As the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran rages in the Persian Gulf, there’s another battle against the regime’s influence being fought a bit closer to home. The Iranian missiles and drones that are raining down on countries in the Middle East cannot yet reach our shores. However, there is no Iron Dome preventing Iranian money from landing in U.S. K-12 classrooms. Iran is the third-largest shareholder in an international multilateral bank that provides financial support to a network of U.S.-based private K-12 Islamic schools.
Iran’s influence operation is substantial. In October 2023, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) published a brief on Iranian influence operations in the United States, where they identified the Alavi Foundation, a New York-based not-for-profit that, according to JINSA, funds “academic collaborations to spread Iranian talking points.” The organization claims to have given out $50 million since its founding in the 1970s. The George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report in 2024 detailing a number of other efforts, as well.
But the problem is much broader than Iran’s attempts to sway school children to hold a favorable opinion of its regime. Foreign funding has been buying influence and control over America’s education system for years. And it isn’t contained within the ivory tower of higher education. In chronically underfunded American K-12 schools, administrators may be tempted to take what money they can, wherever they can get it. Qatar Foundation International, for example, is funding multiple initiatives in the K-12 space, including teacher training, textbooks, and student trips to Qatar.
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