Iran has slammed the “Zionist lobbies” in the United States for launching a smear campaign in universities to muzzle freedom of speech on the pretext of fighting anti-Semitism.

According to The Iran Project, Nasser Kanaani, spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, wrote in a post on X on Sunday that the pro-Israel lobbies have set up “medieval inquisition courts” in 21st-century America to cover up the Israeli regime’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“The exertion of pressure by the US Congress to oust the presidents of several prominent universities in the country on charges of spreading anti-Semitism, which followed on from the expansion of protests by the students of these universities against the massacre of the defenseless people of Palestine, unmistakably reveal that the Zionist lobbies in America have set up medieval inquisition courts in the 21st-century America to censor the crimes of the Israeli apartheid regime in Gaza,” Kanaani said. 

It came days after the presidents of three of the most prestigious universities in the United States faced a flood of anger after they refused to say that calls for intifada, which translates to uprising, constitute bullying or harassment and are punishable.

Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth were grilled for hours by the US House Education Committee on Tuesday on anti-Semitism at their campuses, amid protests there against Israel’s war on Gaza.

During the debate, they repeatedly denounced anti-Semitism and vowed to do more to combat it, yet the New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik went further than that, pushing them to clarify their positions on calls for the “genocide of Jews,” making a reference to calls for “intifada” against the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.

In a three-minute video of the back and forth between Stefanik and the three Ivy League leaders that immediately went viral, they can be seen saying repeatedly that it is a “context-dependent decision” and that it depends “whether the speech turns into conduct.”

As pressure mounted on them over failing to condemn the alleged calls for the “genocide of Jews,” which many observers said were non-existent at the university campuses, and after donors threatened to withhold a $100 million donation due to the pro-Palestinian activities going on the campus, Magill finally stepped down on Saturday.

Reacting to the development, more than 70 members of Congress called for the firing of the other two presidents, using her resignation to pressure Harvard and MIT to act accordingly.

“One down. Two to go,” Stefanik said in a statement on Saturday.

“This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of anti-Semitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”

Israel launched the devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.

The regime has killed nearly 17,700 people, most of them women and children, in Gaza since then. More than 48,000 people have also been wounded as well.

Meanwhile, since the beginning of the Gaza war, many Israeli authorities, including the regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have either openly called for genocide against Palestinians or vowed to commit it.

Last month, Netanyahu invoked the biblical reference to “Amalek” to justify the massacre of Gaza residents. The Israeli “heritage” minister Amichai Eliyahu said recently that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is an option.

Also, on Friday, the deputy mayor of occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem) Aryeh Yitzhak King called for the Israeli army to bury alive hundreds of Palestinian civilians captured in Gaza, in yet another example of such cases.