Iran's judiciary has ordered the seizure of assets belonging to Ali Sharifi-Zarchi, a prominent artificial intelligence professor at Sharif University of Technology who has been living in exile since January, Fars News reported on March 25.

Sharifi-Zarchi was a Tehran-based Iranian academic in artificial intelligence and bioinformatics, currently listed on LinkedIn as an assistant professor at Sharif University of Technology and chair of the International Scientific Committee of the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence. During the January protests in the country where thousands were killed in clashes with police and security, the academic switched sides while abroad and began denouncing the government. 

The head of Yazd province's judiciary, Hojatoleslam Tahmasebi, said the order had been issued as part of a broader judicial directive targeting individuals accused of supporting what he described as "the Zionist terrorist regime" from outside Iran. Sharifi-Zarchi is said to hold shares in several tile manufacturing companies in Yazd province, and orders have been issued to examine those firms' articles of association.

Sharifi-Zarchi responded to the seizure on X, saying the assets confiscated were the product of 25 years of teaching young people and working for Iran.

"They are worth sacrificing for a single smile from the families of children and young people who were massacred in January 2026, autumn 2022, November 2019 and before," he wrote, referring to successive waves of deadly crackdowns on protesters in Iran.

Sharifi-Zarchi left Iran in January to attend an International Olympiad in Informatics event in China. He posted publicly on X that "Ali Khamenei is not my leader" during the January 2026 protests and subsequently said he could not return without facing arrest.

He has since spoken to international media from an undisclosed location, describing himself as a voice for Iranians living under an internet blackout.

The asset seizure order places him alongside two other individuals whose registered assets were frozen by Yazd judicial authorities this week under the same directive. Iran's prosecutor-general said the crackdown would continue until all those accused of supporting enemies of the state had been dealt with.

Sharifi-Zarchi has not been charged through any independent judicial process and the accusations have not been tested before a court meeting international fair trial standards.