As pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protesters run roughshod over college campuses from New York to Los Angeles, don’t think that America’s enemies aren’t paying attention.
One in particular seems especially enamored with America’s ill-behaved, oft anti-Semitic well-heeled college youth: Iran.
For the second time in less than a week, a prominent academic at a university in the theocratic state is going viral with a report from the Middle East Media Research Institute alleging he went on state TV and called the campus demonstrators “our people.”
Foad Izadi, a professor at Tehran University, reportedly made the comments April 26 on Iran’s Ofogh TV, saying this should just be the start of a sustained attack against America using “Hezbollah-style groups” in the United States to turn it into a version of war-torn Lebanon.
“Sooner or later, this kind of support for the Zionist regime by the American regime will diminish,” Izadi said, according to MEMRI.
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“It might not stop completely, but its diminishing is important. This is why the demonstrations [in U.S. campuses] are important,” he said. “What we in the Islamic Republic should do is …We are watching the demonstrations and we like what we see, but it should not end with this.”
The professor went on to claim that “if not for the Islamic Republic [of Iran], the case of the Palestinian idea would have been closed years ago.”
“The idea of resistance belongs to Iran, but on the operational level, when it comes to recruiting connections and building networks, the [Iranian] state has not been involved in sufficient level,” Izadi said, according to the report.
“These [American students] are our people. If tensions between America and Iran rise tomorrow or the day after, these are the peoples who will have to take to the streets to support Iran,” he continued.
Are these college protests based on anti-American rhetoric?
And, as for the future, Izadi saw something resembling the strife Iran had sewn in Lebanon through the state-sponsored terror group Hezbollah, also a not-infrequent attacker of Israel.
“Personally, I think that the potential to repeat in the U.S. what Iran did in Lebanon is much higher,” he said.
“Our Hezbollah-style groups in America are much larger than what we have in Lebanon. America is the Great Satan and our enemy, but we have hope in these areas.”
Tehran University Professor Foad Izadi: We Like What We Are Seeing on U.S. College Campuses; These Are Our People, They Will Support Iran in Case of Confrontation with the U.S.; Iran Can Repeat in America What It Did in Lebanon #Iran #campusProtests @IzadiFoad pic.twitter.com/5Xkm26C8ye
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 1, 2024
Now, the idea that Iran has Hezbollah-style terror cells within the United States on the scale that could cause the destabilization seen in Lebanon is slightly absurd, but it isn’t the only noise we’re hearing out of Iranian academia in support of the student protests that have ripped through campuses such as Columbia, George Washington University and UCLA.
On Wednesday, Iran’s state-run English outlet, PressTV, reported that Shiraz University head Mohammad Moazzeni “expressed readiness to grant scholarships to the students expelled for pro-Palestine demonstrations in the United States and Europe.”
“He said what is taking place in Gaza reveals the nature of Western civilization and the truthfulness of the message of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, one of the great causes of which was supporting Palestine,” PressTV reported.
“They exert a lot of violence in order to contain this raging movement and have even threatened to expel the students from universities and hinder their employment in the future, and such autocratic methods show the decline of global arrogance,” Moazzeni said of the “harsh treatment” students were facing — a rather rich comparison considering Iran’s history of violent crackdowns on any student protests against the regime.
Iran’s internationally renowned Shiraz University to grant scholarships to expelled pro-Palestine students in US, Europehttps://t.co/3IYdsSMUai
— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) May 1, 2024
“Students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University, and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide the conditions],” he said.
Of course, there is a bit of a cultural disconnect here, as one commenter noted:
A lot of protestors are blue-haired types with lots of pronouns. Will they be welcomed?
— Josh Wine (@joshwine1) May 1, 2024
This is part of the absurdity of a movement that has seen farcical moments such as a movement calling itself “Queers for Palestine” and a video of a drag queen leading children in a “Free Palestine!” chant, among others. Keep in mind that among Palestinians and in a not-insubstantial number of Middle Eastern nations — especially Iran — these individuals might get stoned, and not of the legal weed variety.
Whether both sides really are as gullible as to believe the other represents their interests, or whether both are cynical enough to use the other to get what they want — or some combination of both — is anybody’s guess.
I highly doubt our purple-haired “xhe/xir” pronouns-in-bio types will be attending Shiraz University or taking up residence in Rafah to find out, nor do I think either side is serious about inviting these agitators onto their soil and into their institutions.
However, if they are sincere, by all means, let’s have a summit between the spoilt Columbia protesters, the queers and drag queens for Hamas, and the Iranian clerisy and academic elite.
The Iranians would learn the exact nature of those “Hezbollah-style groups” on college campuses, the student protesters would learn that they’re being used by America’s enemies, or — fingers crossed — both.
Until then, however, this should serve as a wake-up call to all the soi-disant revolutionaries who believe they’re anything more than pawns in a brutal Middle Eastern power struggle, and they’re being played by the side of evil.
