Watertown man charged with working for the Iranian government without registering here

The US Department of Justice today charged Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, 63, of Watertown with acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Iranian government.

The government charges that Afrasiabi has been in the pay of the Iranian embassy in New York since 2007, even as he lobbied congressmen and offered himself as an unbiased expert and author on Iranian affairs, and never filed federal paperwork to disclose his payments from a foreign government. He was charged under the same law that helped snare Paul Manafort.

Afrasiabi, an Iranian native who is a permanent US resident, has strong Massachusetts ties - he is a graduate of UMass Amherst with a master's and doctorate from Boston University. He has taught at both BU and Bentley University.

Although he is scheduled for an initial appearance in US District Court in Boston, Afrasiabi was formally charged in US District Court in Brooklyn, across the East River from the United Nations, where Iran has a diplomatic mission.

In 2016, he filed at $25-million federal suit against the state and two Middlesex County assistant district attorneys for the jail time he served after being charged with violating a no-contact order in a dispute that wound up in court with the owner of the Andala Coffee House in Central Square over a lecture there by Noam Chomsky that didn't happen. A judge dismissed the case.

Innocent, etc.