Why Is America Destroying Iran?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the principle to “Know Your Enemy.” This principle involves discernment, which helps us to see past the smiles that do not reach the eyes and the agreeing words. It means more than “Trust but Verify.” It means to truly know your enemy: know the culture, know the national history, know the personal history, and know the patterns and records.

The United States has a pattern of being split down the middle on whether the US should be fighting a war in Iran. One half remembers the history of the past 47 years, and the other half does not. Being a child in 1979 or being born after that date is not an excuse. Here is information that all Americans should understand. This division emboldens our enemies.

Suzanne Downing produces a daily newsletter for Alaskans titled the “Alaska Story – where the conversation happens.” In a recent newsletter, she recounted the history of the US-Iran issue and stated that Iran hopes that Americans do not have a long memory about the terrorist regime. 

The trouble with public memory is that it resets itself every few years when a new crisis arrives, a new slogan takes over the airwaves, a new generation of commentators discovers the same old regime and speaks about it as though history began last Tuesday.

Iran benefits from that amnesia. The clerical regime in Tehran has spent decades cultivating proxies, arming terror networks, directing covert attacks, and leaving behind a trail of dead Americans, dead Jews, dead dissidents, and dead civilians across multiple continents.

Yet every so often, the conversation circles back to whether Iran can be trusted, whether it only wants security, whether the West has somehow misunderstood its intentions. The record says otherwise.

For at least three decades, Iran has been identified by the United States as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It reflects a long pattern tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, which have financed, trained, armed, and directed groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis. Tehran prefers the language of “resistance.” The graves of Americans tell a more truthful story….

A partial list of Iran-sponsored terrorism, as provided by the State Department [follows]:

·       November 1979: Iranian students, backed by the regime, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran -- taking 66 Americans hostage in a 444-day standoff.

·       April 1983: The Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed terrorist group, carried out a suicide car bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans.

·       October 1983: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed 241 U.S. military personnel – including 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel – in a truck bombing at a Marine compound in Beirut.

·       March 1984: Iran-backed Islamic Jihad terrorists kidnapped CIA station chief William Buckley on his way to work in Beirut, ultimately killing him the following year.

·       September 1984: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed 23 innocent people – including two American service members – in a car bomb attack at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut.

·       December 1984: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists hijacked Kuwait Airways Flight 221 enroute to Pakistan, diverting it to Tehran—where they brutally tortured and killed two American officials.

·       June 1985: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist hijacked TWA Flight 847 on its way from Athens to Rome, torturing a U.S. Navy diver before shooting him point blank in the head and tossing his body onto the Beirut airport tarmac.

·       July 1989: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed U.S. Marine Col. William Higgins after kidnapping him the previous year while serving with a United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

·       April 1995: Iran-backed Islamic Jihad terrorists killed eight people – including one American citizen – in a car bomb attack in the Gaza Strip.

·       August 1995: An Iran-backed Hamas suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers, and wounding more than 100 others.

·       February 1996: An Iran-backed Hamas suicide bomber blew up another bus in Jerusalem, killing three Americans and wounding three other Americans.

·       March 1996: A suicide bomber linked to the Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups killed 20 people – including two Americans – in a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv shopping center.

·       May 1996: Iran-backed terrorists killed an American-Israeli dual citizen and wounded another American citizen in the West Bank.

·       June 1996: Iran-backed Hezbollah Al-Hijaz terrorists killed 19 U.S. Airmen and wounded nearly 500 others in a truck bombing at a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia.

·       September 1997: Iran-backed Hamas suicide bombers blew themselves up at a shopping mall in Jerusalem, killing an American-Israel dual citizen and wounding seven other American citizens.

·       August 1998: Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, facilitated by Iran-backed Hezbollah, simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people – including a dozen American citizens.

·       August 2001: An Iran-backed Hamas terrorist blew up a Jerusalem pizzeria, killing three Americans.

·       January 2002: An Iran-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terrorist killed an American-Israeli dual citizen in the West Bank.

·       July 2002: An Iran-backed Hamas terrorist killed five Americans in a bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

·       June 2003: An Iran-backed Hamas suicide bomber killed 17 people – including an American citizen – on a bus in Jerusalem.

·       August 2003: An Iran-backed Hamas terrorist blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing five Americans and wounding one other American.

·       October 2003: Iran-backed Popular Resistance Committees terrorists killed three U.S. diplomatic personnel in a bombing in Gaza.

·       Between 2003 and 2011: Iran-backed militias killed at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq – “roughly one in every six American combat fatalities in Iraq.”

·       August 2006: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed American citizen and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Michael Levin during the Second Lebanon War – the only American to die in the conflict.

·       January 2007: A dozen men affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force killed five U.S. soldiers and wounded three others in Karbala, Iraq, after disguising themselves as U.S. soldiers and entering the Provincial Joint Coordination Center.

·       March 2007: Former FBI Agent Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran, likely dying in an Iranian prison.

·       July 2014: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed two American citizens serving in the IDF.

·       October 2015: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed an American citizen and his wife in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.

·       December 2019: Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists killed an American civilian contractor and wounded several U.S. service members in a rocket attack at K1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq.

·       January 2020: 109 U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq.

·       September 2020: U.S. intelligence indicated the Iranian regime was considering a plot to assassinate the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa.

·       February 2021: An Iran-backed militia fired a rocket at coalition forces in Erbil, Iraq, wounding a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.

·       July 2021: Iranian-backed militias wounded two U.S. service members in a series of rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

·       September 2022: An Iranian rocket attack killed an American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan.

·       November 2022: An IRGC captain orchestrated the killing of an American citizen in Baghdad.

·       March 2023: An Iranian drone attack killed an American contractor and wounded five U.S. service members and another contractor in a strike on a coalition base in Syria.

·       October 2023: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed 46 Americans and kidnapped at least 12 Americans in the October 7^th massacre.

·       December 2023: Iran-backed militias wounded three U.S. service members in an attack on Erbil Air Base in Iraq.

·       January 2024: Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists killed three U.S. service members and wounded more than 40 other service members in a drone attack against the Tower 22 military base in Jordan.

·       Between October 2023 and November 2024: Iran and its proxies conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East, wounding more than 180 U.S. service members and killing three service members.

·       November 2024: An Iranian national and IRGC asset was charged for plotting to assassinate President Trump.

·       June 2025: Iran-backed militias attacked at least three U.S. bases in Syria and two U.S. bases in Iraq.

As one can see from this “partial list of Iran-sponsored terrorism,” Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979 when the regime first took Americans hostage. Since then, Iran-backed militias killed at least 996 Americans (plus hundreds of other people) and wounded hundreds of Americans (plus other people). Iran wants “Death to America” and has killed hundreds of Americans. It is past time that the United States fought back against an enemy that has been at war with us for 47 years! I am grateful that we have a President willing to take the war to Iran before they get a nuclear weapon!