To start this post, I’d like to acknowledge my bias on this particular subject — I understand that the Iranian mullahs are men, with all of the fortes and foibles that humanity possesses; and that a lot of them are probably good, decent human beings.
However, if a djinn were to somehow grant me the ability to cut every one of their throats with a single slash of my knife — to lay each and every one of them (good ones, bad ones, and the indifferent) in their graves in an instant — I’d do it without a second thought, and with a smile on my face.
The Paki ISI irks me. I bloody well hate the mullahs. You might want to bear that in mind.
So. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at recent(ish) history between the United States of America and the Iranian mullahs.
14 FEB 1979: A rabid pack of Marxist honyocks calling themselves the Fadaiyan-e-Khalq — and with the benevolent blessing of an exiled Shi’a cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini — storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Although they were kicked out within three hours, during their kittenish little spat they managed to shoot and kidnap a U.S. Marine named Kenneth Kraus. Over the next week Sergeant Kraus was tortured, and forced in front of a ten-minute mock trial, where he was sentenced to death. Fortunately the United States was able to negotiate his release.
04 NOV 1979: A different pack of dacoits — the Danesjuyan-e Mosalman-e peyrov-e Khatt-e Emam — that’s Persian for “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s1 Line” — break down the Embassy gates in Tehran. They allegedly only intended to hold the embassy for a “couple of hours” as a symbolic gesture, but when they found out that Khomeini enthusiastically supported this casus belli2, that “couple of hours” turned into 444 days. As one should probably come to expect, those 444 days were full of beatings, physical and psychological torture, and multiple human rights violations.
18 APR 1983: Iranian proxy the Islamic Jihad loads up a Chevy pickup with about a ton of explosives, and one of their suicidal idiots drives it into the Embassy of the United States of America in Beirut, Lebanon. 63 people, including 17 Americans, are killed in the blast.
23 OCT 1983: Iranian proxy Hezbollah loads another truck with kaboomite, hands it off to another suicidal bugsnipe, who promptly drives it into the USMC compound in Beirut, Lebanon. 220 United States Marines, and 21 other service members meet the ferryman, complements of the Iranian mullahs this day.
16 MAR 1984: Iranian proxy Hezbollah kidnaps Army officer and CIA station chief William Francis Buckley in Beirut, Lebanon. Over the next 15 months, Buckley is tortured beyond the point of madness — we know this because Hezbollah helpfully sent videos of the torture sessions to Langley — and his heart mercifully gave out under his final torture session sometime in June of 1985.
03 DEC 1984: Kuwait Airways flight 221 is hijacked by “armed pro-Khomeini Shi’a activists”3 — Hezbollah, again — and flown to Mashad International Aeroport in Iran. After landing, several hostages report that ropes and handcuffs were provided IRGC4 officers to help secure the hostages. On 04 DEC 1984, American Charles Hegna and Williams Stanford were shot in the head, and their bodies dumped on the tarmac. 08 DEC 1984, under mounting international pressure the IRGC assaults the aircraft. Surprising absolutely-bloody-no-one, not one single hair of any of the hijackers is ruffled during the assault. Iran announces that the hijackers would be tried for piracy, however — surprise — after some months all of the hijackers were quietly released and allowed to leave Iran.
14 JUN 1985: Iranian proxy Hezbollah hijacks TWA flight 847. On 15 JUN 1985, Robert Stathem (United States Navy) is beaten, tortured, shot in the head and his body dumped on the tarmac at Beirut International Aeroport.
17 FEB 1988. William Richard Higgins, LtCol USMC, and Senior Military Observer of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission for Lebanon, is kidnapped by Iranian proxy Hezbollah. LtCol. Higgins was — predictably — tortured, and 31 JUL 1989 a video was released showing in close-up grisly detail the murder of LtCol Higgins by slow strangulation.
25 JUN 1996. Iranian proxy Al Hijaz packs a sewage truck full of about 5,000 pounds of explosive and one of their suicidal idiots drives it into the Khobar Towers US air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia. 19 American dead, 500 with injuries.
07 AUG 1998. Iranian proxy Al Qaeda — following a playbook that seems to work rather well — stuck some of their suicidal idiots into trucks loaded with fertilizer and oxygen tanks and drove them into the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya. 224 people were killed, including 12 Americans.
2003: Iran sets up factories to make devices using Explosively Formed Penetrators based on a Russian design. These devices, and additional training, are provided to Iraqi militias; and from 2003 to around 2011, these EFP warheads are responsible for the death of several hundred U.S troops in Iraq.
20 JAN 2007: 12 bugsnipes — nine of which belonged to the Iranian proxy Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and three of which were their IRGC handlers — dressed as US contractors and raided the Provincial Headquarters in Karbala, Iraq. One American serviceman was killed in the raid, three were wounded, and four were captured. It should come as no surprise that the four captured Americans were executed less than 24 hours later.
27 DEC 2019: Iranian proxy Hashd al-Shaabi militia fires rockets into the US K1 military base in Kirkuk, Iraq, killing a US contactor, and wounding several military members.
03 JAN 2020: The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps happily announces that it has fired over 30 ballistic missiles at the US Al-Asad Airbase in the Al Anbar Governate in Iraq. At least 109 Americans were injured in that attack.
07 NOV 2022: Stephen Troell, an American teacher living in Baghdad is murdered by an IRGC captain who built a profile of him, before housing and equipping an assassination squad to do the dirty work.
Sigh. This list doesn’t include attacks on US citizens in Israel, or random drone strikes from Iranian proxy militias, because I don’t have the bandwidth for all of those.
I have personal reasons for my hate of the mullahs, but that truncated list of the torture and murder of Americans should serve as a reminder to some: If one side thinks y’all are at war … y’all are at war. Iran, directly and through its proxies, has been at war and killing Americans for four decades.
Folks might ought to keep that in mind.
Ian
“Imam” here is a direct reference to Ruhollah Khomeini.
An act recognized as justifying war.
That’s Latin for “Iranian proxy”.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The taking of our embassy was the impetus for enlisting in the Army. Iran has been a pustule on the ass of humanity for 50 years. I generally wish to avoid war but, in Iran's case, I would make an exception.
Free thinking and good will cannot overcome several thousand years of ingrained hatred. “No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.” Gen. George Patton