On Sunday, keffiyeh-clad protesters greeted incoming students at Columbia with a sign reading, “Honor our martyrs” and chants of “We don’t want two states, we want ’48.” At Cornell University on Monday, the first day of classes, anti-Israel groups got right to work smashing doors and graffitiing buildings, while on other campuses plans are underway to boycott Jewish professors. In this context it is worth considering the director of national intelligence Avril Haines’s announcement last month that Iran is “providing financial support to protesters.”

Jason M. Brodsky takes a closer look at what this means:

Iran has . . . built an extensive online disinformation apparatus that is used both to amplify content promoting its anti-American and anti-Israel worldview and aggravate political and social tensions in democratic societies. . . . For example, the [Iranian-intelligence-run] cybergroup Cotton Sandstorm ran an X account branded “Jewish Peace Advocate,” according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence. [Iranian intelligence] also runs a series of cyberwarfare teams in support of Hamas.

Iran’s supreme leader, for his part, clearly sees an opportunity to exploit protests in the West, dubbing them in July “a unique phenomenon in contemporary history.”

Danielle Pletka and Stephen Ailinger examine how the U.S. can respond to this foreign-influence campaign:

The CIA director William Burns has drawn the roadmap, writing that “strategic declassification” of intelligence can “undercut rivals and rally allies.” Such declassification successfully derailed the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s false-flag operations against Ukraine in 2022. And it’s high time that the Biden administration use just this strategy to ensure that American students understand they have become tools in the hands of one of the world’s most malign regimes.

But strategic declassification should also be followed by action. If the intelligence community identifies individuals or nonprofit organizations that have received Iranian funding to support campus protests, the Department of Justice should follow with indictments.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.