“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza,” Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines warned Tuesday. “We [the Intelligence Community] have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

“Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts,” Haines warned, “seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we have seen them do in the past, including in prior election cycles. … Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.”

Rarely does the 19-agency U.S. Intelligence Community agree on anything. Rarer still does this notoriously secretive bunch care to share their answer with the class. When both phenomena occur together, we should take notice.

The DNI press release offered no specifics about particular Iranian influence operations. Even the phrase, “in recent weeks,” is somewhat vague — does that reach far enough back to include the campus protests, which saw more than 3,000 arrests and were most intense eight to 12 weeks ago? In May, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei praised the U.S. campus protests, and a document leaked in April indicated that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) was conducting a worldwide effort aimed at “the political isolation of the Zionist regime.”

Without knowing exactly which anti-Israel protests received Iranian funding, there are some likely candidates in “recent weeks.” On June 8, thousands of activists were bused into D.C. from more than two dozen cities to encircle the White House. They demanded that Biden enforce a “red line” against Israel’s invasion of Rafah, a point they illustrated by encircling the White House complex in red cloth. The Washington Post captured an image of demonstrators holding up what looks to be a roll of cheap red fabric, along with other homemade signs.

But the Post failed to ask a significant question: who paid for the cloth? Stretching a red line around the White House complex sounds nice in theory, but the White House security perimeter stretches for more than a mile. It would take nearly 2,000 cloth yards to encircle. At $5/yard on the low end (available from Walmart), that comes out to nearly $10,000.

So, it’s worth asking: who paid for the cloth? While we’re asking questions, who paid for the buses? Left-wing protests affect to be grassroots groundswells, but protests like this one are far too well-funded for that.

The protestors are likely not going to say who is funding their demonstration. Many of them likely don’t even know. Even if one elicited an answer, it would likely be a smokescreen (leading to a shell corporation or pop-up organization invented last week).

In the absence of a certain answer, however, we can at least narrow down the possibilities. Another helpful question is, who has an interest, or thinks they do, from the protests? Again, the protest aimed to deny Israel, a close ally, a victory against Hamas, a genocidal terror group that launched an unprecedented surprise attack against Israel, through leverage exerted over American foreign policy. Who has an interest in doing such a thing?

Leftists have convinced themselves that they have a moral interest. Through a perverse framework of Marxist intersectionality, they believe the very existence of Israel is an abomination, and that Israel’s territory should be handed over to its mortal enemies. For them, denying Israel a victory against that enemy is a small step toward implementing their worldview in the land of Israel. Indeed, left-wing organizations have been funneling millions of dollars into anti-Israel activism for years.

But there is another party with a much more practical interest in denying Israel a victory over Hamas. That would be Israel’s larger enemy, the chief financier and backer of Hamas, who wields Hamas alongside other similar pawns as a weapon against Israel: Iran.

The Iranian government hates Israel and wants to keep Hamas alive; that’s the motive. The Iranian government recently received a large infusion of cash when the Biden administration eased sanctions and freed up frozen assets in Western banks; that’s the means. Now we learn, from the U.S. Intelligence Community, that Iran is fomenting and funding anti-Israel protests in America, so they have the opportunity. When Iran has the means, motive, and opportunity, would anyone dare to argue that they are definitely not the shadowy financier behind these protests?

There is another, more sinister layer to Iran’s involvement in anti-Israel protests. These protests are taking place in an election year, during the president’s reelection campaign. Anti-Israel groups who comprise part of the president’s base promote and participate in these protests. These groups have implicitly and explicitly threatened that their constituencies will withhold their votes for the president unless Biden modifies his foreign policy to accommodate their wishes.

In other words, Iran’s meddling with U.S. protests is also a way of meddling with U.S. elections.

Remember when foreign interference in U.S. elections was treated as an existential threat? When a president’s election was widely considered to be illegitimate because a hostile foreign power bought political ads on social media, supposedly nullifying the votes of actual American citizens?

“Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election spawned endless investigations and news articles and accusations,” recalled columnist Ira Stoll. “It’d be strange if the disclosure of Iranian activity in the U.S. in the midst of the 2024 campaign fails to arouse similar levels of concern.”

The northern bear is up to its same old tricks. The Justice Department announced Tuesday that Russia continues to meddle in U.S. elections. Judging by the state of its miliary and economy, Russia’s meddling campaign will likely be as incompetent as ever.

Iran, on the other hand, is carrying out a savvier, more sophisticated plan. I suggested above that Iran is, in a way, meddling in U.S. elections. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Iran hopes to leverage its potential election meddling to influence American foreign policy in the Middle East. The Iranian regime would be insane to boost Donald Trump, the guy who ordered a drone strike on its terror chieftain, over Joe Biden, the guy who gave them billions of dollars for no good reason.

The Iranian regime aims to become a nuclear-armed, dominant power in the Middle East, and eliminating Israel is part of that vision. Iran is not above pulling some sneaky trickery on the Biden administration (not to mention American voters) to achieve its geopolitical ambitions.