Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the clerical regime in Tehran and its proxies have committed a range of attacks against Americans. This memorandum provides select documentation of these assaults. While the list is not comprehensive, it demonstrates that Tehran continues to pose a threat to U.S. forces in the Middle East, the American homeland, and Americans residing across the globe.
Here is just some of them.
November 1979-January 1981: Iranian students — with the backing of Tehran — take 66 Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
October 1983: Operatives of the Iran-backed Hezbollah drive a truck bomb at a Marine compound in Beirut, killing 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel.
March 1984: Terrorists kidnap CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut, subsequently torturing and ultimately killing him in 1985. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
April 1995: An explosives-laden van crashes into a bus near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, killing one American and seven Israelis. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
August 1995: A Hamas suicide bomber blows up a bus in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers and wounding more than 100.
June 1996: A truck carrying 5,000 pounds of explosives blows up the Khobar Towers, a U.S. Air Force housing complex in the Saudi Arabian town of Khobar. Nineteen Americans die and some 500 people are injured. The Iran-backed Hezbollah Al Hijaz, a terrorist group in Saudi Arabia, is deemed responsible.
September 11, 2001: While the 9/11 Commission Report concludes that Iran had no foreknowledge of al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center, the report indicates that Tehran facilitated the travel of some of the terrorists. “In sum,” the report notes, “there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.”
2003-2011: Iranian-backed militias kill at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Iranian training and material support for Iraqi militias during the surge greatly increased the difficulty of U.S. forces to combat the insurgency and included some of the deadliest weapons used against American troops, including explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
August 2006: Hezbollah fighters kill American citizen Michael Levin, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), during the Second Lebanon War. He is the only American to die in the conflict.
January 2007: Twelve men affiliated with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) disguised themselves as U.S. soldiers, entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the Iraqi city of Karbala, killed five U.S. soldiers, and wounded another three. In 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a $15 million bounty for information on an IRGC Quds Force commander who planned the attack and other “assassinations of coalition forces in Iraq.”
January 2020: A direct Iranian ballistic missile attack against the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq causes more than 100 U.S. troops to suffer traumatic brain injuries.
November 2022: A captain in Iran’s IRGC orchestrates the killing of an American citizen living in Baghdad who worked at an English language institute.
March 2023: An Iranian drone kills an American contractor and wounds five service members and another contractor when it strikes a coalition base near the Syrian city of Hasakah.
October 7, 2023: Hamas kills at least 48 Americans and kidnaps at least 12 Americans in a massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel.
December 2023: A drone attack conducted by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia against U.S. forces in Erbil wounds three American soldiers, including one critically injured with shrapnel to the head that placed him in a coma.
January 2024: A drone launched by Kataib Hezbollah kills three U.S. soldiers at a U.S. military base in Jordan and wounded more than 40 other service members.
November 2024: A report released by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies indicates that Iran and its proxies have conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East between October 17, 2023, and November 19, 2024, resulting in more than 180 wounded and three killed U.S. service members.
November 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces charges against an Iranian national and two American accomplices for plotting to assassinate President Trump.
March 2025: A U.S. jury convicts two agents of Iran for plotting to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022.
June 2025: At least three U.S. bases in Syria and two U.S. bases in Iraq are attacked with missiles or drones, likely by Iranian-backed militias.