This move towards normalisation and cooperation culminated in recent years in the Abraham Accords, the transformative peace agreement which establishes an influential and productive bloc of economic partnership in the Middle East and serves to stabilise regional and world security.

Why world security? Because the ambitions of the Islamic Republic are by no means limited to their corner of the world. Americans along with other inhabitants of the free democracies need to understand what Arab and Muslim nations have been trying to tell us for years: the Islamic Republic will stop at nothing to attain their goals of disruption, subversion, and domination. To this end, we have seen global coordination on the propaganda front at a shocking level between the foreign actors whose interests are currently aligned in a fundamentally anti-Western manner. The Islamic Republic is directly coordinating with Russia and China to back Hamas. They are also working with Russia to evade American sanctions, provide support to the Houthis, and deliver military equipment to Hezbollah.

In concert with such activity, the Islamic Republic is actively and effectively sowing chaos and discord in America and elsewhere. If Israel is a thorn in the side of the mad mullahs of Tehran, America is a gigantic redwood whose rootedness in the tradition of human rights and freedoms remains the greatest obstacle to the dominion of radical Islamist ideology. Iran does not have the military prowess or might to wage war directly with America and her allies. Their goal, instead, is to destabilise us from within, and they make clever use of the technologies and freedoms that typify the West to do so.

Aiming for maximum chaos, they fuel the flames on both sides. On the right, they hack the Republican presidential campaign. On the Left, they fund protestors and influencers who shout, “Death to America” and “We Are Hamas,” all too often without understanding whose interests they are genuinely furthering. Islamic Republic operatives have attacked Western infrastructure, seeking to destroy our energy, water, and healthcare systems using the novel tactics of cyberwarfare.

They collaborate with domestic criminal networks to threaten their critics on American and European soil. Far and away their most effective strategy, however, is the PSYOPs campaigns waged through our ubiquitous social media platforms. Their manipulations are deployed covertly, aided by social media anonymity and weaponised through secret algorithms that profit off outrage, hate, and polarisation. The Islamic Republic’s plan to radicalise the West on social media has enjoyed particularly stunning success with more youthful citizens.

Young people who get their news primarily through TikTok hold opinions far outside the norm when it comes to America, Israel, and Jews. American women between the ages of 18-34 have an unfavourable view of America of more than 50% above the norm. Their ideas about Israel and Jews follow suit. Members of this demographic rely on TikTok to a much more extreme degree than others. The dire effects this produces are no mere accident: Iran, partnering with Russia, and China, has been waging a covert war through platforms such as TikTok to weaponise antisemitism and to destabilise America and the West – not least through promulgation of the victim/oppressor narrative which holds that every human and institutional relationship is governed by power alone.

There is always a place for peaceful protest and criticism of any nation or leader. However, it is clear that the Western pro-Palestinian movement’s messaging apparatus – and much of its momentum – has been fomented, supported and echoed by the Islamic Republic, not least through cyberwarfare, funding, and PSYOPs campaigns such as those led by the Singham network. If a glowing neon arrow is required to connect the dots, here is Ayatollah Khamenei himself directly tweeting his support of American protestors. There is virtually nothing more damning that could be said about such campus activity.

The slogans being shouted by those who barricade and blockade universities, bridges and streets are those of the Islamic Republic and its terror proxies. When buildings, monuments, and homes are defaced, the clichés spray-painted so enthusiastically and self-righteously are those of the Islamic Republic and its terror proxies. Mass rape and hostage torture are alternately denied and celebrated, acts of self-immolation and “revolutionary suicide” depathologised and glorified as political tactics, and cries of “Intifada, intifada, coming to America” and “Gas the Jews” ring through encampments and marches. Violent revolutionary rhetoric such as, “You don’t get to choose how we resist,” or, “By any means necessary,” does not square with American values, rules of engagement, or the admirable, courageous, and time-honoured traditions of the American Civil Rights movement. The strategies and objectives that accompany and underlie the Islamic Republic’s propaganda and covert actions could not be more incompatible with those of any culture that truly values the rights of women and minorities, free expression and vigorous debate, and liberty of faith.

Unlike everyone under the Islamic Republic of Iran, Americans and those in the West are entitled to free speech – even entitled to hate who they wish to hate. One of the most profound manifestations of such rights is the opportunity and responsibility to evaluate and criticise the ideas and actions of others – including self-declared enemies – and identify those offensives designed to undermine the very rights that allow us to think and speak freely in the first place. No foreign nation should be granted the opportunity to infiltrate the West through nefarious means to destabilise and destroy us. Nonetheless: the Islamic Republic continues to do precisely that. Such strains of subversive and toxic influence must be identified, repudiated, and eliminated.

Here are three concrete suggestions toward such an end:

• Westerners who further the aims of the Islamic Republic by breaking the law – making true threats, defacing property, or assaulting citizens or law enforcement – should be arrested with minimal possible force and prosecuted.
• Face coverings should be illegal when worn to intimidate, menace, or terrorise. They allow agitators to hide in order to indulge their worst instincts. And in anonymising their wearers, face coverings insulate them from any consequences in the public square and preclude legitimate engagement within the free marketplace of ideas. Masks are a hallmark of the KKK, not of peaceful protestors.
• Post-partisan legislation like America’s PATA – which calls for increased transparency in our social media platforms while still protecting freedom of speech – must be formulated and passed.

We have entered a time of massively accelerating change, hurtling headlong through the unknown. We are exploring new and old modes of thinking – some courageous, some horrifying, some promising. Despite broad consensus in the West on many issues, we have been entranced into believing that we simply cannot agree on anything. A great number of our systems, institutions, organisations, and corporations profit off this very polarisation. Distrust is high. 

With so much hate and paranoia, many find it difficult to determine who the West’s real enemies are. And we have been enticed and encouraged by bad foreign actors and hate-profiteers to believe it’s one another.

However, we have unassailable evidence of the truth right in front of us: the Islamic Regime has declared itself an enemy of the West.

It is high time we take them at their word.

Jordan B. Peterson is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and author of “Maps of Meaning,” “12 Rules for Life” and “Beyond Order.” A collection of his writings for the Telegraph can be found here.

Gregg Andrew Hurwitz is a best-selling American novelist and screenwriter.