US Republicans to Probe Pro-Iranian Propaganda on College Campuses

UK-based Iran Inter­na­tion­al is report­ing that US Repub­li­cans are prob­ing what they call “pro-Iran pro­pa­gan­da” on US col­lege cam­pus­es. Accord­ing to the report, the probe fol­lows con­tro­ver­sial com­ments by the direc­tor of the Den­ver University’s Cen­ter for Mid­dle East Stud­ies, who spec­u­lat­ed that the recent attack on Salman Rushdie could have been insti­gat­ed by Israeli intel­li­gence operatives:

Con­tro­ver­sial remarks by a Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver pro­fes­sor who blamed Israel’s Mossad for the attack on author Salman Rushdie has prompt­ed Repub­li­cans to probe pro-Iran pro­pa­gan­da in US col­leges. Law­mak­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee (RSC), the largest Repub­li­can cau­cus in Con­gress, are set to launch over­sight inves­ti­ga­tions into schools like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver to root out “anti-Semit­ic and anti-Amer­i­can con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.” Indi­ana rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Banks, the RSC’s chair­man and a mem­ber of the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, told the Free Bea­con that “Anti-Semit­ic and anti-Amer­i­can con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are now wide­spread in uni­ver­si­ties and poi­son­ing stu­dents’ minds,” stress­ing the need for over­sight on pro­fes­sors pro­mot­ing the Iran­ian regime’s anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da and reform­ing the high­er edu­ca­tion. His remarks came after Nad­er Hashe­mi, the direc­tor of the Den­ver University’s Cen­ter for Mid­dle East Stud­ies, said this week dur­ing a pod­cast that Rushdie’s alleged attack­er, Hadi Matar, could have been per­suad­ed to car­ry out the attack by Mossad agents pos­ing as mem­bers of Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards, which report­ed­ly were in con­tact with Matar pri­or to the near-fatal stab­bing. He said a “much more like­ly” sce­nario for the attack revolves around Matar’s sup­posed com­mu­ni­ca­tions “with some­one online who claimed to be an Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) sup­port­er and lured him into attack­ing Salman Rushdie. And that so-called per­son online…could have been a Mossad oper­a­tive.” Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Greg Steube from Flori­da, a mem­ber of the RSC and the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, described Hashemi’s remarks as untrue and espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous to pro-Israel stu­dents on cam­pus, say­ing, “Pro­pa­gan­da from the Iran­ian regime has no place on Amer­i­can col­lege campuses.”

Read the arti­cle here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed in August on a report that the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment and pro-Iran­ian gov­ern­ment media and social media  “enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly wel­comed” the stab­bing of British-Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Salman Rushdie.