Over the past week, Iran witnessed a new escalation in anti-Zionist demonstrations, with more than 20 campus protests reported at major universities across the country. According to Iran’s Fars News Agency, these demonstrations were organized over a four-day period and showcase the depth and coordination of the Islamic Republic’s state-directed hostility towards Israel. The timing of these rallies, at a moment of heightened conflict in the Middle East, highlights Iran’s continued campaign to strengthen anti-Israel sentiment and reinforce its regional axis of terror proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
The demonstrations were marked by chants denouncing Israel, accusations of genocide in Gaza, and explicit support for the population under Hamas administration. Protesters carried Iranian, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi flags and engaged in ritual acts of hostility—trampling and burning Israeli flags—reflecting the broader ideological and geopolitical posture of the regime. These displays, recurrent at regime-sanctioned events, are not spontaneous expressions of grassroots outrage, but carefully orchestrated messages backed by government-linked campus organizations, including the Basij student militia.
Some of the demonstrations were staged outside foreign embassies, such as Hungary’s mission in Tehran, which recently hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Such targeting underscores the Iranian regime’s approach of using both international posturing and domestic mobilization to advance its objectives. Iran positions these university rallies as expressions of public will, but in reality, they serve as instruments of state propaganda and intimidation, both internally and toward foreign diplomats.
This campaign dovetails with Iran’s wider efforts since the October 7, 2023, massacre—the deadliest antisemitic attack since the Holocaust in which Hamas terrorists murdered over 1,200 Israeli civilians, using methods including executions, sexual violence, mutilation, and abductions. Iran’s leadership and military, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, publicly hailed the massacre as a blow against Israel. Since then, Tehran has intensified support—militarily and rhetorically—for its terror proxies across the region, aiming to escalate pressure on Israel and to undermine U.S.-led security structures.
Iran’s universities have long served dual purposes: as centers of regime indoctrination in support of the so-called ‘axis of resistance’ and as flashpoints for actual grassroots dissent against the government. While authorities facilitate anti-Israel rallies for propaganda purposes, they simultaneously suppress student protests demanding greater freedoms, economic reforms, or an end to clerical authoritarianism. In these anti-Israel rallies, students are often mobilized by regime-affiliated bodies, with participation used as a display of loyalty or required to avoid academic or social penalties.
The content and symbolism of the protests align with Tehran’s regional agenda. Marchers call for an end to Israel’s counterterrorism operations in Gaza, characterizing Israeli measures as ‘genocide,’ a term repeatedly employed by regime media to delegitimize the Israeli state and obscure the documented atrocities committed by Hamas. These rhetorical strategies ignore verifiable evidence: Israel’s response has been a war of self-defense after a terror onslaught against civilians, targeting terror infrastructure embedded and shielded by Hamas in civilian areas—a hallmark of Iran’s proxy warfare doctrine.
International context is critical. Iran’s investment in incitement, proxy violence, and ideological mobilization forms a cornerstone of its strategy to confront Israel, the United States, and allied governments. Mass protests and anti-Israel narratives are meant to complement military action—like missile attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon or drone strikes from the Houthis in Yemen—and to present an image of unified popular resistance, masking the regime’s tight control and widely documented internal discontent.
It is also essential to recognize the disconnect between the regime’s messaging and the sentiments of large segments of Iranian society. Independent observers note widespread dissatisfaction with government repression, declining living standards, and lack of fundamental rights. Previous waves of unrest in Iranian universities have focused inward, targeting regime abuses and corruption rather than external enemies. Yet, the government continues to deploy the spectacle of anti-Zionist protest as a means to redirect frustration towards Israel and bolster its standing with partner terror organizations.
Israel’s leadership, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, alongside IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, emphasize the existential nature of the threat: Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist violence, incitement, and asymmetric warfare endanger not only Israel but regional stability. The Israeli government reiterates its commitment to operating within the bounds of international law, seeking to minimize civilian harm, and to the recovery of hostages abducted by Hamas—a key distinction frequently obscured by Iranian rhetoric.
The recent wave of anti-Israel campus protests thus encapsulates Iran’s dual-track strategy: the pursuit of regional supremacy through its ‘axis of resistance’ and the consolidation of internal power through ideological warfare against both external adversaries and domestic dissenters. As Iran’s terror proxies escalate attacks on Israel’s borders and in the Red Sea, and as the regime attempts to dominate the narrative through international and domestic propaganda, the stakes for Israel’s security and the future of the Middle East could not be clearer.
Amid this ongoing conflict, the international community faces a challenge of both information and action: to recognize and expose the calculated nature of Iran’s mobilization, to distinguish between genuine civil society and regime-sponsored incitement, and to defend the principles of sovereignty and self-defense in the face of state-driven campaigns of terror.
The Iranian student protests against Israel, widely reported and centrally organized, are not simply voices of youth activism, but the latest move in Iran’s systematic and multi-front war on Israel and regional order—a campaign rooted in decades of incitement, proxy aggression, and denial of the right of self-determination for the Middle East’s only democracy.
