At the end of May, a month when anti-Israel and often antisemitic demonstrations roiled US college campuses, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei penned a letter expressing support for the protests.
Khamenei commended the students for being on “the right side of history,” for their “noble resistance” against US support for Israel, and for having established “a branch of the Resistance Front” against the Jewish state.
Considering that Avril Haines, the US Director of National Intelligence, said on Monday that 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,” Khamenei’s words take on new meaning. Khamenei was essentially praising the fruits of his own handiwork.
“We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support,” Haines said.
She added that the intelligence did not indicate that Americans who participate in the protests are not “in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza.” But, she warned, “it is also important to warn of foreign actors who seek to exploit our debate for their own purposes.”
Ironically, her words came just a day after Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview with progressive The Nation magazine that the protesters “are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.”
Harris added, “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”
Tehran's pernicious game
But if Haines’s information is correct, some of that emotion is being fueled by a country that hates American democracy but wants to exploit it for its own purposes, and that seeks to destroy Israel.
There have been persistent rumors since the protests began that Iran and other governments were involved – some fingers pointed at Russia and China, and at Qatar and and Saudi Arabia – to either foment civil unrest in the US, or weaken US-Israel ties.
Haines’s comments were a first high-level confirmation that Tehran has a hand in this pernicious game.
And it is pernicious on several different levels. First, by stoking discord, Iran seeks to deepen existing fault lines in American society and exploit domestic tensions to further polarize an already badly polarized society, potentially leading to greater social unrest
This is something that could transpire at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, where there already is concern that this high-profile stage will be exploited by anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrators to create havoc on the streets that will be seen and heard around the world.
Second, this move is destructive because it undermines the public’s trust and faith in grassroots democratic movements. A democracy’s integrity rests on the free and fair expression of public opinion. When a foreign government covertly intervenes in domestic protests, it compromises that principle and breeds skepticism of the protest’s legitimacy and authenticity as well as of the policy decisions influenced by those protests.
Thirdly, foreign interference in domestic affairs poses a real threat to US sovereignty since it involves covert operations to manipulate internal political dynamics. What is even scarier is that some of those being manipulated do not even realize they are being used as stooges to serve another country’s malign interests.
And, finally, this could have negative ramifications for Israel-US ties. If the assessments are accurate, Iran was involved in sowing anti-Israel sentiment on US campuses and in streets that featured in mainstream media, creating a perception that America was moving away from Israel. That very perception – if it takes hold – could impact the decisions of policymakers who are heavily influenced by what they perceive as the public’s mood.
We must hope that with Haines’s revelation, both US policymakers and the public will be more wary and see anti-Israel protests for what many of them are – a vehicle used by foreign interests to sow disunity inside America and drive a wedge between Israel and the Jewish state.