Founded just after the 1979 revolution, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fields elite military and paramilitary units (now deployed throughout Iraq and Syria), engages in clandestine activities and support for terror abroad, and is responsible for the country’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. It also exerts sizable political influence and controls a significant portion of the Islamic Republic’s economy. In a comprehensive study, Emanuele Ottolenghi, Saeed Ghasseminejad, Annie Fixler, and Amir Toumaj explain the various avenues through which the nuclear agreement grants the IRGC new sources of funding, and what can be done to restrict these without violating the deal’s terms:

Neither the U.S. nor the EU has sanctioned the vast majority of IRGC-linked companies. We have identified at least 229 companies with significant IRGC influence, either through equity shares or positions on the board of directors. The U.S. Treasury, however, has only sanctioned 25 IRGC individuals, 25 companies, and two academic institutions as owned or controlled by the IRGC. . . .

[As the nuclear deal is implemented and] export and trade restrictions are lifted, previously prohibited Western technology will make its way back to Iran. The challenge of denying the IRGC access to banned technology—including dual-use technology and equipment for monitoring dissidents—will become even more arduous. The demise of sanctions may also facilitate the acquisition of advanced weaponry that will improve Tehran’s conventional military capabilities, including the capabilities of the IRGC, which in turn may trickle down and enhance its ability to support the Syrian regime, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Houthi rebels in Yemen, to name a few.

[Furthermore], the United States and European Union have lifted specific sanctions against strategic sectors of the Iranian economy. We judge that [these] sectors are important for two reasons: the IRGC has an overwhelming stake in these sectors, and the sectors combined account for nearly half of Iran’s total GDP. Additionally, . . . these sectors are important to Iran’s ballistic-missile development.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.