Brutal governance, enforcement, and punishment under Sharia law as instructed by the new supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was now in effect, as their hatred for the west in general and Israel and the United States in particular would help to shape the Middle East and indeed the entire world for the next 47 years.
A few years later in 1983, Lebanon was deteriorating into civil war, with Iranian proxies right in the middle of the mess. The UN sent a multi-national peace keeping force to the region in order to prevent things from further devolving. Islamic militants funded and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran in April of that year drove a truck bomb in front of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, many of whom were Lebanese employees. Emboldened by the lack of a significant response, on October 23, 1983 the Iranian proxy, Islamic Jihad, crashed the outer defenses and drove an even larger truck bomb into the Marine peacekeepers’ barracks at the Beirut airport utterly obliterating the building and killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors, 3 soldiers, and 6 civilians early on a Sunday morning. In another coordinated attack at the same time, the French peacekeeping forces had their barracks similarly attacked killing 58 French soldiers. President Reagan’s lack of a forceful and meaningful response is one of the few times I was sorely disappointed with his leadership. I was a senior in high school that year and was already contemplating joining the military upon graduation.
In the years and decades to come, the evil Islamic Republic of Iran could always be found stoking chaos and killing those that the regime deemed enemies of their brutal regime. Iran has been instrumental in providing weaponry, training, and funding for evil proxy organizations that were ghoulishly happy to do their bidding. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen have long targeted Israel, most especially civilian targets in that tiny nation the size of New Jersey. Of course, this culminated in the horrific Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7th, 2023 killing over 1200 people and taking 48 hostages, including Americans.
Iran has also supported Islamic militias in Iraq and Afghanistan with weaponry and expertise in building IEDs and other such bombs to maim and kill American military personnel in the region.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been responsible for the deaths of untold thousands of Israelis, Americans, and other innocent people since their inception worldwide. The evil regime has also killed thousands of its own people as they have risen up against the evils of the Ayatollah and his murderous thug enforcers. By credible counts the latest massive uprising in January of this year of Iranian protesters resulted in the murder of more than 30,000 Iranian citizens.
President Trump, despite his faults, has worked tirelessly in the Middle East to bring peace. He has been remarkably successful with historic triumphs as many countries have agreed to peace by signing on to the Abraham accords. Iran has run counter to that desire for peace.
They have continued to build and improve upon their missiles, hoping to achieve a long-range ICBM capable of hitting the “Great Satan” of the United States. They already possess short and medium range missiles that can and do hit Israel, and can hit parts of Europe. The Iranian regime continues to fund terrorism and even has provided weaponry and drones to Putin in his quest to re-build the former Soviet empire by first reacquiring Ukraine in that protracted unprovoked war.
Each U.S. President over the last 47 years has fretted what to do to contain Iran. Obama and Biden thought that they could make a deal with Iran by sending $1.7 billion dollars in cash to the evil republic and to ease sanctions. They thought such appeasement might buy good will with the mullahs there and thus have a strong Iran as a counter foil to the Sunni Islamic nations in the region. Of course, this didn’t work, as any Middle East expert could have predicted. Iran continued to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon as they worked feverishly to develop an ICBM capable of carrying such a deadly payload to U.S. shores. Indeed, “Both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium],” Steve Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.”
Trump has repeatedly tried to negotiate in good faith to create a deal where Iran would stop such work on nuclear weaponry and missile creation, all to no avail. Because of the regime’s intransigence and absolute refusal to give up these programs, despite the U.S./Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June with operation Midnight Hammer, an ultimatum had to be made if the regime continued to refuse to make an acceptable deal to the rest of the world. The consequences of allowing this murderous regime to acquire a nuclear weapon is unthinkable.
The radical Shia as led by the now-recently deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei never had any intention of abiding by any deal with the U.S., had one been reached, as they have repeatedly proven over the decades. They simply went through the motions of negotiating as a delaying tactic, much as Putin has done in his war with Ukraine.
These radical Shia Islamists believe the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi Born in 868, who is a messiah-like figure to them will come again to restore “justice” to the world. al-Mahdi is believed to have gone into a state of “occultation” in 874 A.D., meaning Allah miraculously caused him to “disappear.” Still alive, the 1,155-year-old Muhammad al-Mahdi is patiently biding his time to return and usher in the takeover of the Muslim and eventually entire world.
While such traditions may seem silly or harmless enough to westerners, Mahdism poses a serious, though vastly overlooked, threat to international security, primarily because its current articulation as propagated in Iran requires its adherents to take “proactive” steps to help usher in the Mahdi, most notably by initiating an “apocalyptic” showdown with the “greater” and “lesser” Satans, namely, America and Israel. For a faith that teaches that to die as a martyr for Allah by killing western infidels is glorious, they have no compunction, let alone fear, of killing millions in order to bring back their messiah. THIS is why ignoring the Islamic Republic of Iran and trying to make some meaningless deal with them is nothing short of ignoring an existential threat to Israel, the U.S., and indeed to the entire world.
Trump has so far insisted that the main objective of Epic Fury is to remove the capability of Iran to create missiles and a nuclear weapon. Israel’s decapitation of the Islamic leadership has further given the people of Iran a chance to finally stand up and govern themselves as they choose. This will not be a U.S. troops boots-on-the-ground nation building exercise. It is incumbent upon the Iranian people to form their own government now – one that will hopefully decide to live as a peaceful member nation of the world.
The fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of displaced Iranians in America, Canada, Europe, and throughout the world are celebrating the demise of this evil regime while thanking America and Israel for eliminating this grave threat to world peace should be telling in and of itself. It seems that primarily only leftists and those that hate America, but then I repeat myself, think that the attack on Iran was wrong and evil.
Those that clutch their pearls and criticize American and Israeli actions on this either don’t know and understand the history with Iran and the evil that the regime has perpetrated, or they simply hate Trump more than they love their own country. Often times I think both are factors. As for me and some of the brothers that I served with that understand the cost of appeasing and ignoring Iran’s terrorism, this week is a very good one where the world is now a much safer place and the Iranian people can finally choose to be free once again. The world’s largest supporter of terrorism, as our own State Department has long stated, will soon finally be no more. I pray that this will also give me cousin some long-awaited sense of peace.
