Mullahs’ seek to export ideology to N. America through academic research

Mohamed Abdel Ghaffar

The Mullahs’ regime has sought since it was established to spread its ideology in other countries, whether across the region or globe, promoting for the revolution to further enroot into the ground of Tehran.

Tehran has taken several ways, boosted by the enthusiasm of some Islamic organizations in Arab countries to the idea of the Iranian revolution, such as the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The Iranian regime has also tried to spread its ideas in other ways, including the deployment of armed militias in several countries such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

The Iranian regime’s attempts did not stop at this, but extended to non-traditional methods as well, including academic and research methods, which Tehran knows to represent a major influence in foreign countries in general, and North America in particular, because of the scientific and research centers in these countries.

Tehran has worked to establish and fund universities and research centers in North America, as well as support diverse cultural and social centers, with the aim of influencing the cultural and intellectual construction of citizens and opinion leaders there.

One of these institutions is South America’s Alavi Institute the successor organization to the Pahlavi Foundation, a nonprofit group used by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1973 to advance Iran’s charitable interests in America.

There is also Iran’s Islamic Culture and Relations Organization (ICRO), which has two offices in the United States, in New York and Ottawa. It interacts with the social and cultural elites through its cultural forums, in addition to conducting religious studies.

The aim of these institutions is to produce a number of scholars and academics who believe in the ideas and principles of the mullahs’ regime and work to disseminate these ideas directly through their research and reports to assess the situation, which tends to spread and promote the Iranian regime’s ideology.

The seriousness of this step is that these studies are issued by parties and centers that do not appear to have a clear direct link to the Iranian regime, which makes the possibility of believing and promoting them on the basis of impartial and unbiased information.

It is pertinent to mention that North America was not the only target of the mullahs’ regime. Tehran used the same mechanism in various places to export the ideas of the Iranian revolution to different countries around the world.

One of the biggest examples is Al-Mustafa International University, which run under the direct supervision of the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, it also has 60 branches in different countries around the world, in addition to 360 Quranic centers outside its campuses.