Hamid Mowlana (Persian: حمید مولانا , Hamid Molana, born in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, Iran) is an Iranian-American advisor to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom he has warned against a “soft war” against Iran launched by the United States.^[1]

Education and academic career

Mowlana was the founding director of the International Communication Program at the School of International Service in the American University, and has served as the visiting professor and guest scholar in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. He completed his undergraduate studies in economics (1959) and received his M.S. in Journalism (1960) and his Ph.D. in Communication and Political Science (1963) from Northwestern University.^[2]

He received the 1993 University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Other Professional Contributions. He has also received a number of other awards, including the International Communication Association’s award for outstanding research in 1977; American University’s School of International Service Award for Outstanding Contribution to Academic Development in 1980 and 1988; for Thirty Years of Distinguished Leadership and Scholarship in 1998; and the Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 2000. He was the recipient of the International Studies Association’s Distinguished Senior Scholar Award in International Communication at its 43rd Annual Conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana in March 2002.

Mowlana has worked for UNESCO in Paris and is a former President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

He is the author, editor, or co‑editor of works such as Global Information and World Communication: New Frontiers in International Relations (2nd Edition), Sage Publications, London (1997); Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity?, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA (1996); Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of Media Means for America and the World, Westview Press, 1996; Mass Media in the Middle East: A Comprehensive Handbook, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT (1994); The Global Media Debate: Its Rise, Fall, and Renewal, Ablex Publishing, Norwood, NJ (1993); Triumph of the File: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf, Westview Press, Boulder, CO (1992); The Passing of Modernity: Communication and the Transformation of Society, Longman, White Plains, NY (1990).^[2]

He wrote regularly for Kayhan daily, one of the main conservative newspapers in Iran during the 1990s and 2000s.

Political advisor

On August 19, 2008, the Islamic Republic News Agency, reported that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had appointed Mowlana as his advisor, asking Mowlana to help with the objectives of his government in “providing justice, friendship, serving the society and promotion of public life status.”^[1]

Ahmadinejad’s government has donated a multi-million dollar property in North Tehran to Hamid Mowlana’s foundation, a move which was criticized by the Iranian media.^[3]

In March 2010 the Iranian government news agency Press TV described Mowlana as calling on the Islamic government “to prepare a strategy to counter the `soft warfare` launched by the US” and “take “clear” measures to counter Western tactics against Iran.” He warned that the “US has been trying to `infiltrate` into Iran by influencing clerics, professors, students, journalists, businessmen, managers of big companies.”^[4]