It has been fashionable in America for some time to ignore the reality of evil in the world. When evil strikes, our cultural choice has been to protest loudly, wring our hands together, and then move on to the next horrifying news story. Are we lazy? Are we suffering from short-term memory damage? Do we lack the ability to take the time to gather evidence, develop a response strategy, or the will to say, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore?”
There was a time when our collective anger exploded over an American being harmed or killed by any country or its agents.
But the chain of national grief has become too long, and our country’s will to seek retribution is weakening. Too often we find ourselves struggling, as we did when we lost 13 American servicemen at the monastery gates of Kabul. I am reminded of the empty words of then-President Biden, who declared, “We will not forgive and we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” Too often when our resolve is tested, it’s through strong words and empty threats that prove to have little, if any, consequences.
Current polls show that only one in four Americans strongly supports current actions in Iran. I have to believe that this is largely due to our tendency to quickly forget sins and our habit of moving on. As a reminder, here is a summary of just some of the misdeeds Iran has committed or financed since 1979. Remember these when you hear opportunistic politicians masquerading as voices of opposition. Recall also how the Iranian regime responded by attacking neighboring counties, attacking civilian targets, and killing innocent civilians.
Sometimes the best response to evil is decisive action. Now is one of those times. There is information out there for the world to consider. Never responding is a response that leads to an expansion of this list.
Iran Evil Partial Timeline from WhiteHouse.org
This is only a partial record of the Iranian regime’s bloody war against Americans.
November 1979: Iranian students supported by the regime seize the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and take 66 Americans hostage during a 444-day standoff. April 1983: The Iranian-backed terrorist group Islamic Jihad carries out a suicide car bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans. October 1983: Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists kill 241 U.S. military personnel, including 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other military personnel, in a truck bombing at a Marine Corps facility in Beirut. March 1984: Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad terrorists kidnap CIA Director William Buckley on his way to Beirut for work and ultimately kill him the following year. September 1984: Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists carry out a car bomb attack on the American embassy annex in Beirut, killing 23 innocent people, including two American servicemen. December 1984: Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists hijack Kuwait Airways Flight 221 en route to Pakistan and divert it to Tehran, where they brutally torture and kill two American officials. June 1985: Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists hijack TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome, torture a U.S. Navy diver, shoot him straight in the head, and dump his body on the tarmac at Beirut airport. July 1989: Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists kidnap and then kill U.S. Marine Colonel William Higgins, who had served with UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon the previous year. April 1995: Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad terrorists carry out a car bomb attack in the Gaza Strip, killing eight people, including an American. August 1995: An Iranian-backed Hamas suicide bomber blows up a bus in Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers and injuring more than 100 others. February 1996: An Iranian-backed Hamas suicide bomber blows up another bus in Jerusalem, killing three Americans and injuring three others. March 1996: A suicide bomber affiliated with the Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups detonates a bomb at a Tel Aviv shopping center, killing 20 people, including two Americans. May 1996: Iranian-backed terrorists kill a dual American-Israeli citizen and wound another American in the West Bank. June 1996: Iranian-backed Hezbollah al-Hijaz terrorists detonate a truck bomb at a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen and injuring nearly 500 others. September 1997: An Iranian-backed Hamas suicide bomber detonates himself at a shopping mall in Jerusalem, killing a dual American-Israeli citizen and injuring seven other American citizens. August 1998: Iranian-backed Hezbollah-backed al-Qaeda suicide bombers simultaneously bomb the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans. August 2001: Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists bomb a pizzeria in Jerusalem, killing three Americans. January 2002: Terrorists from the Iranian-backed Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades kill a dual American-Israeli citizen in the West Bank. July 2002: Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists detonate a bombing at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, killing five Americans. June 2003: An Iranian-backed Hamas suicide bomber kills 17 people, including an American citizen, on a bus in Jerusalem. October 2003: Iranian-backed Popular Resistance Committee terrorists kill three U.S. diplomats in a bombing in Gaza. Between 2003 and 2011: Iranian-backed militias killed at least 603 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, representing “approximately 1 in 6 U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.” August 2003: Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists bomb a bus in Jerusalem, killing five Americans and injuring one American. August 2006: Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists kill Michael Levin, an American citizen and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldier, during the Second Lebanon War, the only American killed in the conflict. January 2007: In Karbala, Iraq, more than a dozen men from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force disguised themselves as U.S. soldiers and invaded the province’s Joint Coordination Center, killing five U.S. soldiers and wounding three others. March 2007: Former FBI agent Robert Levinson goes missing in Iran and likely died in an Iranian prison. July 2014: Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists kill two Americans who were affiliated with the IDF. October 2015: Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists kill an American citizen and his wife in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank. December 2019: Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists kill a U.S. civilian contractor and wound several U.S. military personnel in a rocket attack at K1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq. January 2020: 109 U.S. soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Ain al-Asad Air Base in Iraq. September 2020: U.S. intelligence suggests the Iranian regime is considering a plot to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. February 2021: Iranian-backed militias fire rockets at coalition forces in Erbil, Iraq, injuring one U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors. July 2021: Iranian-backed militias injure two U.S. service members in a series of rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. September 2022: Iranian rocket attack kills American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan. November 2022: Revolutionary Guards commander orchestrates the murder of American citizens in Baghdad. March 2023: An Iranian drone strike kills a U.S. contractor and injures five U.S. service members and another contractor in an attack on a coalition base in Syria. October 2023: Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists kill 46 Americans and kidnap at least 12 Americans in the October 7 massacre. December 2023: Iranian-backed militias attack Erbil Air Base in Iraq, injuring three U.S. service members. January 2024: Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists kill three U.S. service members and injure more than 40 others in a drone attack on the Tower 22 military base in Jordan. October 2023 to November 2024: Iran and its proxies carried out more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East, injuring more than 180 U.S. service members and killing three service members. November 2024: Iranian nationals and members of the Revolutionary Guards are indicted on charges of plotting to assassinate President Trump. June 2025: Iranian-backed militias attack at least three US military bases in Syria and two US military bases in Iraq.
