Blindfolded American hostage surrounded by captors outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, November 9, 1979.
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(by Steve Joachim, News Nation) – Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the clerical regime in Tehran and its proxies, first led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, (the “Supreme Leader”) have committed a range of attacks against Americans.
The attacks have often been carried out by Iranian-backed militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and have frequently targeted and killed Americans overseas – particularly in Israel.
They have also included military targets, such as the October 1983 attack on a Marine compound in Beirut that left 220 Marines dead and led to a U.S. withdrawal from that country.
The Trump administration has pointed to the history of attacks to justify to global partners and Congress its bombing campaign on Iran, which began Saturday and killed Khamenei – an enemy of the U.S. for nearly five decades. …
Iran was a U.S. ally…under the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. At that time, Iran was a huge buyer of U.S. weapons; President Jimmy Carter was the last U.S. president to visit Iran, during the Shah’s rule. …
…The Islamic Revolution of [1979 brought] Khomenei to power, and led to the Iranian hostage crisis when students…took 66 Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. [The students who took the Americans captive were loyal followers of the Ayatollah and were acting on his calls to increase attacks against the “Great Satan” (the U.S.)].
Chants of death to America, searing memories of blindfolded U.S. hostages and a laundry list of terrorist attacks are the U.S.-Iran history for most of the last near 50 years. …
Here is a timeline of much of the history of Iranian attacks (which started soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution), compiled in part by the non-partisan think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who has a strong focus on national security and foreign affairs and was founded after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
April 1983 – A suicide car bombing kills 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The Iran-backed terrorist group Islamic Jihad, a precursor and early branch of Hezbollah (not to be confused with Palestinian Islamic Jihad), claims responsibility.
October 1983 – Operatives of the Iran-backed Hezbollah drive a truck bomb at a Marine compound in Beirut, killing 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel.
December 1983 – Hezbollah operatives drive an explosives-filled dump truck through the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City. No Americans are harmed.
March 1984 – Terrorists kidnap CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut, subsequently torturing and ultimately [murdering] him in 1985. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
December 1984 – Hezbollah terrorists hijack Kuwait Airways Flight 221 on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan and divert it to Tehran, [murdering] two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
U.S. Navy Steelworker 2nd Class Robert Dean Stethem, a Seabee diver with Underwater Construction Team ONE was returning from an overseas assignment when the flight was seized by terrorists.
June 1985 – Hezbollah terrorists hijack TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome and murdered U.S. Navy diver, [23 year-old Robert Dean Stethem. As a member of the U.S. military, Stethem was beaten and tortured. Finally, the terrorists shot him in the temple and dumped his body onto the tarmac at the Beirut airport].
July 1989 – Hezbollah operatives [murdered] U.S. Marine Corps Col. William Higgins after kidnapping him the previous year while on a United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon. [He was held hostage, tortured, and 17 months later, murdered by his captors].
April 1995 – An explosives-laden van crashes into a bus near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, killing one American and seven Israelis. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
August 1995 – A Hamas suicide bomber blows up a bus in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers and wounding more than 100.
February 1996 – A Hamas suicide bomber blows up a Jerusalem bus, killing three Americans and wounding three other Americans. A total of 26 people die in the attack.
March 1996 – A suicide bomber blows up the Dizengoff shopping center in Tel Aviv, wounding two Americans. Twenty people die and 75 others are injured in the attack. Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claim responsibility.
May 1996 – Gunmen murder an American-Israeli dual citizen in the community of Beit El in the West Bank. Another U.S. citizen and three Israelis are wounded. No group claims responsibility, but Israel suspects Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
June 1996 – A truck carrying 5,000 pounds of explosives blows up the Khobar Towers, a U.S. Air Force housing complex in the Saudi Arabian town of Khobar. Nineteen Americans die and some 500 people are injured. The Iran-backed Hezbollah Al Hijaz, a terrorist group in Saudi Arabia, is deemed responsible.
September 1997 -Three Hamas suicide bombers blow themselves up at the Ben Yehuda shopping mall in Jerusalem, killing a U.S.-Israeli dual citizen and wounding seven other American citizens. Four other people die and nearly 200 are wounded in the attack.
August 1998 – With the assistance of Hezbollah, al Qaeda suicide bombers almost simultaneously blow up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounding thousands. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, al Qaeda developed “the tactical expertise for such attacks months earlier, when some of its operatives — top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them — were sent to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.”
August 2001 – A Hamas suicide bomber blows up the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, killing a U.S.-Israeli dual citizen and two other Americans. A total of 15 people die in the attack.
January 2002 – Gunmen affiliated with the Iran-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade murder a U.S.-Israel dual citizen and wound another individual in the West Bank community of Beit Sahur.
July 2002 – A bomb planted by a Hamas terrorist kills five Americans at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, killing five American students, including an American-Israeli dual citizen and an American-French dual citizen. A total of nine people died in the attack.
June 2003 – An American citizen, along with 16 other people, died when a Hamas terrorist blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem.
October 2003 – Terrorists from the Iran-backed Popular Resistance Committees kill three U.S. diplomatic personnel in a bombing in Gaza.
2003-2011 – Iranian-backed militias murder at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Iranian training and material support for Iraqi militias during the surge greatly increased the difficulty of U.S. forces to combat the insurgency and included some of the deadliest weapons used against American troops, including explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
August 2003 – A Hamas suicide bomber blows up a bus in Jerusalem, killing five Americans and wounding one other American. A total of 24 people died in the attack.
August 2006 – Hezbollah fighters kill American citizen Michael Levin, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), during the Second Lebanon War. He is the only American to die in the conflict.
January 2007 – Twelve men affiliated with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) disguised themselves as U.S. soldiers, entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the Iraqi city of Karbala, murdered five U.S. soldiers, and wounded another three. In 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a $15 million bounty for information on an (Iranian) IRGC Quds Force commander who planned the attack and other “assassinations of coalition forces in Iraq.”
July 2014 – Hamas terrorists kill two Americans serving in the IDF during fighting between the terrorist group and Israel in Gaza as part of Operation Protective Edge.
October 2015 – Hamas terrorists murder an American citizen and his wife, residents of the West Bank community of Neria, in their car in a drive-by shooting.
December 2019 – Rockets fired by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, kills an American security contractor and wounds several U.S. service members and Iraqi personnel at the K1 military base in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
January 2020 – A direct Iranian ballistic missile attack against the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq causes more than 100 U.S. troops to suffer traumatic brain injuries.
March 2020 – The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007, announces that he likely died in an Iranian prison at an unknown date.
September 2020 – U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Iran is weighing a plot to assassinate U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks.
February 2021 – A rocket fired by an Iran-backed militia at coalition forces in the Iraqi city of Erbil wounds a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.
July 2021 – Iranian-backed militias conduct at least three rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in 24 hours in Iraq and Syria, wounding two U.S. service members.
September 2022 – An Iranian rocket attack kills an American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan.
November 2022 – A captain in Iran’s IRGC orchestrates the murder of an American citizen living in Baghdad who worked at an English language institute.
March 2023 – An Iranian drone kills an American contractor and wounds five service members and another contractor when it strikes a coalition base near the Syrian city of Hasakah.
October 7, 2023 – Hamas kills at least 48 Americans and kidnaps at least 12 Americans in a massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel.
December 2023 – A drone attack conducted by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia against U.S. forces in Erbil wounds three American soldiers, including one critically injured with shrapnel to the head that placed him in a coma.
January 2024 – A drone launched by Kataib Hezbollah kills three U.S. soldiers at a U.S. military base in Jordan and wounded more than 40 other service members.
October 2024 – Iran executes German-Iranian national and U.S. permanent resident Jamshid Sharmahd on fraudulent terrorism charges.
November 2024 – A report released by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies indicates that Iran and its proxies have conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East between October 17, 2023, and November 19, 2024, resulting in more than 180 wounded and three killed U.S. service members.
November 2024 – The U.S. Department of Justice announces charges against an Iranian national and two American accomplices for plotting to assassinate President Trump.
March 2025 – A U.S. jury convicts two agents of Iran for plotting to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022.
June 2025 – At least three U.S. bases in Syria and two U.S. bases in Iraq are attacked with missiles or drones, likely by Iranian-backed militias.
[January 2026 – The Ayatollah and his evil regime murdered at least 30,000 of their own people – unarmed Iranian citizens].
Questions
1. List the various groups funded/supported/trained by the Ayatollah and his murderous regime that are mentioned in the timeline as perpetrating the terrorist acts.
2. What means did the terrorists use to murder Americans in their various attacks? (What types of attacks did they commit?)
3. Do a search for any 2 of the following Iran sponsored terrorist attacks that murdered Americans (OR choose any 2 others):
- 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon
- 1983 bombing at a Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon
- 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and murder of U.S. Navy diver, 23 year-old Robert Dean Stethem
- 1996 bombing Khobar Towers, U.S. Air Force housing in Saudi Arabia
- 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
a) For each, list the, who, what, where and when.
b) What response did the U.S. have to each? (How did we hold the Iranian government accountable?)
4. Up until last week, U.S. representatives have been negotiating with Iranian officials to end their nuclear weapons program. The Iranians would appear to be near a deal, but then backtrack.
- U.S. negotiators said the Iranians told them just recently that they had enriched enough uranium to build 11 nuclear weapons.
- Under the United Nations NPT treaty, Iran agreed to not build nuclear weapons. The regime has for the past 40 years secretly pursued nuclear weapons.
- The U.S. and Israel in June obliterated three of Iran’s main nuclear sites. The regime immediately proceeded to work on their nuclear weapons program.
- Iran’s mullahs (clerics who run the government) call the U.S. “the Great Satan” and call for “Death to America” during their rallies.
Based on what you have learned about their terrorist activities, do you think the regime would have used the weapons on the U.S., once acquired? Explain your answer.
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