Issues

Talking Points

Talking Points – The Islamic Republic Of Iran: 40 Years of Global Terror

On Sunday the IDF reported that a missile was fired in to the Golan Heights by Iranian forces from an area near Damascus. The missile was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system. This is yet another act of aggression by the regime in Tehran towards the Jewish state.  In response to the missile attack, the Israeli Air Force struck Iranian targets in Syria.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought the current radical regime into power, Iran has openly expressed its desire to destroy the world’s only Jewish state. Tehran has likewise remained belligerently hostile towards the United States, including supporting terror attacks against Americans and kidnapping American citizens visiting the Islamic Republic.

Beyond mere rhetoric, Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terror, spending an estimated $16 billion annually “to support terrorists and rogue regimes.” Iran’s primary terrorist client is Hezbollah, but Tehran also sends hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and weapons to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad each year. A snapshot of the terror attacks sponsored by the Islamic Republic includes:

  • October 1983 –An Iranian backed terrorist detonates a truck bomb at the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. 241 US personnel are murdered.
  • March 1992 – A Hezbollah suicide truck bomber detonates explosives outside the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 29 people are killed.
  • July 1994 – A Hezbollah suicide bomber drove an explosive laden van into the Jewish Community Center building ion Buenos Aires, Argentina. 85 people were killed.
  • February 2012– An Iranian terrorist attached a bomb to car belonging to the wife of the Israeli defense attaché in India. The attaché’s wife and two bystanders are wounded in the explosion.
  • July 2012 – A Hezbollah suicide bomber detonates an explosive device on a bus full of Israeli tourists, in Burgas, Bulgaria. 6 people are killed.

Israel is Iran’s primary target in the region, but the Islamic Republic’s hatred for the United States is no smaller. In fact, in 2017 two individuals were arrested in the United States and “charged with performing surveillance on prospective targets for attacks to be carried out by Hezbollah’s external operations wing, Islamic Jihad.”