Iran’s deadly attacks against American forces and citizens extend more than 30 years

While the United States weighs its future involvement in the conflict between Iran and Israel, many leaders are looking at Iran’s activities targeting Americans worldwide for four decades.

Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Posted on Tuesday: “War forever is the war that Iran waged against the United States, Israel and the civilized world since 1979.”

Examples of Iran’s involvement in attacks on Americans include direct and proxy attacks on American forces, support for terrorist groups and assassination efforts.

The head of Iran admits the role of the country in terrorist bombings that killed 241 American soldiers: report

The Lebanese volunteer rescuers bear the body of an American navy in Beirut on October 24, 1983, the rubble of the American naval barracks which was attacked by a terrorist truck bomb on October 23, 1983. A terrorist suicide car was driven in the building and exploded, killing 241 soldiers and injuring more than 60 others. (Peter Charlesworth / Lightrocket via Getty Images)

1979 hostage crisis from the United States Embassy

At the start of the Islamic revolution in 1979, Islamic radical students seized the United States Embassy in Tehran. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first supreme religious leader of Iran, has seized the situation, which rejects international calls to release hostages. The latest American hostages were published 444 days later.

Beyrtit 1983 bombs

In 2023, Sayyed Issa Tabatabai, representative of the Iranian supreme chief Ali Khamenei in Lebanon, admitted during an interview with the press agency of the Islamic Republic (IRNA) that the Islamic Republic was involved in two 1983 bomb attacks which killed Americans in Lebanon.

The bombing of the United States Embassy in Beirut resulted in the death of 63 victims, including 17 Americans. When two-suicide truck bombs exploded multinational forces in Lebanon in the barracks, 220 navies, 18 sailors from the US Navy and three American army soldiers were killed and 58 French soldiers were murdered.

In the IRNA interview, Tabatabai said: “I quickly went to Lebanon and I provided what was necessary to (perform) martyrdom operations where the Americans and the Israelis were.” He also said that he had received a Fatwa from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordering him to carry out the attacks, although IRNA removed the assertion “shortly after the publication”, according to a report and a translation of the interview with the Middle East Media Research Institute.

This file photo of June 30, 1996 shows the destroyed Khobar towers and the crater where a truck bomb exploded in an American military complex in Saudi Arabia. (AP photo / Saleh Rifai)

1996 Khobar Towers Bombing

On June 25, 1996, 19 American Air Force members were killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar towers. Al Jazeera reported that in 2006, an American court found the Iranian government responsible for the attack, committed by Saudi members of Hezbollah. The court ordered Iran to pay $ 254 million to the victims of the attack.

Support of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan

According to a 2019 Pentagon report quoted by the Military timeIran is responsible for the death of 603 American soldiers in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. This figure represented 17% of American deaths in the country during the period.

Some American victims were able to prove Iran’s bonds with our enemies before the courts.

USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group browsing the Middle East before the calendar, says an American official

In this file photo of May 27, 2016, Taliban fighters react to a speech by their senior manager of the Shindand district of the province of Herat, Afghanistan. (The Associated Press)

In 2022, family members and surviving victims won a case against the Islamic Republic of Iran, using the law on foreign sovereign immunities to keep the regime responsible for supporting terrorist actors who killed or injured US staff in 30 American people in Afghanistan.

The Iranian strikes on Israel increases, killing at least 24 and damaging the branch of the American Embassy in Tel Aviv

Bill Roggio, principal researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor -in -chief of the long War Journal, testified in support of the victims. He told Fox News Digital that “Iran’s support for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and that the impact he had on death and injuries to American soldiers and civilians is incalculable. Iran has provided money, weapons, training, intelligence and refuge by the Taliban through Afghanistan, including at the heart of the country in Kabul.” In Roggio’s estimate, “Iran’s support for the Taliban was only competed by that of Pakistan. I would say that the extensive support of Iran has facilitated almost all the Taliban attacks against American staff.”

American soldiers in Iraq in 2004. (SPC. Gretetel Sharpee)

In 2022, the Washington American district court, DC noted that Iran also had damages to families and victims of 40 American soldiers injured or killed in Iraq due to Iran’s support to terrorism in the country.

Involvement of proxy, attempts to punish

In the attempted remuneration for the murder of the Islamic revolutionary, General Qassem Soleimani, Iran has targeted two United States bases housing American troops in Iraq With surface surface missiles in 2020.

In January 2024, three Americans were killed and 25 others were injured in a drone attack on an outpost in Jordan near the border with Syria. Two Iranians, one of whom had double American citizenship, were charged in the attack.

Iranian men are charged as a deadly drone strike that killed three American soldiers

At the time of the attack, the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Michael McCaul Chamber (R-TEX) said that Iranian proxies had “launched more than 150 attacks against American troops” after Hamas’ October 7 attacks.

Roggio reported that on June 14, militias supported by Iran “launched three drones” in Ain Al Assad, an American base in western Iraq. The drones were slaughtered before reaching their target.

Roggio said that drone attack “seems to be an unauthorized strike by an Iranian unnamed militia. Unlike past attacks, no group has claimed credit and there was no follow -up strike”. He thinks that Iran “wants to keep the United States out of combat, because the American army has the capacity to strike the underground nuclear installation of Fordow”.

An Iranian military truck transports missiles on the surface in the air in front of a portrait of the supreme Iranian chief of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a parade on the occasion of the annual day of the country on April 18, 2018, in Tehran, Iran. (Atta Kenare / AFP via Getty Images)

Between October 2023 and August 2024, the Islamic resistance supported by Iran in Iraqi militias launched 180 attacks against American forces in Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Throughout their “decades of experience”, Roggio says that Iraqi militias “would have killed more than 600 American soldiers.”

Kidnapping

Robert LevinsonA retired FBI agent and private investigator disappeared from an Iranian island in 2007. Levinson was held hostage and was declared dead in 2020, while he was died in Iranian detention. His family blamed the Iranian regime for their capture and imprisonment.

Last year, Iran executed Jamshid Sharmahd. Sharmahd survived an assassination attempt in California in which an Iranian agent was found guilty of the planned murder. He was then kidnapped by the Dubai Iranian regime in 2020 as part of a business trip.

An FBI poster showing the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who was kidnapped and is said to have died in Iranian police custody. (AP)

The history of prisoners’ exchanges between Iran and the United States dates back to 1979. The last exchange of prisoners of five Americans was imprisoned in Iran for five Iranians detained in the United States occurred in September 2023. As part of the agreement, the United States released $ 6 billion in frozen assets in South Korea.

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Assassinations

In November, the Ministry of Justice announced charges against an Iranian citizen and two New Yorkers for their role in a murder plot for the rental targeting several American citizens, including President Donald Trump.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Bret Bret News on Monday that Trump remains a target of the Islamic Republic. “They want to kill him. He’s number one enemy.”

Benjamin Weinthal of Fox News contributed to this report.