From Tehran to the Faculty Lounge
The detention of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar in Los Angeles, niece of the late IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, is not just another immigration story. Following the federal revocation of her green card and the reported departure of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani from her position at Emory, something larger has come into focus. For years, while the Iranian regime led chants of “Death to America,” many of the people closest to it were building lives inside the very Western institutions their families publicly condemn.
In Iran, there is a term for them: Aghazadeh, literally, the children of privilege. While ordinary Iranians deal with inflation, repression, and morality police, the sons and daughters of the ruling class are often found in far more comfortable settings: Western hospitals, universities, banks, and research centers. The list is long, and in some cases, surprisingly prominent.
Leila Khatami, daughter of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, has taught mathematics in New York. Ehsan Nobakht, son of a former deputy health minister and parliamentarian, became an associate professor of medicine at George Washington University. Zahra Mohaghegh, tied to the Larijani network, now leads research in nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering at the University of Illinois. Zeinab Hajjarian, daughter of senior Iranian political figure Saeed Hajjarian, held a biomedical engineering post at UMass Lowell. In Britain, Hadi Larijani has held a senior academic role directing a research center at Glasgow Caledonian University.
In authoritarian systems, the family is part of the power structure itself.
The usual response is that children should not be blamed for the actions of their parents. Fair enough; nobody is arguing otherwise. But universities are not family courts. They are institutions with national security implications, especially when dealing with advanced research, medicine, engineering, and public policy. In authoritarian systems, the family is part of the power structure itself. Bloodlines and patronage matter. A child of a regime insider is rarely detached from that world; they often benefit from the networks that helped their families rise in the first place.
That does not make them criminals, but it does mean they deserve closer scrutiny than they currently receive. Instead, universities tend to wave all of that away. Anybody with the right résumé becomes an “international scholar.” A politically connected academic becomes “global talent.” Questions about background or family ties are brushed aside as if they are somehow impolite.
Meanwhile, parents are paying over $80,000 a year to send their children to elite schools, believing they are buying access to the best minds in the world. Many have no idea that some of the professors teaching their children — or overseeing sensitive research programs — come from families tied to the most anti-Western regimes on earth. This is especially true in fields such as nuclear engineering, biotechnology, and advanced computing, where the line between academic work and strategic value is razor-thin.
Western universities helped create this problem because they increasingly operate like corporations. They chase prestige, rankings, and foreign money. Once billions start flowing in from places like Qatar, China, or Saudi Arabia, administrators become less interested in asking difficult questions. A donor becomes a “partner.” A regime-connected academic becomes “diverse talent.” A foreign government becomes “an opportunity.”
That is how the rot spreads-not through one huge scandal, but through years of small compromises that eventually become normal. The presence of these figures also sends a message to genuine dissidents. For an Iranian student whose family fled the IRGC, it is hard to ignore when the child of a powerful insider ends up in a position of authority on campus. It reinforces the feeling that the regime’s reach is long, and that even thousands of miles away, its shadow still hangs over their lives.
The cases of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani suggest that Washington may finally be paying attention. But a few detentions do not undo years of institutional complacency. Academic freedom is not supposed to mean blind indifference. Universities are still supposed to know the difference between a dissident escaping a regime and the privileged child of that regime quietly taking a seat in the faculty lounge.
It is a bitter irony that while the Iranian regime burns American flags in Tehran, many of the people closest to it have spent years building careers in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and London. We should stop pretending the faculty lounge is a sanctuary from the real world; for the children of the regime, it has simply become the most prestigious place to hide.
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