that Mahallati urged a violent global jihad against Israel and laid the ideological foundation for the genocide of the persecuted religious community  Baha’is in Iran while he was Tehran’s top envoy at the UN.  Pooyan Tamimi Arab, a professor of religious studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, wrote on Twitter: ”Behind the universal messages [Mahallati] refers to is a man who is in denial and who hasn’t learned to listen to his conscience.” The academic added that “Oberlin College don’t think that we will forget. I will do everything in my power to let my academic colleagues in the Netherlands know about how your institution is standing on the wrong side of history.” Mahallati bitterly complained about the protests launched against him on the Oberlin campus and across the world.  “There is no need to come to the streets,” said Mahallati. The Iranian campaign to oust Mahallati includes seeking to chip away at revenue and contracts won by the chairman of the Oberlin College board of trustees, Chris Canavan. Canavan is a partner with Lion’s Head Global Partners, which is based in the United Kingdom and has received government funds. Canavan, according to his critics, has gone to great lengths to shield Mahallati from criticism about his role in the mass murder. Canavan has declined to answer Post press queries. Mahallati went as far as to compare the intense criticism of his conduct and rhetoric at the UN to “a crime against humanity.” He said, “Likewise, if you commit a character assassination against a university professor, you have also committed a crime against humanity.”  Len Khodorkovsky, a former USContinue reading “Pro-Iran professor slips up on his ‘crimes against humanity’ in interview”

Last year, Oberlin College closed an investigation into Mohammad Jafar Mahallati over allegations that he helped cover up the mass murder of political prisoners in Iran in 1988.Mahallati claims that his ‘personal views’ are different from the views he expressed as the ambassador of Iran, citing his books and published works as evidence. Kate Anderson | Reporter Wednesday, June 22, 2022 11:30 AM FacebookTwitterEmailMore Demonstrators gathered at Oberlin College recently to protest Iranian professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati.  The protest was an effort by the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists, Jewish News Syndicates reports.  Last year, Oberlin College closed an investigation into Mahallati over allegations that he had been involved in covering up the mass murder of political prisoners in Iran in 1988 and comments that he made to the UN in regards to Israel. Mahallati was Iran’s United Nations ambassador at the time.  He joined Oberlin in 2007 and is currently a professor of religion and “presidential scholar in Islam.”   In a speech to the UN in 1989, Mahallati made remarks indicating he believed that Israel belongs to Palestine. [RELATED: ANALYSIS: 92% of Harvard newspaper’s Israel reporting has negative bias] “The land of Palestine is the platform of the ascension of the Prophet Mohammad; its significance is that it contains the first kiblah direction−towards which Muslims prayed,” he said. “Its occupation by Zionist usurpers is a transgression against all Muslims of the world and its liberation is therefore a great religious obligation and commitment.” Mahallati also condoned the “first Palestinian intifada.” “On December 9th, 1987, the heroic uprising of Palestinians began,” he told the U.N. According to a 2020 letter obtained by Fox News, Mahallati later claimed to be a purveyor of peace.  “[I] dedicated my life to research, teaching and writing about peace and friendship,” the letter reportedly states.  The college closed the investigation in October 2021 and announced that they had found no evidence of Mahallati being involved in the mass murders or any evidence of anti-Semitic behavior.  Mahallati claims that his “personal views” are different from the views he expressed as the ambassador of Iran, citing his books and published works as evidence. “The official positions I formally took at the United Nations during the time I served do not portray my personal views,” he via the Oberlin website. “My personal views are well portrayed in all my published books, articles, and teachings during the last 30 years since I left the U.N.” [RELATED: Anti-Israel activist delivers graduation address at ‘hotbed of radical antisemitism’] A fatwa, an Islamic legal ruling or decree, was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1988 that ordered the execution of political prisoners that would not convert to Islam.  “It is decreed that those who are in prisons throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the Monafeqin [Mojahedin], are waging war on God and are condemned to execution.” This took place during Mahallati’s tenure as United Nations ambassador for Iran from 1987-1989.  Campus Reform reached out to Scott Wargo, Director of Media relations at Oberlin, and he referred to the fact sheet put out by the school regarding the subject. Oberlin College closed its investigation into Mahallati in October of 2021 after the school found no evidence of his involvement or knowledge of the massacre.  “The inquiry did not find proof to corroborate the allegations that Professor Mahallati knew of the atrocities at the time he was asked about them during his tenure at the United Nations,” the sheet said. The college also stated that the investigation did not find a “pattern of anti-Semitic behavior.” “The review could not identify a pattern of anti-Semitic behavior or ongoing calls for the destruction of Israel,” it stated. Campus Reform reached out to Mahallati and will update this article accordingly.  Please Click Here for the article.

(New York, N.Y.) – June 21, 2022 United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is renewing its call to Oberlin College in Ohio to terminate its employment of former Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a tenured professor. Mahallati, who served as Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N. at the time of the regime’s infamous massacre of 5,000 political prisoners in 1988, stated on June 17 in an interview with Voice of America that he couldn’t know about the “little details” like the massacre. In June 2021, UANI called upon Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar to relieve Mahallati from his position on the faculty and disassociate Oberlin from Mahallati for his role in covering up gross human rights abuses.   UANI CEO Ambassador Mark Wallace stated the following: “Oberlin College must terminate Mahallati’s professorship immediately. We condemn in the strongest terms Mahallati’s barbaric characterization of the 1988 massacre of 5,000 innocent prisoners by the Iranian regime as ‘little details’ and his false claim that the executed dissidents were ‘battlefield causalities.’ For Oberlin, the choice is clear: They can either cut ties with Mahallati, or they can continue associating themselves with agents of the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”   Last month, Wallace authored an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post that condemned both Oberlin and Princeton University for maintaining ties with Iranian agents. Princeton currently employs former Iranian Ambassador to Germany, Seyed Hossein Mousavian; under his watch, Iranian regime agents carried out the assassinations of political refugees on German soil. Recently, Mousavian attended, and appeared in a documentary about, the funeral of Iranian Commander Major-General Qassem Soleimani, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist responsible for the deaths and of hundreds of American service members. In the documentary, he gleefully remarked on several threats made by Iran to a former U.S. official’s family.    In the op-ed, Wallace stated, “Leading universities like Princeton University and Oberlin College in Ohio have for too long chosen to cast their lot with the Iranian regime, not the United States and its democratic allies. Iranian government agents are members of the faculty at both institutions. Princeton must cut ties with Iranian Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Oberlin with Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. They represent the brutal Iranian establishment and hide behind calls for diplomacy and peace to mask their bloodstained records. It is shameful that both schools are standing by their side instead of prioritizing student safety and upholding their moral obligations to protect against infiltration by agents of hostile foreign powers.”   UANI has also recently launched a petition calling Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber to immediately take action and terminate the employment of Mousavian. To join UANI in demanding Princeton remove Mousavian, please sign the petition here.  To read UANI’s letter to Oberlin College President Twillie Ambar concerning their employment of Mahallati, please click here. Please Click Here for the article.

BySusannah Johnston June 16, 2022 When students return to Oberlin College in Ohio in early September, some of them will be taking classes from religion professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who has been accused of helping to cover up a mass-murder while serving as a diplomat for the Islamic Republic of Iran in the late 1980s. Oberlin administrators have accepted Mahallati’s denials, but they now have more to consider than his guilt or innocence in the alleged coverup. In light of his ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran, they have good reason to question his real agenda at Oberlin. Is he using his position at the school to promote peace and friendship and an honest understanding of Islam, or is he a shill for the Iranian regime? One piece of evidence Oberlin administrators will have to consider in their assessment of Mahallati’s career is a letter he sent to the Iranian parliament in 2018 defending himself against charges of disloyalty leveled at him by hardliners in the Iranian regime. In a letter obtained by FWI, Mahallati emphasized his loyalty and utility to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Writing in Persian to the Iranian parliament, Mahallati told a very different story from the one he tells in English to the Oberlin community, portraying himself as a peacemaker. Mahallati penned the letter in response to the Iranian parliament listing him as a dual national who posed a national security threat. To lend credence to this accusation, his critics reported that he had been arrested by the regime in the late 1980’s upon his return after his term as a diplomat at the United Nations had ended. Mahallati began his letter by noting the importance of his “opportunity to introduce Islamic teachings, especially Qur’anic research, to about a hundred American students each year.” He also declared that the accusations against him “are pure lies, and in my professional life I have never been a dual national government director, nor [have I] taken money from the US government for any political or non-political matter…” In the letter, Mahallati asked Ali Larijani, then speaker of the Iranian parliament, to “take the necessary measures to correct the report, which has libeled and raised utterly false allegations against this humble man, and to delete my name from the report, which has nothing at all to do with what the report is about.” Mahallati affirmed his usefulness to the regime, declaring that it his “national and religious duty” to continue spreading Iranian Shi’ism as a teacher in the West. This national and religious duty should not “neglect the share of Iranian and Shiite culture in this [American] society.” He also mentioned the pervasive influence of the rival Saudis at Georgetown and Harvard. “Currently, many students who study Islam in these institutions are naturally influenced by the menus of their founders and supporters,” Mahallati wrote. “Surprisingly, in this situation, some people in our homeland have tried to harm the two or three remaining Iranian-Shiite teachers in the field of Islamic studies who are still working!” Mahallati further highlighted his value to the regime by reminding the Iranian government how China has benefited from investing outside of China and that Iran should recognize this and do the same. He concludes that “it is still surprising that some are trying to cut the relationship of the community of seven million Iranians living outside of Iran with their motherland. All of this at the time that some countries in the Middle East, together with the United States, are building a consensus for an economic sanctions against Iran!” Mahallati ended his letter by stating that Iran needed to overcome the sanctions against it and that Iranian Americans could do a lot to help. This message in the 2018 letter is similar to the arguments he made in a 2013 article Mahallati wrote for Iranian Diplomacy, a website run by Seyyed Mohammad Sadegh Kharraz, former deputy foreign minister for the regime. In the 2013 article, Mahallati called on Iran to include Islamism in its foreign policy, asking: “Can a Shiite foreign policy neglect the Shiite contribution to the growth of the new generation of Islamic sciences being created in the West?” Mahallati’s 2018 letter is also congruent with his presence on the editorial board of an Iranian journal, Sepehr-e-Siasat, which published an article praising the violent Iranian proxy Hezbollah as “a regional power” that promotes Shiite identity and has taken “important measures to confront the regional domination system and the Zionist regime.” (Mahallati’s name disappeared from the masthead of this publication soon after FWI reported on its presence.) An Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA), a group that advocates for removing Mahallati from Oberlin, member, Frieda Fuchs, a political scientist and former visiting professor at Oberlin College, has concluded that Mahallati uses his position at Oberlin to promote Iranian interests. “As a professor, he teaches his students a cherry-picked view of Islam, aligned with Shia religious values and in line with his country’s official policies,” she said. “He did so in 1988 during his tenure as UN ambassador; he continues to do so today. He is a perfect apparatchik, the devil’s advocate for his regime’s bidding; he projects himself as a messenger of peace, and a victim of a broader Zionist right wing conspiracy.” Mahallati who reportedly spends time in Shiraz, Iran when not teaching at Oberlin, did not respond to request for comment. The upshot is that while Oberlin administrators have dismissed concerns that Mahallati helped cover up a mass killing in 1988, they have yet to contend with his ongoing ties to the regime accused of the crime. Please Click Here for the article.

Islamic studies professor Mohammad Mahallati allegedly covered up the mass murder of political prisoners in Iran, and has called for global jihad against Israel. BY BENJAMIN WEINTHAL (June 7, 2022 / JNS) Iranian Americans and Jewish Americans gathered in Oberlin, Ohio, over the weekend to protest the continued employment of Oberlin College and Conservatory professor with ties to Iran. Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who teaches Islamic studies at the college, served as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989 where he is alleged to have covered up the mass murder of political prisoners in the Islamic Republic. Len Khodorkovsky, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and senior adviser to the U.S. special representative for Iran, traveled to Oberlin for the demonstration, which was held during the college’s graduation weekend. He tweeted, “It’s unconscionable for @oberlincollege to continue employing Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, former Iranian regime official complicit in the #1988massacre of 5000+ Iranians. Oberlin’s Board of Trustees should be concerned about the reputational damage this is inflicting on the school.” While at the United Nations, Mahallati has also called for violent global jihad against Israel. Speaking at the United Nations in 1988, he said: “The establishment of the Zionist entity was itself in violation of provisions of the United Nations Charter.” The following year, he defended the violent intifada as “the heroic uprising of Palestinians” and called for a “holy struggle against oppression and Zionism.” The protest against Mahallati electrified the Iranian diaspora, as a direct action against a former top official of the Islamic Republic who has been leading a largely insulated life on the rustic Oberlin campus. Lawdan Bazargan, an Iranian American human rights activist, has spearheaded the campaign to oust Mahallati. She told JNS, “Our campaign started with a simple request: Fire Mahallati, who denied the mass killings of our loved ones and shielded those responsible from accountability.” Bazargan, a leading member of the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA), continued, “Since Oberlin’s president [Carmen Twillie Ambar] and its board of trustees decided to ignore us, ran a sham and non-transparent investigation, refused to meet with the victims’ families and started rumors about our independence and connections, we now have to appeal to politicians and state and federal authorities.” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) is one politician who has heeded AAIRIA’s call. “It’s distressing that Oberlin continues to ignore the victims of Iran’s terrorist regime, and continues to defend a former senior Iranian official on their faculty, who is cited in U.N. and Amnesty International reports as having worked to deny mass killings in Iran,” Banks said in late May. “Oberlin owes everyone an explanation as to why Mr. Mahallati was hired in the first place despite his very questionable background, and why they’ve refused to conduct a transparent and independent investigation on this issue,” he said. After Banks spoke out, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS: “Perhaps now Oberlin College will take action regarding why it hired, promoted and continues to protect an ex-Iranian regime figure.” Frieda Fuchs, a former visiting professor in the college’s political science department who is a member of AAIRIA, told JNS: “Three pro-Mahallati protesters carried ‘Stop Political Racism’ signs. One of them sported a keffiyeh. It is not too hard to guess who the intended audience of the signs are. The fact that the relatives of the victims of the 1988 massacres in Iran are on campus for the third time speaks to the fact that Oberlin’s administrators have bought into the story that Mahallati is a soft-spoken professor of peace who is the victim of a well-funded and orchestrated smear campaign launched against him by right-wing Zionist and Iranian pro-Republican warmongers.” Fuchs continued, “It is hard to understand why a school that prides itself on a history of supporting political freedoms and social justice for disadvantaged groups persistently refuses to engage with the relatives of the victims of Iran’s dictatorial regime, most of whom came from the political left.” Bazargan said 16 protesters attended the anti-Mahallati event, including first- and second-generation Iranian Americans, members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, monarchists, atheists, leftists and secular demonstrators. There was “lots of support from students, parents and some alumni who were dismayed by the whole situation that such a person [Mahallati] is at the school and the administration is whitewashing it,” she said. The activists from AAIRIA said they reached “hundreds of people” with flyers and in conversations. Bazargan said at least two-thirds of the graduating students turned their back on the chairman of the Oberlin College board of trustees, Chris Canavan, because of allegations of union-busting and failure to pay the faculty fair salaries. One student told a member of AAIRIA that students also turned their backs on Canavan because of the Mahallati affair. Hamid Charkhkar, a member of AAIRIA, revealed that Mahallati is on the editorial board of Sepehr-e-Siasat, an academic journal tied to Iran’s regime. Charkhkar told JNS that Mohammad Bagher Khorramshad, Iran’s deputy interior minister for political affairs and a member of the U.S.-sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is also on the editorial board. Susannah Johnston, an investigative reporter for Focus on Western Islamism, reported last week on Mahallati’s affiliation with Sepehr-e-Siasat. After the publication of her article, Mahallati’s name was scrubbed from the journal. Sepehr-e-Siasat promoted an article praising Hezbollah, wrote Johnston. The United States, Israel and scores of other countries have classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. No response was received to JNS press queries to Oberlin College by press time. Mahallati has denied the allegation that he committed crimes against humanity in 1988. Oberlin College published a fact sheet on Mahallati in October 2021, claiming that he supported a “two-state solution that would allow Israel and the Palestinian people to exist together in peace.” Oberlin College conducted an investigation into Mahallati last year. “The inquiry did not find proof to corroborate the allegations that professor Mahallati knew of the atrocities at the time he was asked about them during his tenure at the UnitedContinue reading “Protests mount against embattled Iranian Oberlin professor with links to IRGC”

A group of families of executed political prisoners in Iran, Oberlin College students, alumni, concerned citizens of Ohio, and Iranian-Americans will protest for the 3rd time on June 5, 2022, from 11 am to 1 pm EST at the corner of College Street and Main Street, Oberlin, Ohio to raise our voices against the Oberlin College leadership, Mrs. Carmen Twillie Ambar, Oberlin’s President and Mr. Chris Canavan, the Chair of Board of Trustees. They have been protecting professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, accused of denying the mass killing of the political prisoners in Iran and shielding those responsible from accountability. Jim Banks, Congressman of Indiana, who is part of the House Committee on Education and Labor, said; “Oberlin owes everyone an explanation as to why Mr. Mahallati was hired in the first place and why they ignore the victims of Iran’s terrorist regime and continue to defend a former senior Iranian official on their faculty, who is cited in UN and Amnesty International reports as having worked to deny mass killings in Iran.” The new revelations about Mr. Mahallati’s ties to the Islamic Regime of Iran and his defense of FATWA (Islamic Decree) to assassinate the US and British writer Salman Rushdie make him an enemy to the US national security and the liberal values that it stands for. We repeat our campaign demand of October 2020 and ask for Mr. Mahallati’s immediate removal. If Oberlin College’s leadership continues to show a lack of leadership, we will turn to Congress and demand a proper investigation into Mr. Mahallati and Oberlin College’s inactions. For more information contact: Lawdan Bazargan (562) 212-9546  lawdanbazargan@gmail.com Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists http://www.aairia.org