Washington: A promising future in academia and business beckoned Majid Abbasi. His research on how welding affects the properties of steel earned him a doctorate from Brigham Young University and a job offer from the University of Alabama. He was also seeking to patent and commercialise a technique he had invented to improve cleaning of contact lenses.

Then he made a fateful move that shattered those prospects: he visited his parents.

Since Abbasi went home to Iran on vacation in December, the US government has barred him from returning. The State Department twice denied him visas, saying it had reason to believe he would engage in espionage, sabotage or prohibited export of sensitive information. Alabama withdrew its offer. Because of US sanctions on trade with Iran, the startup that licensed his contact lens concept can’t pay him.

“My first reaction was the famous American slang: Holy Cow, seriously? I’m a scientist and avoid politics,” Abbasi, 31, wrote in an e-mail. “Sabotage, espionage, technology transfer are baseless, unfair labels. I do not appreciate such labels.”

Abbasi’s work isn’t sensitive, faculty members at Alabama and Brigham Young said.

“Majid was a gem everyone in the department knew and enjoyed being around,” said Tracy Nelson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Brigham Young.

As growing tensions and sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme spill into academia, Abbasi’s plight is becoming more common. At least half a dozen Iranian graduate students in engineering who were slated to attend universities such as Michigan State, Southern Illinois, South Carolina, Pittsburgh and Northwestern this year couldn’t come because the US rejected their visa applications under the same espionage clause, Bloomberg News has found.

The visa denials run counter to the policy of the Obama administration, which has reached out to Iranian students and has said that its sanctions are designed to hurt Iran’s regime, not its people. The US eased travel restrictions for some Iranian students in May 2011, and opened a “virtual embassy” in Tehran in December to foster communication. Enrollment of Iranian graduate students at US universities more than tripled to 4,696 in 2010-2011 from 1,475 in 2004-2005, according to the Institute of International Education in New York.

More barriers

“You — the young people of Iran — carry within you both the ancient greatness of Persian civilization and the power to forge a country that is responsive to your aspirations,” President Barack Obama said in a March 2011 message marking the Iranian New Year. “Your talent, your hopes, and your choices will shape the future of Iran, and help light the world. And though times may seem dark, I want you to know that I am with you.”

Now, more Iranian students are likely to face further barriers to entering the US under legislation Obama signed last month. It ordered the Secretary of State to deny visas to any Iranians seeking to take coursework to prepare for careers in Iran’s energy industry, nuclear science, nuclear engineering or a related field.

The Senate Banking Committee drafted the provision. Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, “wanted to make sure we weren’t inadvertently allowing technology or knowledge transfer” that could undercut US sanctions prohibiting assistance to Iran’s oil industry and nuclear program, committee spokesman Sean Oblack said.

The State Department approved the restriction, said Jamal Abdi, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group in Washington.

‘Upper Hand’

“There’s a tug of war inside the State Department between supporters of outreach to the Iranian people and those who want to broaden sanctions,” Abdi said. “The new law suggests that the sanctions advocates have gained the upper hand.”

Tensions have been building between the US and Israel over a possible Israeli strike on suspected Iranian nuclear weapons facilities. The visa denials likely reflect both classified intelligence information and concerns that students could pose a danger in the event of war with Iran, said Fred Burton, a former State Department special agent focused on Iranian terrorism.

“If you think about the saber rattling and war footing that everybody’s discussing, you want to minimize the probability of attacks here domestically,” said Burton, now vice-president of intelligence for geopolitical consulting firm Stratfor in Austin, Texas.

Talent pool

American universities are eager to tap Iran’s students, many of whom excel in science and math. Iran finished eighth among 100 nations in the 2012 International Mathematical Olympiad, a math championship for high school students. Presidents of half a dozen universities including Carnegie Mellon, Rice and the University of Florida visited Iran in late 2008 to foster academic ties.

Of 23 new Iranian graduate students whom the University of Florida expected to enroll this semester, only 16 have shown up, University of Florida President Bernie Machen said. The other seven may have been denied visas, or have had difficulty transferring funds from Iran because of the sanctions, he said.

Iranian students are “a pool of very talented young people who desire further education in this country,” especially in science, engineering and math, Machen said. “We’re disappointed. Politics trumps education in this case.”

An Iranian this year won a Northwestern University fellowship for outstanding first-year graduate students in mechanical engineering, only to be refused a visa. His admission has been deferred, university spokeswoman Pat Tremmel said.

Espionage Operations

At the same time, Iranian espionage increasingly worries federal authorities.

“Iran’s intelligence operations against the United States, including cyber capabilities, have dramatically increased in recent years in depth and complexity,” James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress in January.

The Obama administration is also facing political pressure from Congress and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to crack down on Iran.

“From Day One in 2009, Congress has been coming at the administration like a steamroller on Iran-related issues in an effort to box us in,” said Reza Marashi, a former officer on the State Department’s Iran desk and now research director of the National Iranian American Council.

Not all of the people turned away are Iranian. A Chinese graduate student admitted to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 2010 was denied a visa for the same reason, said Linda Gentile, director of the school’s office of international education.

Denials are based on “all the information we have available to us” after extensive reviews by federal agencies, said State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Finan, who declined to discuss individual cases. “If we’re denying the visa for that reason, it’s necessitated because of the evidence.”

Visa applicants from Iran warrant special attention if their academic pursuit appears on a U.S government list of “critical fields” used in developing weapons of mass destruction, according to a State Department manual.

Interview Questions

Consular officers “are not expected to be versed in all the fields on the list,” the manual states. “Rather, you should shoot for familiarization and listen for key words or phrases from the list in applicants’ answers to interview questions.”

When Ali Moslemi was a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, he went home on vacation in December 2009. He had to wait 10 months before his visa to return to the US was granted. He earned his doctorate in 2010 and works in the oil industry in Houston.

Authorities may have held up his visa because he was researching propulsion, Moslemi said. While the US stopped releasing the alert list about a decade ago, the last publicly available versions identified rocket propulsion technologies as a critical field. Moslemi, though, was working on a type of propulsion known as pulse jet, which occurs in heartbeats and in the swimming of squid and jellyfish, not in rockets, he said.

‘Dangerous Guy’

“It wasn’t military but it had the word propulsion,” said Moslemi, president of the Iranian Students and Graduates Association in the United States. Consular officials “are not technical people. If there’s a match, they say, ‘He’s a dangerous guy.”’

Iran was the leading foreign source of students at US universities in the 1970s before the Islamic revolution that brought the current regime to power. The influx peaked at 51,310 in 1979-1980, triple the number from the second-biggest supplier, Taiwan. Some returned to Iran and became professors, who now guide their students to the US

After the 1979 revolution, the number of students from Iran dwindled. Today, while Iranian undergraduates remain scarce in the US, the graduate-student population has rebounded, especially in the sciences.

Brain Drain

Iran ranked seventh among countries sending graduate students to the US in 2010-2011, up from 26th in 2004-05. The University of California enrolled 255 Iranian graduate students in 2011, up from 29 in 1999.

Outdated lab equipment and disillusion with the repressive regime drive the exodus of Iranian science graduate students. They’re also drawn by US universities’ lofty reputation and financial support for graduate study, students said. Once they finish their degrees, they often seek jobs here rather than return to Iran.

The Iranian government doesn’t mind the brain drain of potential dissidents, said Mohsen Milani, an Iranian-born professor of politics at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“The thinking is, ‘We have a large reservoir of brilliant students,”’ Milani said. “If we lose a few of them, that’s okay. That means less trouble internally.”

Mostafa Rahmani, director of the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Washington, didn’t respond to written questions.