Set in author Tom Clancy's "Ryanverse," universe, President Jack Ryan and The Campus deal with a sinister plot behind a series of protests in Iran, dubbed the Persian Spring.

[2] In Iran, a series of protests break out between a group of dissidents led by Reza Kazem and the Iranian theocratic government in what is favorably dubbed by the international press as the "Persian Spring."

A deadly strain of flu, as well as spring floods, occur across the country, and his political rival, Senator Michelle Chadwick, criticizes his policies using bot-planted fake news stories about him.

Overseas, the United States embassy in Cameroon comes under siege from the Cameroonian government eager on arresting opposition leader General Mbida, who had taken refuge there, while Russia is plotting to stage an invasion of Ukraine disguised as a military exercise.

Russian SVR officer Erik Dovzhenko has been coordinating with Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps major Parviz Sassani in capturing and executing dissidents in Iran at great personal risk to himself since his lover Maryam Farhad is secretly allied with Kazem's organization.

Kashani then informs her ex-boyfriend Jack Ryan Jr., who is on the ground in Portugal with his fellow Campus operatives to monitor da Rocha and his French assassin Lucile Fournier, who had just struck a deal with a pair of Russian GRU officers.

In Portugal, Clark and his fellow Campus operatives Domingo "Ding" Chavez, Barry "Midas" Jankowski, and Adara Sherman rescue da Rocha from the Russian GRU officers, who had double-crossed him on the missile deal and had killed Fournier.

Now in Iran, Ryan, Dovzhenko, and Kashani talk to an Iranian nuclear scientist named Atash Yazdani for information about the missiles in exchange for treating his ill son, when Sassani tracks them down and attacks them.