Above photo: A woman speaks as Georgetown students hold an on-campus protest supporting Palestine at Georgetown University on September 4, 2024 in Washington, DC. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.
Where is the actual evidence that Iranian operatives “posing as students” are helping organize and fund campus protests over the war on Gaza?
On September 4, the New York Times did something it has a long and sordid history of doing: laundering extremely loaded and consequential “U.S. intelligence” claims without providing an ounce of skepticism — or evidence. The report, headlined “Iran Emerges as a Top Disinformation Threat in U.S. Presidential Race,” begins with fairly boilerplate hand wringing about foreign influence operations, followed by authors Steven Lee Myers,Tiffany Hsu and Farnaz Fassihi casually tossing out a government claim that, by implication, has the effect of smearing hundreds of thousands of student protesters:
“Across the United States this spring, Iran also used social media to stoke student-organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students, according to American intelligence assessments.”
The Iranian government is not only funding U.S.-based Gaza student protests, but using “operatives” to “pose as students”? Certainly, if U.S. authorities had evidence of this explosive claim, they would be rolling out indictments, as they did on the same day against several Russian entities that had worked to pay rightwing online influencers to spread their message about supporting Ukraine being weak and liberal, right?
Who were these Iranian “operatives”? Are charges incoming? And what does it mean for “operatives” to “pose as students”? For years, U.S. intelligence, security fellows, and a host of think tank PhDs have filled the market demand for “foreign influence” experts, telling the media that such operations are everywhere lurking in the shadows and the United States, therefore, must funnel billions of dollars into countering it. After all, in the mainstream media’s telling — as is the case with “terrorism” and “counter terrorism” — the United States, by definition, can never do propaganda, only “counter propaganda,” so the incentives to provide cover for this industry is obvious.
In this passage, the Times is giving the reader the impression that Iranian agents are “posing as students” in the context of the actual Gaza protests. In These Times sent an email to the Times writers in question — Myers, Hsu and Fassihi — asking them if they had seen any evidence of this Iranian financial patronage or Iranian agents “posing as students.” New York Times press contact Nicole Taylor responded with a statement saying:
“Iran’s support for the student protests, including Mr. Khamenei’s public remarks, has been well-documented, including overt and covert activities. We stand by our report which includes clearly attributed and on-the-record claims made by U.S. officials that relate to operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students online.”
Taylor’s response appeared to reference a rather vague July statement by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines claiming online support and mysterious financial support from Iran for the protests, as Haines is the only major U.S. official making similar claims to those asserted in the New York Times report (White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeated those claims later that month, but was referring to Haines’ previous statement). As reported by the Associated Press, Haines’ statement asserted that “groups linked to Tehran” were “using social media platforms popular in the U.S., groups linked to Tehran have posed as online activists, encouraged protests and have provided financial support to some protest groups.”
The Times did not offer any evidence to support either claim. Their reporting, by their own admission, is simply repeating assertions from government sources without skepticism.
In These Times also reached out to the Department of Justice to see if the agency could provide any evidence of this alleged financial assistance or provide details of the extent of these alleged “operatives” that have been “posing as students” – – online or otherwise – – but we received no response. So far, neither the U.S. government nor the New York Times has provided any evidence to support either of these claims.
The New York Times giving liberal sanction to the claim that Iranian agents are funding and participating in Gaza protests invariably contributes to a broader campaign to smear Gaza protests. This has potentially violent consequences for a protest movement increasingly targeted by university officials, District Attorneys, the federal government, police and right-wing pro-Israel vigilantes. It’s a claim that should be made with great care and even greater evidence. Instead, it’s just tossed out in the paper of record based entirely on an unsourced government assertion.
The Times isn’t alone: This claim and variations of it have been made by far-right media outlets and think tanks for months – – all without verifiable evidence. On Sunday, former Secretary of State and current Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton, appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS and alluded to similar allegations. In reference to the Gaza campus protests, she said, “we have now seen evidence of foreign money” without saying what specifically she was referencing or citing any of this alleged evidence.
This isn’t to say there are zero outside efforts to influence U.S. discourse; we have seen several instances of influence operations allegedly targeting Americans from Russia, China and, yes, Iran—often pushing right-wing influencers to muddy the waters (it’s worth nothing, the United States and its military allies Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE run extensive influence operations). But the evidence we do have typically shows shoddy, largely outsourced operations that only seem to gain traction around the margins. And certainly are not, as the Times report implies, using operatives to pose as protesters.
That Iranian media and online bots would cover and promote the protests, often in a tabloid way to make the United States look bad, makes perfect sense and is something the United States does to other countries, including Iran, all the time. It doesn’t help that the general substance of the claim Iran is alleged to be pushing — that the United States is backing an ongoing genocide—also happens to be true.
Indeed, the most efficient way to guarantee that the genocide in Gaza doesn’t “sow divisions” and isn’t “being exploited” by enemy states is to simply stop arming and funding it.
One distinct possibility is that given the actual substantive revelations about Russian intelligence carve-outs paying right-wing influencers (a charge the influencers in question don’t deny), U.S. officials wanted to provide some balance in their roll out and decided to make vague gestures toward Iranians being the secret puppeteers behind Gaza protests. Belittling Gaza protesters helps trivialize an enormous movement loathed by Republican and Democratic leaders alike. According to one Harvard analysis, the United States saw “more than 3,700 days with protest activity at 525 different colleges, universities, K-12 schools, and school district offices across 317 different U.S. cities and towns” since October 7, 2023. Little Jimmy at Oberlin being under the spell of Iranian propaganda is obviously preferable than having to defend the moral basis for killing over 16,000 Palestinian children, nonstop, for almost a year.
So where is the evidence that some meaningful number of student protesters are actually Iranian operatives? Or that the organizers are funded by Iran? We have none so far. What we do have is powerful people making this claim and the paper of record dutifully repeating it without critical reporting. Presumably, U.S. officials may at some point in the future provide proof, but as of now the claim comes off as just a conspiracy theory pushed by a government with every incentive to do so, and a newspaper that has a long track record of passing along evidence-free government assertions.