Iranian university maintains ties with terrorist group Hezbollah: Swiss ambassador made pilgrimage to Mullah University

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Today, the February 2023 episode seems like a warning sign. Nadine Olivieri Lozano (49), the Swiss ambassador to Iran, visited a religious site in the Shiite pilgrimage site of Qom in full veil and courageously exchanged ideas with the ayatollahs.

The photos went around the world and caused general irritation – after all, the regime of the Iranian mullahs was engaged in a bloody suppression of the protest movement in the country that arose after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Iranian women who oppose the mandatory headscarf are arrested, beaten, humiliated and raped. In the shadow of new world events, repression is intensifying. Women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi (51), who was recently honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, had to attend her award from her prison cell in early December. Human rights organizations are sounding the alarm about the high number of executions. Three weeks ago a 17-year-old was executed.

Iranian elite on course

In terms of foreign policy, everything is going well for those in power: with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, the Yemeni Houthis and the Syrian Assad regime, they have important pillars of support in the region. Ties with Russia and China have become even closer. Meanwhile, Europe is too weak to do anything about it; Unlike the US and Canada, the EU has not even managed to put the Revolutionary Guards on the terror list. They are the driving force behind Tehran’s aggressive domestic and foreign policies.

All attempts to isolate the theocracy have failed. On October 7, Iran-backed Hamas carried out a terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200, plunging the Netanyahu government into a new war with nearly 20,000 Palestinian casualties. Revolutionary Guard officials boast of training Hamas in the run-up to October 7.

When Ambassador Olivieri Lozano made her trip to Qom in February, the department of FDP Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis (62) proudly announced that a visit to a university for the purpose of ‘interfaith exchange’ was also on the program. This fitted very well into the good offices motif that the federal government was pursuing. As a protecting power, Switzerland represents US interests in Iran. You want to be a mediator on the world stage, which also includes the involvement of civil society on all sides. What was not known in this country at the time: the university mentioned was the University of Religions and Denominations (URD), in German the University of Religions and Confessions.

University as an extension of the ayatollahs

The URD is closely linked to the Iranian power apparatus. Representatives of the Revolutionary Guard were present when it was founded in 2005. One of these is the hardliner Mohammad Taghi Shahcheraghi, Deputy Minister of the Interior since this summer. Another is Ayatollah Alireza Arafi (64), member of the Guardian Council and confidant of revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei (84). Arafi has already met Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah (63) several times. In 2018, Hezbollah deputy Naim Kassim (70), who publicly calls for the destruction of Israel, appeared at the URD. Such ties between the URD and the mullahs’ regime and its international allies were highlighted, among others, by the American NGO United Against Nuclear Iran in a detailed report on November 5.

The message from a portal close to the regime of February 24, 2023 that Blick came across is explosive. It shows Olivieri Lozano in a group with the head of the URD. According to the Persian reports, the Swiss guest seems to have shown anything but critical distance, on the contrary. Olivieri Lozano is quoted as saying: “We are very interested in expanding cooperation between Swiss universities and the URD.” And it is “very gratifying” that the URD “as an international university offers students from all over the world the opportunity to study here”. The ambassador supports “scientific cooperation between the universities of both countries”.

Contrary to what the announcements from Bern suggest, the URD is not a university for ordinary Iranians. The Islamic World Science Citation Database does not even mention the university. You do not enter through an entrance exam; The management recruits its own students; according to our own information, 85 percent of them come from abroad.

URD has good connections

The website does not even attempt to feign any distance from the regime that has controlled Iran for more than forty years. The university president openly describes the URD as “capital for the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic”; The website shows him congratulating the head of the Quds Force on his appointment. This is the foreign branch of the Revolutionary Guard. The unity general Qassem Soleimani (1957–2020), who was assassinated by the US in 2020, enjoys the status of a martyr in these circles – in a speech the URD rector calls his university a “pioneer” for what Soleimani “put into practice” .

As the United Against Nuclear Iran report revealed, the same controversial university collaborated with several German universities. “Taz” and “Bild” reported. According to the group, the infiltration of Western institutions represents an important soft power instrument of the mullahs’ regime. The universities of Paderborn, Münster and the Free University of Berlin have now ended their cooperation with the URD. However, the mullahs’ lobbying work is very successful. High-ranking representatives of the Western intelligentsia are courted. In March 2023, Pope Francis (87) received a delegation from the URD in the Vatican.

The mullahs’ “cadre factory” (“Taz”) also maintains its connections in Switzerland. Three weeks ago, “NZZ am Sonntag” reported on Saida Mirsadri (39), an Iranian visiting professor of religious philosophy at the University of Zurich with connections to the URD.

University of Zurich distances itself

Striking was a rather tame podcast by Mirsadris with the dean of the seminary of religious studies on October 14, 2022 (“The female body as a battlefield”). As the freedom movement in Iran reached its peak, Mirsadri expressed her dissatisfaction that the Iranian leadership was described as Islamist.

The University of Zurich subsequently announced that Mirsadri “was associated with only one title (“Research Chair”) from March 2023 to November 6, 2023. Moreover, she was not employed there, “she received no salary and never taught at the URD”. However, the university itself seems to have had a falling out – the “mere” later disappeared from the statement, and Mirsadri herself in another interview speaks openly about the fact that she worked as a translator for the URD for eight years.

In response to the ‘NZZ’ article, Reinhold Bernhardt (66), professor of systematic theology at the University of Basel, wrote a harsh letter to the editor. In it, he ripped Mirsadri’s description as the “long arm of Tehran” as a “grotesque insinuation with out-of-context quotes, half-true information and tendentious interpretations.” Professor Bernhardt himself has already had something to do with the URD: in 2015 he led a week-long workshop there of ‘Open Theism’ into postcolonial theories.

In the Swiss theological scene people put things into perspective and point out the special circumstances that apply to citizens of totalitarian states – you cannot say everything publicly. It is said that Mirsadri himself lost family members to the repression. Criticism would take place within the realm of the possible.

Professor of systematic theology explains

When asked by Blick, Bernhardt expressed himself in a differentiated manner: “The sharp criticism of the URD president’s statements is completely justified,” he says. “I share them.” However, one cannot draw conclusions from these statements “about the political or religious orientation of the URD as a whole” and certainly not about Mirsadri’s attitude. He himself was there four times between 2014 and 2018, where he gave lectures and seminars and participated in events.

According to Bernhardt, the student organization does not at all share the attitude of top management. “As far as I know, some of these people are very critical of the regime and are not at all in line with what the president has said.” It is “by no means” a conservative or even extremist university, on the contrary: “For years, the URD was a kind of pilgrimage site for Western scholars and leading religious representatives interested in dialogue with Shia Islam.” Moreover, the rector of the University of Zurich was once a guest of a group of professors from Zurich. Bernhardt maintains these contacts with the URD only in the interest of the students, he emphasizes. “I don’t regret it at all.”

Critics of the regime are disappointed with Switzerland

And what do they say in the foreign department of Cassis? “To perform their duties, our ambassadors must know the host country as a whole, its culture and people,” said EDA spokesperson Blick. “This also includes visits to academic institutions in different parts of the country.” Human rights were also discussed during the visit to the URD. For Ambassador Olivieri Lozano – considered a talented diplomat – the visit was “the opportunity to establish contact with this academic institution in the field of interreligious dialogue”. Cooperation between the URD and Swiss universities is not planned until 2024.

Critics of the regime with an Iranian background take bitter note of the whole story. “The Swiss authorities claimed in February that Ambassador Olivieri Lozano is in contact with all groups in Iran,” said political scientist Saghi Gholipour (40), co-founder of the ‘Free Iran Switzerland’ movement. «But I never read about visiting Jina Mahsa Amini’s family. Or a visit to the relatives of the seven hundred people who were executed last year.” With its signals, Switzerland encourages the mullahs to continue their crimes. “The constitution states that we promote respect for human rights worldwide. What our ambassador has done contributes to the opposite.”

Gholipour still expects the federal government to finally change its thinking and become more critical of the Iranian regime and its PR work. The warning signs would be there.

Source: Blick