Iranian Official’s Daughter Deported from the U.S. After Employment Termination

Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, whose father was a prominent figure within the Iranian regime, left the United States after being dismissed from her role as an assistant professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta earlier this year. Following her termination, she has also been barred from re-entering the country.

Once the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security until the death of her father, Ali Larijani, in a U.S. airstrike, Dr. Larijani faced significant backlash after the brutal suppression of protests in Iran. Reports indicated she was ousted in January due to public outcry regarding her family’s connections to the regime.

“She and her husband, Seyed Qalantar Motamedi, are no longer in the country and are prohibited from re-entering. This action is part of a larger crackdown on individuals associated with the anti-American regime,” reports have stated.

Her father was known as a close ally to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was killed along with several other high-ranking officials in an Israeli airstrike on February 28. Following this, during Operation Epic Fury, there were discussions of him briefly becoming the de facto leader of Iran, although his leadership didn’t last long due to another airstrike that killed him and Dr. Larijani’s brother, Morteza, on March 17.

Earlier this month, the federal government revoked the legal status of both Dr. Larijani and her husband, part of an extensive operation against foreigners linked to Iranian leaders and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.

The response to Dr. Larijani’s position at Emory included a petition with over 100,000 signatures and a protest outside the university, where demonstrators criticized her family’s ties to violence in Iran.

The university’s Winship Cancer Institute, renowned for its cancer research and treatment innovations, found itself at the center of this controversy. The push for Dr. Larijani’s dismissal gained significant traction after U.S. Representative Earl “Buddy” Carter sent a letter urging her termination and revocation of her medical license. He argued that institutions shouldn’t act as “safe havens” for individuals with connections to adversarial regimes, suggesting that her presence posed a risk to national security.

Reports suggest that Dr. Larijani received her green card under President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021. Prior to her firing, in January, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned her father for inciting violence against the Iranian populace and sanctioned additional officials for their involvement in a network misappropriating oil funds.

As the scrutiny around her intensified, it became clear that while Dr. Larijani pursued her career in America, her father was allegedly engaged in activities that terrorized many in Tehran, labeling the U.S. as the “Great Devil.”