Remember the dog the Russians launched into space? The US also sent several kinds of organisms into space to test their responses.

Iran has a large number of well-trained scientists and engineers, many trained, and being trained, in North American and European universities and institutes. I remember some in my classes at the University of Texas, many years ago. Numbers have increased yearly.

Locally, The University of Calgary has six Iranians at the Ph.D. level in engineering alone (4 men, two women); just one of c. twelve Canadian universities with Iranian graduate students.

In the United States, Iranians have student groups at 17 or more institutions in California, over 48 universities overall, including MIT, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Stanford, Illinois, Rutgers, Texas, Penn State, etc.
The following lists Iranian student groups; those at some schools are not listed.
Iranian student organizations