The Islamic Republic has been one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. As its rulers try to cover for their own mishandling of the outbreak, David T. Glenn and Ari Cicurel argue that America should try to bring Iranians the truth:

Iran’s leaders are . . . pushing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. Ayatollah Khamenei, among others, has argued it is an American-made biological weapon. Likewise, Khamenei refuses U.S. aid, speculating that American “medicine is a way to spread the virus.” Both arguments are absurd, yet Iran continues to feed these lies to its people and spread them internationally, particularly online.

The United States must strive to reveal the truth about the Islamic Republic’s misdeeds by coordinating comprehensive technological and media responses with international partners. First, providing everyday Iranians with the tools to get truthful information weakens the regime. Much as the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty offered alternative programming in Soviet states during the cold war, supplying greater Internet access in Iran would decrease the effectiveness of false narratives.

Likewise, tailored cyber operations can advance policy objectives to disable or minimize the regime’s ability to spread false information. Introducing measured technological constraints on [Iran’s state-sponsored broadcasting network] can decrease its ability to disseminate the inaccurate narrative about the virus.

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.