Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs accused “the Israel lobby” of working to squelch the mass protests on college campuses, during an interview with an Iranian regime outlet.

Sachs, a renowned economist who now spends much of his time pushing narratives favored by authoritarian regimes such as China, spoke to the Tehran Times, a state-controlled newspaper that espouses the regime’s revolutionary Islamist ideology.

“The Israel lobby and individual donors are trying to suppress pro-Palestine protests and discourse. This is wrong,” he said. He did not elaborate on what he meant by the Israel lobby or who that includes. Sachs also accused the Columbia University administration of panicking “in response to pressures from politicians and from university donors,” and added that Columbia should not have called in the police to clear the encampment that students set up on campus. He also didn’t name any specific donors.

Framing the response to the campus protests, which featured rhetoric about “globalizing the intifada” and other antisemitic themes, as the work of a powerful but nebulous “Israel lobby” says a lot by itself. But running to the Iranian regime to do that suggests either that Sachs doesn’t know much about the Tehran Times or that he’s content to align himself with the government that backed October 7. Sachs speaks regularly to Chinese and Qatari state media and has addressed the U.N. Security Council at the request of Russia’s foreign ministry. It’s hardly a surprise that he’s adding the Tehran Times to his media circuit.