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Students abducted

Princetons student exchange program first took off in 2014, when a prominent Iranian-American scholar and future Biden administration official, Ariane Tabatabai, connected the Iran centers then-associate director to Mostafa Zahrani, a senior Iranian foreign ministry diplomat with strong ties to his countrys elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). I wanted to introduce you to a friend who is in Princeton, and you will see him in Vienna in three weeks, Tabatabai wrote, ccing Kevan Harris, the then associate director. He is interested in sharing with you a plan to send Iranian students to Princeton and to send American students to Iran.

Harris jumped at this opening, according to correspondence seen by Semafor, and arranged to see Zahrani in Austria two weeks later on the sidelines of the nuclear negotiations that were taking place between Iran, the US, and other global powers. The follow-up took time, but by early 2015, Princeton welcomed its first candidate for the Iran program: a Chinese-American graduate student named Wang Xiyue.

Wang was hesitant about going to Tehran, he told Semafor in recent interviews. He didnt speak Farsi, and his Ph.D. work initially focused on the Soviet Unions role in Central Asia, rather than issues related to Iran itself. He also raised with Princeton his concerns about security, given Irans history of abducting American citizens and the fact Tehran had no diplomatic ties with Washington.

On Dec. 1, 2015, Wang emailed administrators that he felt he needed to be as specific as possible about his scholarship with Iranian officials to protect himself once on the ground. [A]s a US citizen of non-Iranian descen[t], I think it would be preferable for me to be as transparent as possible so that I would not be deported from the country for doing things my visa does not prescribe me to do, he wrote.

But Harris and other Princeton officials reassured Wang about his safety and the importance of learning Farsi in Iran, both for his dissertation and future academic work. Its a good time to go [to Iran] looks like they are in a good mood over there, Harris wrote to Wang in the weeks before his January 2016 departure. Take advantage of it.

Wangs reservations proved to be right. Six months after his arrival in Tehran, Irans intelligence ministry confiscated his US passport. On Aug. 7, 2016, he was arrested on espionage charges and sent to Irans feared Evin Prison, where he spent more than three years, at times in solitary confinement and threatened with death.

Princeton denied that it in any way downplayed the risks of travel to Iran nor pressured Wang into joining the exchange program. Princeton did not direct, and indeed did not have the power to direct, Mr. Wangs travel, university spokesman Michael Hotchkiss told Semafor. And it was Princeton University that undertook a relentless, multi-year and multi-million-dollar global effort to secure his release.

Last year, a second Princeton graduate student, Elizabeth Tsurkov, was abducted by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. She hasnt been seen since last November.

Tsurkovs journey to Princeton was an unusual one. The academic and journalist was born in Russia, raised and educated in Israel, and earned her masters degree in social science from the University of Chicago in 2019 with a 3.9 GPA. Throughout this time, she showed a remarkable ability particularly for an Israeli to engage the Middle Easts religious groups, militias, and political movements in hotspots like Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Tsurkov has said in published interviews that she began her reporting through the heavy use of social media. Fluent in Arabic, she employed Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp to document the plight of people caught in war zones, and amassed a substantial online following and network in the process. She also used her Russian passport to visit Arab countries that are largely off limits to Israelis.

Tsurkov has acknowledged that her citizenship and religion unnerved some of her contacts. But her colleagues and family said that her writings, which have focused heavily on the plight of victims of regional and sectarian violence including Palestinians have allowed her to gain and maintain the trust of the groups and individuals shes documenting. Among her affiliations is an Israeli-Palestinian think tank that educates Israelis on Islam and their Arab neighbors in a bid to support the peace process.

I think that what drives all of them, at the end of the day, to speak to me is a feeling that I care about them, and I want to properly reflect their perspectives and their views, Tsurkov told the media outlet Al-Monitor in a 2021 podcast.

Tsurkovs doctoral work at Princeton was focused on the patronage systems that underpin political movements in Lebanon, Iraq, and Iraqi Kurdistan and why their members often remain loyal to feudal and sectarian leaders who deliver little economic development in return. In her thesis proposal from 2021, which was approved and funded by Princeton, she outlined the travels shed made, and would continue to make, to Baghdad, northern Iraq, and Lebanon.

Tsurkov was kidnapped on March 21, 2023 from a cafe in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, just days after undergoing back surgery in an Iraqi hospital for a herniated disc. Both the US and Israeli governments blame the Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH) for the abduction.

KH was established in 2003 with the direct support of Irans IRGC, and is designated by the US as a terrorist organization. KHs militia forms the largest part of Iraqs national guard, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and KH politicians serve in Iraqi Prime Minister Shia Al Sudanis government. US officials say KH also regularly coordinates with the IRGC to attack American military facilities and personnel in Iraq and the wider region. This includes a January drone strike on a Pentagon base in Jordan that killed three American troops.

The Trump administration assassinated KHs founding commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in a January 2020 missile strike on his convoy in Baghdad. He was accompanied by the IRGCs most powerful general, Qasem Soleimani, who also died in the attack. Iran has vowed to avenge both of their deaths. KH hasnt contacted the Tsurkov family nor made any demands for her release.

Elizabeths sister, Emma Tsurkov, has publicly criticized Princetons response to the kidnapping mirroring, in many ways, complaints raised by Wang Xiyue. Last August, she penned an opinion piece in the New Jersey Star-Ledger claiming the school had been denying it approved Elizabeths travel to Iraq and was telling the State Department that their grad student had essentially gone rogue. Emma Tsurkov stressed in her article that any divide between the school and Elizabeth was extremely dangerous as it could only fuel charges that she was a spy and hurt her chances of coming home.

Emma told Semafor that Elizabeth, once in Iraq, was in regular contact with her Princeton thesis advisor, Professor Amaney Jamal, the dean of the School of Public and International Affairs. This included occasional video calls from Baghdad. But the Tsurkov family has been disappointed that Jamal hasnt met with Emma in person since Elizabeths disappearance, something Princeton doesnt dispute.

The school in October, for the first time, publicly took responsibility for Elizabeths research and travel to Iraq, even while raising questions about whether she followed proper procedures going there. Spokesman Hotchkiss told Semafor that Princeton is totally committed to gaining her release by making available reputable outside experts the University has retained and by advocating with US government officials to use their influence to help bring Elizabeth home safely.

He added that Jamal directly communicated her deep concern for Elizabeth and her family to Emma Tsurkov via email and that the school has appointed a deputy dean at the graduate school to serve as a point person. [The administrator] is available for Emma at any time and remains in contact with her, he said.

KH released a proof-of-life video in November in which a visibly exhausted Elizabeth Tsurkov reads a statement in Hebrew claiming she was both an operative for the CIA and Mossad, the Israeli spy agency. (The US and Israel deny this charge.) The student is believed to still be in Baghdad.

Emma Tsurkov is now focused on pressuring Iraqs government to secure Elizabeths freedom, given Baghdads close ties to KH. The family believes Iraq should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and have its US aid budget slashed unless it wins Elizabeths release. Emma Tsurkov directly confronted the Iraqi prime minister at a Washington think tank last month on behalf of her sister, publicly accusing him of not doing anything to save her.

The Iraqi government hasnt responded to requests for comment from Semafor.

An Iranian diplomat on campus

Princeton entered the Iran debate in a significant way in 2009, when it agreed to host Hossein Mousavian, a top regime diplomat and former nuclear negotiator, in New Jersey. Mousavian fled Tehran that year after being charged with espionage by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads government, and briefly detained. The Islamic Republic insider would be cleared, but still found himself starkly on the wrong side of his countrys vicious political infighting.

Mousavian was no dissident, though, and used his perch at Princeton to advocate Irans positions on its nuclear program and other key national security issues. A former ambassador to Germany, Mousavian has supported ties with the West in ways that have placed him at odds with the IRGC and other hardline parties in Tehran. He has also sought to improve relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Many of Mousavians dictums on the nuclear file would be adopted by the Iranian government after his close political ally, Hassan Rouhani, succeeded Ahmadinejad as president in 2013 and moved to negotiate directly with the Obama administration over the next two years. The Princeton scholar was a prolific producer of opinion pieces and commentary during this period who liaised, at times, with Iranian diplomats, including Mostafa Zahrani and then-Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, to promote their messaging and engagements in the West, according to the foreign ministry correspondence reviewed by Semafor.

Princeton officials lauded Mousavians ability to advise the US and Iranian delegations to help advance the nuclear deal, which was finalized in July 2015. And in the eyes of Wang Xiyue, the graduate student, this reflected his schools strong ties to the upper echelons of the Islamic Republics leadership. This sense of security was only bolstered, Wang told Semafor, by the fact that one of his advisers at Princetons Iran center, Mona Rahmani, was herself related to an Iranian government official. Her father ran Tehrans interests section in Washington, an Iranian government body that works to support dual US-Iran citizens, from 2010-2015.

My concerns were alleviated by the fact that there were these direct links between Princeton and Iran, Wang said. It looked like there was coordination.

Following his arrest in August 2016, these connections to Tehran proved of little use, Wang outlined in a lawsuit he filed against Princeton in 2021, charging negligence. The university advised Wangs wife to stay quiet and not publicly criticize the Iranian government, he says. And Mousavian told Princetons leadership that his outreach to Zahrani, Zarif, and other Iranian officials would be counterproductive for Wang, given the Princeton scholars own sparring with Tehrans security state. Rahmani, meanwhile, also declined to lobby the regime, the lawsuit states. She left the university in 2017.

Wang says he felt totally abandoned during the more than three years he was incarcerated in Evin Prison. He was released on December 7, 2019 as part of a prisoner exchange negotiated between the Trump administration and Iran. Simply put, after encouraging and convincing Mr. Wang to go to Iran, Princeton chose to put their reputation and political interest ahead of Mr. Wangs personal safety, reads his lawsuit.

Princeton denies that it placed its reputation or ties to Iran ahead of Wangs safety. And the school said it invested enormous resources behind gaining his release. Throughout his ordeal, the University worked in close coordination with his wife and provided extensive financial and other support to Mr. Wang and his family during and after his imprisonment, Princetons legal team at Akin Gump wrote to congressional lawmakers investigating the schools ties to Iran last year.

Princeton reached a financial settlement with Wang last September but denies all charges made against the school in the suit. We have chosen to help them [Wangs family] move on with their lives by avoiding protracted litigation, spokesman Hotchkiss said.

Originally posted here:
How Princeton got burned by its outreach to Iran - Semafor