Fired Academics Speak Out As Tehran University Denies Mass Expulsions
Fired faculty members from the University of Tehran are challenging the chancellor who recently claimed no professors have been expelled amid mass crackdowns on dissent.
Fired faculty members from the University of Tehran are challenging the chancellor who recently claimed no professors have been expelled amid mass crackdowns on dissent.
Prominent sociologist, Ebrahim Bay Salami, himself fired in January last year, remarked, "My colleagues and I are prepared to engage in a debate with the chancellor of the University of Tehran," after thousands of academics around Iran have been forced to retire or had contracts terminated in the wake of the 2022 uprising.
The controversy arose when Mohammad Moghimi, the university's chancellor, declared in an interview, "We have not expelled any professors at the University of Tehran. When allegations of expulsion are raised concerning a professor, it signifies the unilateral termination of the professor's contract with the university due to various reasons. If any cases of expulsion are identified, please introduce them to me. I am fully prepared to hold a session with the media present and debate with any professor claiming to have been expelled."
Salami, speaking in an interview with Khabar Online, urged Chancellor Moghimi to release his complete academic dossier and disclose any issues that led to his expulsion.
Azin Movahed, another university faculty member, said he and his colleagues had also received notices of dismissal, expressing willingness to debate with Moghimi on the matter.
Recent reports reveal the extent of academic pressure in Iran. Etemad, a prominent reformist daily, published a list documenting the dismissal, forced retirement, or banning from teaching of 157 tenured professors between 2006 and August 2023. The trend extended to non-tenured lecturers, purportedly replaced by individuals aligned with the government's ideological stance.
A further 32,000 associate professors have been removed from their positions at various branches of the Islamic Azad University in Iran, it was revealed last year, amidst a major reshuffling of academic roles in the country's higher education system.
The situation escalated amid protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in September 2022, prompting a crackdown by the Raisi administration, including summoning, detaining, and suspending professors aligned with the demonstrators.
Sergey Shykevich, threat intelligence expert at cyber security company Check Point said in an interview with digital magazine Computer Weekly, “Nation states understand that to pretend to be involved in hacktivism allows them deniability … They don’t want to be accused, even if everyone knows it’s Russia or Iran”.
According to the expert, Russian cybercrime forums are often frequented by state-sponsored hacking groups, including those linked to Iran, which can spend large sums of money on buying malwares as “their budgets are unlimited.”
Russian underground forums have long been one of the main sources of buying and selling malware on the Internet. Launched in 2000, “Exploit” is one of such forums which includes around one million messages regarding more than 200,000 different subjects.
“They offer everything you could imagine … It starts with software vulnerabilities. You can rent malware, ransomware as a service and spam as a service to distribute fake phishing emails and currently even AI-related services, and deep fake platforms,” Shykevich added.
Running cybercrime forums has turned into a lucrative business in Russia. According to reports, one of the administrators of these forums recently enjoyed a $500,000 wedding ceremony in Moscow.
Computer Weekly said that Russian underground forums are “strictly members only”, fees varying from around $60 to several thousand. The forums also employ a vetting process before admitting new members in an attempt to block the access of security forces or researchers.
In recent years, Tehran and Moscow have strengthened their political, military, communication, and cyber ties, prompting concerns among Western countries and their allies.
In December, the Iranian parliament approved a bill dedicated to information and intelligence cybersecurity cooperation between Tehran and Moscow.
Microsoft disclosed in February that state-backed hackers from Iran, Russia and China have been leveraging tools developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI to enhance their cyber espionage capabilities.
It followed revelations in November that Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) had issued a warning that Iran, Russia and China are likely to plan to influence the upcoming elections in the United States and other countries later this year.
Moreover, police in the UK announced in January that they have launched a new unit to deal with threats posed by Tehran, Moscow and Beijing ahead of the UK’s general election. “We will be the most overt part of the UK security community stepping up its response to those hostile state actions,” said Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, the UK’s head of counter-terrorism policing.
Iran-backed hackers have particularly stepped up their activities following the Israel-Hamas conflict. According to American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, in the second half of 2023, “Iran-nexus adversaries and Middle East hacktivist adversaries were also observed pivoting cyber operations in alignment with kinetic operations stemming from the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict.”
In December 2023, Iran-linked hackers targeted a water facility in the rural area of County Mayo in Ireland, leaving the residents without water for two days. The attack was carried out by pro-Iran Cyber Av3ngers group which claimed that the facility was attacked because it used an Israeli-made piece of equipment.
Since early January the rial has fallen by almost 20 percent, adding to its steep devaluation since 2018, when Donald Trump withdrew from the Obama-era JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
Concern has spiked following the announcement of yet more hardliners coming into power in Iran's parliament in the wake of the recent low-turnout kangaroo elections.
Meanwhile, Trump’s successive victories in the Republican primaries and his eventual candidacy for the upcoming elections also significantly shook Iran’s currency market, the US dollar surging to 600,000 rials last week, hitting an all-time record.
Referring to the composition of lawmakers in Iran’s next parliament, economic journalist Reza Gheibi told Iran International that Iranians have concluded there is no hope of improving domestic economic conditions and thus resorted to different markets, including that of currency, to avoid the rapid depreciation of their cash.
Also, Stockholm-based economist Ahmad Alavi told Iran International that Iran’s economy is severely impacted by widespread corruption, international sanctions, banking isolation, nepotism and squandering foreign currency resources.
“The future parliament lacks the required competency and eligibility to legislate in the field of economy and this will certainly lead to wasting more currency resources,” he said.
Over the past decades, the regime has provided huge financial and military support to its proxies in the region such as Yemen's Houthis and Lebanese Hezbollah while Iranians increasingly face poverty and a bleak economic future.
According to Gheibi, the prospect of Trump’s re-election as the US President has fueled concerns about the possibility of increased sanctions against Iran, more restrictions on the flow of foreign currency into the country, and a decline in oil sales.
Since early 2018 when Trump withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal, the rial has fallen 15-fold as the United States employed “the maximum pressure” policy and imposed economic sanctions against Tehran.
A review of recent years’ statistics indicates that the currency market often fluctuates in the final weeks of the Iranian year as the demand for currency in the import sector increases.
Moreover, the small sector of Iranian society who can afford to travel abroad during the New Year (Nowruz) holidays, also increases the demand for currency.
However, the psychological pressure of Trump’s prospective victory has accelerated the upward trend in the currency rate in the final days of the current year.
Alavi said there are many factors needed to create stability in the economy including a more effective government and repairing the budget deficit.
Over recent days, the Iranian government has tried to prevent the currency rate increase by means of injecting dollars to the market and tightening security measures.
However, the impact of such measures are expected to be limited and temporary, and the government needs to consider a major policy overhaul to control the dollar rate in the next Iranian year (starting March 20).
According to estimates, the dollar will be exchanged at a rate of 590,000 to 600,000 rials in the next few days. However, the coming year is predicted to be much tougher for Iran.
Analysts believe that the oil market will suffer. The decline in China’s economic growth as the largest oil buyer means that Iran’s oil revenues in turn, will not increase, Tehran selling 90 percent of its oil to Beijing.
As protests and unrest show no sign of abating, Iran faces another tough year ahead.