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Students are straggling back to college for the fall term, which means we’re in for a new round of pro-Hamas protests and antisemitic offenses.
If our leaders want to avoid a repeat of last spring’s dismaying agit-prop, they should look into what role one malign foreign actor, Iran, plays behind the scenes.
Iran is not alone in facilitating the protests, to be sure. China, for example, is never very far from the scene. Cuba, too.
But ask yourself which of America’s enemies benefits the most from disrupting US society and seeing a rise in Jew hatred, the world’s oldest pathological phobia?
Any computer model that maximized these two goals would have to spit out the radical theocracy that has been ruling Iran — and ruining the lives of Iranians — since 1979.
The White House has had plenty of warning that the mullahs likely have been stirring the anti-Israel mayhem that upended American cities and campuses in April and May.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines released a statement in July warning that “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.”
As usual, the Iranians use subterfuge.
“We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters,” said Haines. “Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.”
White House spokesman John Kirby also said a month ago, “We do know that Iran has been funding and encouraging some of the protest activity here in the United States.”
Let that sink in: “Here in the United States.”
Nor is Iran’s baleful influence limited to just the campus mayhem. Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee in May that Iran would also try to interfere in this November’s elections.
“Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts, seeking to stoke discord,” Haines told the committee.
Tehran can be expected to “continue to adapt their cyber and influence activities, using social media platforms, issuing threats, and disseminating disinformation. It is likely they will continue to rely on their intelligence services in these efforts and Iran-based online influencers to promote their narratives.”
Iran may be even behind plots to assassinate Donald Trump. As The Post reported this month, an Iranian agent arrested in New York was likely planning an attack on the former president.
“The Iranian indicted in Eastern District today is 100% an agent of the Iranian government,” a law-enforcement source said.
However, it’s unlikely that the Biden-Harris (or should we be calling it Harris-Biden?) administration will take any serious action.
Both Haines and Kirby tripped over themselves by insisting that — despite all the evidence they say they have on Iranian interference — they believe the students participating in the protests are not the dupes they plainly are.
“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,” Haines said in her statement.
Kirby, when told that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called the protesters “Iran’s useful idiots,” recoiled in apparent horror.
“That’s not a phrase we would use,” he said. “Most of the protest activity here in the United States is peaceful. Most of it is — the vast majority of it is organic.”
My own research says otherwise. We’ve uncovered an entire revolutionary ecosystem, with ties to China, Cuba, Venezuela and other awful regimes, that supports the protests.
But ultimately, Biden and Harris have other reasons for going easy on Iran: They share many of the protesters’ donors, and they have given the ruling Iranian mullahs all sorts of breaks in hopes of reviving the Obama-era nuclear deal.
The administration has lifted sanctions on Iranian entities involved in Iran’s military missile program, on government officials, on a host of strategic petrochemical companies, and on Iran’s civil nuclear program.
In 2023, the administration unfroze $6 billion in Iranian oil assets, further dismantling a Trump-era sanctions program aimed at bringing the mullah regime to its knees. Even more beneficially for Iran, Biden-Harris stopped enforcing sanctions on Iranian oil exports, giving the regime a steady stream of income from sales to China.
After a revitalized Iran hit our ally Israel with an unprecedented direct missile and drone strike in April, the administration reimposed some cosmetic sanctions, but drew the line at hitting Iran with missiles.
The administration did not even let Israel retaliate. “Take the win!” was the ludicrous advice Kirby proffered.
So it falls to Congress to do the job. Our representatives must investigate the rogue regime in Tehran, expose it for what it is, and show American students they are being manipulated.
They should also demand answers on how many Iranian actors may be fomenting unrest here in the United States, and what sort of security threat they pose to everyone from the former president to innocent bystanders who find themselves in the wrong protest at the wrong time.
As college classes begin, let’s instruct our leaders to finally level with us about this evil threat aiming to divide us.
Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation.