A Boston-based political scientist and author has been arrested and accused of peddling influence for the Iranian government.
Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, 63, was arrested at his Watertown, Massachusetts, home on Monday and appeared in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts on Tuesday. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent and one count of acting as a foreign agent without registration.
Afrasiabi is accused of secretly deriving a “significant portion” of his income from the Iranian government for his work in the United States from 2007 until this month when he was arrested, according to court documents. The FBI highlighted that while in the U.S., Afrasiabi never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“For over a decade, Kaveh Afrasiabi pitched himself to Congress, journalists, and the American public as a neutral and objective expert on Iran,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers in a statement after Afrasiabi’s arrest. “However, all the while, Afrasiabi was actually a secret employee of the Government of Iran and the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations (IMUN) who was being paid to spread their propaganda.”
While working for Iran, the political scientist lobbied a U.S. congressman and the U.S. Department of State in favor of policies that would benefit Iran, although the name of the lawmaker was not disclosed in court documents, according to a Justice Department news release from Tuesday.
Afrasiabi is also accused of counseling Iranian diplomats about U.S. foreign policy, making television appearances where he would advocate for the Iranian government’s position on world events, and authoring “articles and opinion pieces espousing the Iranian government’s position on various matters of foreign policy.”
Afrasiabi contacted Iranian officials about “retaliation” for the successful U.S. drone strike operation that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, according to a court filing.
He allegedly advised in an email that Iran should “end all inspections and end all information on Iran’s nuclear activities pending a [United Nations Security Council] condemnation of US’ illegal crime.” Doing so would “strike fear in the heart of the enemy” and “weaken Trump and strengthen his opponents,” the email said, according to court documents.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading dissident group of Iranians calling for regime change, praised the arrest on Tuesday. Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s Washington office, told the Washington Examiner that it was a “welcome and long overdue action.”
“Unfortunately, for the past three decades, the Iranian regime has been running an extensive network of agents and operatives, many of them U.S. persons, in clear violation of American law,” Jafarzadeh said. “The impunity with which Tehran has run its emissaries in the United States had emboldened them.”
Iran will be rolling out 1,000 additional centrifuges and said it is planning to enrich uranium to 20% in further violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. responded to the announcement of the nuclear expansion by slapping even more sanctions on the Iranian steel industry.
Afrasiabi faces up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted.
