The Iranian regime's significant role in the ongoing pro-Hamas protests in the US was finally acknowledged on July 9 by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
"In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we've seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran's government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters."
Haines made it sound as if the Iranian regime had been sitting on its hands until "recent weeks," but apparently Iranian government agents have been active all along in stoking the protests, including in Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Princeton.
According to Jason M. Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute's Iran Program:
"Iran's Foreign Ministry cultivates relationships with media outlets and think tanks in the United States and Europe, to influence policymaking in directions that serve its interests....
"Tehran has also been actively engaged in, at the minimum, encouraging American and European protest activity after the October 7 massacre—both physically and online. Iran's Intelligence Ministry (MOIS) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization dominate this space. Months before Haines' statement, this could be seen in reports from the United Kingdom that counterterrorism police had identified individuals linked to Iran's regime present on the fringes of anti-Israel rallies there. In advance of demonstrations, a memo allegedly written by an IRGC intelligence official, urged 'significant support measures for April 15 and other rallies with the aim to achieve [Israel's] political isolation.'"
Iran has made no secret of the immense importance it places on the US protests – as a way to export its Islamic Revolution. They have been making it clear that the regime sees the protesters at US campuses as an Iranian fifth column in America to be used in the future. American-educated Tehran University Professor Foad Izadi, a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime and considered by some as one of Iran's main experts on the U.S., said on April 26, 2024:
"We are watching the demonstrations, and we like what we see, but it should not end with this...These protestors are our people and will support Iran in an Iran-U.S. confrontation; Iran can repeat in the U.S. what it did in Lebanon but on a grander scale because the 'Hizbullah -style' groups in the U.S. are 'much larger' than in Lebanon."
Iran's Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, thanked US students in May for their efforts on behalf of the Iranian cause:
"Dear university students in the United States of America, this message is an expression of our empathy and solidarity with you. As the page of history is turning, you are standing on the right side of it. You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government's ruthless pressure—a government which openly supports the usurper and brutal Zionist regime."
Iran was also behind the campus protests at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and possibly also other universities, Iran International found.
An analysis by the American cybersecurity company XPOZ, also cited by Iran International, showed "a high percentage of inauthentic accounts primarily written in Farsi, coming from Iranians inside Iran linked to the regime and IRGC, fueling the campus protests at McGill."
"The primary takeaway is that there is a massive activity, funded, coordinated and organized by a foreign government that is influencing Canadians in Canada and driving incitement to violence and real-world activity," one of the XPOZ analysts said.
According to the analysts:
"... 60 percent of Pro-Palestine campus protestors were not authentic online users. The data indicates the presence of coordinated Farsi-speaking accounts, suggesting a targeted campaign. By comparison, 75% of commentators critical of the encampment were authentic....
"XPOZ analysts said their data demonstrate that Canada is subject to the use of deceptive mass influence campaigns coordinated by foreign governments, like Iran, to target Canadian society through proxies to deepen divides and threaten national security."
According to official statistics, antisemitism accounted for about 70% of religiously-motivated hate crimes in Canada in 2023, although Jews only account for less than one percent of the nation's population. Canada has seen an unprecedented rise in violent and other antisemitic attacks. So far, the Iranian effort has occasioned an extreme increase in antisemitic crime with shooting attacks against Jewish schools, fire bombings of Jewish institutions, boycotts and vandalism against businesses owned by Jews, and Islamic imams inciting and telling their congregations that Jews are "vermin". Of course there are also the constant marches of pro-Hamas activists chanting "long live the intifada" and "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" -- a euphemism for the destruction of Israel. On campuses in Canada, pro-Palestinian protesters at encampments have been heard chanting: "Go back to Poland", "Say it loud, say it clear, we don't want no Zionist here", and "Intifada, revolution — from the river to the sea."
If this is the kind of influence Iran wields at Canadian universities, what kind of influence does it have on universities in the US?
Avril Haines was not particularly forthcoming about exactly where and how Iran is peddling its influence on US campuses. Haines's only suggestion was to warn Americans to be "more vigilant". How does one go about being "more vigilant" if one is not given a clue what to be vigilant about? What are Jewish students supposed to do with such advice? For the better part of the last academic year, there were literally "Jew-free" zones on US university campuses – the "encampments' – where Jewish students were not allowed to pass.
National Review described the situation at UCLA:
"Those who occupied encampments on the university's property disallowed Jews from passing through the quad unless they would disavow Israel and, by extension, their Jewish faith. UCLA's position had been that the encampments preventing Jewish students from accessing certain areas of campus were not its responsibility."
Jewish students all over the US have been told to "go back to the gas chambers" and attacked being Jewish -- while police would not intervene. Now that it is clear that a state that is the enemy of the US is behind much of this, the best that US intelligence can do is tell people to be "more vigilant"?
Haines was also not entirely truthful when, immediately after mentioning Iran's role in the protests she claimed:
"I want to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza – this intelligence does not indicate otherwise."
White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby later repeated Haines's claim:
"We do not believe that all the protest activity out there on a daily basis is being fully funded by Iran. There is a lot of organic concern out there in the American people about what's going on in the Middle East and most of the protests are formed and fashioned in that regard."
Why are Haines and Kirby deliberately misleading the public about the nature of these protests, which are anything but organic? It hardly needs to be said that all protests need not be funded by Iran in order for them to be orchestrated by other hostile agents and organizations, a fact that Kirby and Haines appear deliberately to ignore.
Protests were apparently planned well in advance of October 7. One of the lead organizers of the campus protests, the Hamas-affiliated Students for Justice in Palestine had a toolkit ready for a "Day of Resistance" just days after the massacre. While Haines and Kirby claim that the protests are "organic" and "in good faith," Hamas, an Iranian proxy, had been organizing protests on US campuses.
Other foreign powers are also involved in stirring up the pro-Hamas protests: China is connected by means of an organization named Code Pink, which has been highly active in demonstrations, sit-ins and harassment of members of the pro-Israel camp and is connected to American millionaire Neville Roy Singham, who, according to the New York Times, "works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide." He does so through a web of organizations and in a mix of "progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points."
The New York Times has described how Code Pink went from criticizing China's human rights violations to defending its reportedly genocidal treatment of Muslim Uyghurs after Singham, in 2017, married Jodie Evans, the co-founder of Code Pink. Singham, a long-time admirer of Mao Zedong, lives in Shanghai, where he helps promote the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while his wife defends China. "If the U.S. crushes China," she said in 2021, it "would cut off hope for the human race and life on Earth." Code Pink is currently under investigation for its ties to the CCP by the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Singham is also the primary sponsor of the People's Forum, an organization advocating and educating for a Communist revolution in the US. The People's Forum has also helped to organize many anti-Israel protests, including walkouts from New York City public schools where students were told to chant a slogan that advocates the destruction of Israel: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
Significantly, the People's Forum was behind the three-day conference in Detroit, "People's Conference for Palestine." At the conference, the People's Forum's executive director Manolo De Los Santos -- to great applause -- called for the complete destruction of the United States:
"We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room. I know all of you in this movement are exhausted... but it is not about gathering and talking. It is about transforming that work into action."
From July 9 to August 15, emboldened by previous protests, the People's Forum organized a "summer school" teaching students, organizers and would-be revolutionaries and protesters to fight for the destruction of the US, which it decribed as:
"An unprecedented mass movement for Palestine has taken the world by storm, igniting a profound shift in the consciousness of millions, while the US ruling class, desperate to maintain its hegemony, struggles to fulfill its imperialist agenda amidst serious political crisis... How do we organize for revolution? Bi-weekly classroom sessions, discussion, and revolutionary study. A chance to meet new friends and comrades, study, discuss, debate, and then put theory into practice!"
The People's Forum closely coordinates with other radical and revolutionary organizations such as Answer Coalition – whose director Brian Becker gave a class at the summer school – which was behind a violent demonstration in Washington, D.C. in July, during which "rioters burned American flags, defaced the Columbus monument, and assaulted U.S. Park Police officers."
According to NGO Monitor, Answer Coalition, along with a multitude of pro-Hamas organizations, including CODEPINK, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Students for Justice in Palestine Chicago, American Muslims for Palestine Chicago, National Lawyers Guild -Task Force on the Americas/San Francisco Bay Area chapter, ANSWER Coalition – Chicago, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), and National Students for Justice in Palestine are planning to "March on the DNC" on August 19-22, when the Democratic Party is scheduled to host its convention in Chicago.
Pro-Hamas protests in the US are also lavishly funded by a multitude of other donors, many of whom, it appears, are the very same ones that bankroll the democratic presidential campaign.
"Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden's biggest donors," Politico revealed in May. "The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker..."
Finally, the Biden-Harris administration itself, and therefore taxpayer money, is funding the protests, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):
"U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee... discussed oversight findings from the EPW Committee that revealed a $50 million grant was awarded from the EPA through the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to 'Climate Justice Alliance,' a group that engages in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activities."
No wonder that the Biden-Harris administration and the politicized agencies of US intelligence are trying to cover the whole thing up by pretending that most protests, in the words of John Kirby, are "organic" and in "good faith." They are not – they are used by a multitude of actors seeking the overthrow of the United States -- and by extension the West, to galvanize new cohorts of student revolutionaries to destroy the US. Nothing less. And they are making no secret about it. They are blaring it all out on social media, while US officials shamefully use disinformation to confuse the American public. It is time for Congress and the rest of America finally to wake up.
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
Larry4