Fresh Air

Recent Iran-related news items evoked the saying, ‘Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.’ These reports reveal that the ayatollahs consider students chanting against Israel on university grounds as friends. At the same time, the Iranian regime is employing and supporting criminals and terrorists in Western nations.

Khamenei: the leader of the pro-Palestine student movement?

The first news item involves a letter published by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, on May 25. Addressed to pro-Palestinian students demonstrating and encamping on university campuses in the US, the letter lavishly praises rioters who ransacked campuses across America, while spreading hate and violently attacking Jews, faculty members, and police officers, shouting genocidal slogans (‘From the river to the sea’). In his letter, Khamenei expresses “empathy and solidarity” with these students, asserting that “the tide of history is turning, and you are standing on the right side of it.”

Moreover, Khamenei designates the anti-Israel students as a new “branch of the Resistance Front.” According to him, they have “begun an honourable struggle in the face of your government’s ruthless pressure” – a government that openly supports the “usurper and brutal Zionist regime.”

It’s worth remembering that the other members of this “Resistance Front” include terrorist organisations such as Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and various armed Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

Since October 7, the “Resistance Front”  has relentlessly attacked and killed civilians, fired rockets, drones, and missiles at Israel from various directions, while also disrupting global trade by imposing a pirate-style blockade on maritime trade via the Red Sea. Now, angry pro-Palestinian students setting up encampments in US universities, as well as in Australia, can apparently wear the “Resistance Front”  badge of honour and follow the orders of their new leader from Teheran.

But what is the aim of this resistance axis, which now includes students from Columbia University all the way to Melbourne and Sydney universities? With a not-so-hidden antisemitic undertone regarding Jewish power, Khamenei explains, “The goal of this struggle is to end the blatant oppression that the brutal Zionist terrorist network has inflicted on the Palestinian nation for many years.”

The Supreme Leader’s antisemitism becomes evident when he warns the students that “The global Zionist elite – who own most US and European media corporations or influence them through funding and bribery – has labeled this courageous, humane resistance movement as ‘terrorism.’”

In Khamenei’s reimagined history, Jews are portrayed as an evil force controlling the world:

After World War II, the capitalist Zionist network gradually imported several thousand terrorists into this land with the help of the British government. These terrorists attacked cities and villages, murdering tens of thousands of people and displacing multitudes into neighbouring countries. They seized homes, businesses, and farmlands, forming a government in the usurped land of Palestine and calling it Israel.

Getting caught up in the idea that the student movement is supposedly inspired by the example and ideology of the Iranian regime, the newspaper Kayhan, which is considered a mouthpiece for Khamenei, ran an article (May 6) which said of the student protest movement, and Khamenei’s supposed inspiration and guardianship over it: “This is what we call exporting the Islamic Revolution!”

Pro-Palestinian students from the LGBTQI+ community – or even progressives who back the rights of this community – should know what the self-proclaimed head of their movement really thinks about LGBTQI+ people, declaring in 2022: “There is severe moral deprivation in the world today, such as homosexuality and things that one cannot bring oneself to even talk about.”

Khamenei also argued in 2023 that homosexuality is forbidden in all divine religions and ridiculed Western countries for legalising same-sex relationships “and not being ashamed of it.”

Dancing with criminals for terror

Other friends of the Iranian regime are organised crime gangs. European and Israel’s intelligence agencies recently (May 30) revealed that Teheran has a contractual relationship with several crime syndicates in Europe.

According to the reports, Iran hires the criminal drug trafficking organsation Foxtrot, the biggest of its kind in Sweden, which is also involved in several assassinations across Europe. Rua Majid, a Swedish citizen of Kurdish origin who heads Foxtrot, is wanted by Interpol. He fled to Turkey in September 2023, where he escaped an attempt to arrest him and is now in Iran.

To avoid jail, Majid agreed to be recruited to work for Iran’s intelligence agencies, which instructed him to conduct operations against Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe.

Following orders from Teheran, youngsters working for Foxtrot executed two attacks on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm – planting a bomb in the diplomatic compound at the end of January and shooting near the building in mid-May.

Teheran also works with Rumba, another European drug trafficking group with ties to Turkey and Azerbaijan. It is headed by Turkish citizen Ismail Abdo, a former partner of Majid until a dispute between them resulted in an attempt on Abdo’s mother’s life. Also wanted by Interpol, Abdo was arrested in Turkey but was later released.

Just like Majid, he fled to Iran where he was recruited to work for the regime. Rumba is believed to have been involved in an attack in mid-May when two grenades were hurled at the Israeli Embassy in Brussels, Belgium.

This is not the first time the nexus between Teheran and criminal elements in Europe has been brought to light. In January 2023, the US revealed that Iranian agents hired the services of an Eastern Europe-based mafia organisation to try and assassinate Iranian-American regime dissident Masih Alinejad.

The lesson from all of this should be clear: The so-called pro-Palestine student movement is in bed with violent, intolerant and reactionary forces – the antisemitic Iranian regime, which uses the students as proxies to spread instability in the West, and the criminal gangs Teheran contracts to conduct terror attacks. The next time you see students shouting hateful slogans on campus against Jews and Israel, remember the reactionary  and dark forces they are aligned with.