Timeline: Trump ends 47 years of Iran regime’s war against America
Since seizing power in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran waged a 47-year campaign of war against the United States. The regime fixated on a principal theme, above all else, with trademark fanaticism nearly every day for nearly half a century: “Death to America.”
Its death campaign against the United States is summarized in the timeline below.
America had to die because, according to the worldview of founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the USA above all manifested Satan and immoral satanic forces worldwide. Khomeini fused Shi’ite sharia with political activism and an anti-imperialist worldview of revolutionary expansion.
The U.S., Khomeini said as his supporters dug in at the American embassy in Tehran to keep dozens of diplomats and staff hostage, was the “Great Satan.”
Israel ranked as a lesser satanic force. The “Zionist entity,” Khomeini said in his November 5, 1979 Great Satan speech, was only the “Little Satan,” a mere extension of American imperialism. Iranian Shi’ite revolutionaries are not Sunni Arabs. They did not view Israel as the tail wagging the American dog.
Khomeini’s distinction, which his successor, the recently departed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intensified almost daily, defined the Iranian regime’s fanatical ideology. That ideology shaped its foreign policy and military strategy. The Great Satan had to die.
The ayatollahs and their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, executed this ideology with a 47-year campaign of terrorism and subversion against the United States, and a fantastically expensive nuclear weapons program.
The timeline below traces the major events of Iranian regime aggression against American targets, which include embassies, military sites and vessels, and more than 1,000 US military personnel killed directly by Iranian regime proxies.
Every single one of the events in the timeline was an act of war against the United States.
Those events, and others not listed, show that the February 28, 2026 destruction of the Iranian regime was a long-overdue defensive action by the United States. Operation Epic Fury placed America First. True to his word at his historic Riyadh speech in 2017, President Donald Trump worked with allies and partners, each for their own reasons but with a shared, common interest, to eliminate a threat that the failures of his six predecessors had allowed to grow.
The timeline
November 4, 1979: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, publicly backs takeover of US Embassy in Tehran and taking 66 American diplomats hostage, subjecting some to torture. The hostages are held for 444 days, and were not freed until President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981.
April 18, 1983: Iran bombs American Embassy in Beirut, through proxy Islamic Jihad (to become Hezbollah), killing 63. Iran provided financial and operational support.
October 23, 1983: Iran bombs US Marine Barracks in Beirut, killing 241, in deadliest attack on Americans since World War II. Hezbollah acts as proxy.
December 12, 1983: Iran bombs US Embassy in Kuwait.
March 16, 1984: Iran kidnaps CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley, imprisoning him for 15 months and torturing him for much of his captivity until murdering him in June, 1985. Hezbollah acts as proxy.
September 20, 1984: Iran bombs US Embassy Annex in Beirut, killing 24, via Hezbollah proxy.
June 14, 1985: Iran-backed terrorists hijack an American TWA jetliner, flight 847, holding passengers hostage for 17 days and torturing and murdering US Navy diver Robert Stethem.
1985-1991: Iran proxies kidnap Americans in Lebanon, including journalists, academics, and missionaries, facing torture, isolation, and mock executions, killing several. Terry Anderson is held for 2,454 days.
February 17, 1988: Iran proxy Hebzollah kidnaps US Marine Corps Colonel William R. Higgins, chief of the Observer Group Lebanon. Hezbollah holds Higgins in brutal captivity, murdering him by torture or by hanging.
April, 1988: Iran mines international waters in the Persian Gulf, damaging an American frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts.
February 26, 1993: Iran-linked operatives bomb the World Trade Center in New York City. US intelligence and subsequent indictments tie some of the bombers to Iran terror networks in Afghanistan and Sudan.
June 25, 1996: Iran bombs the Khobar Towers housing complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US Air Force personnel and injuring nearly 500. A subsequent US federal court verdict in 2018 found that Supreme Leader Khamenei personally approved the bombing and that the IRGC financed and directed it proxy Hezbollah al-Hejaz.
2000-2010s: Iran-backed networks in Latin America conspire to kidnap or assassinate American officials and their families, with some plots foiled by US law enforcement and intelligence.
2003-2011: Iran kills more than 600 American military personnel and wounds thousands in Iraq by financing, training, and arming jihadist insurgents in Iraq. IRGC Qods Force orchestrates the attacks of Iraqi Shi’ite militias (Mahdi Army, Kataib Hezbollah), and provides Iranian-made Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs).
January 20, 2007: IRGC Qods Force operatives, disguised as US soldiers, kill 5 American soldiers and wound 3 in a sophisticated operation at a US-Iraqi security station in Karbala, Iraq.
2011: IRGC Qods Force plots assassination in Washington DC of Saudi Ambassador.
2011: IRGC Qods Force plot to assassinate American diplomats in Panama. US and Panamanian authorities foil the plot, which was run out of Mexico. Cuban operatives were found to be involved with the IRGC.
May, 2012: IRGC-backed terrorists plot assassination of US officials and embassy employees and their families in Baku, Azerbaijan, via a Tehran-directed cell.
January 12, 2016: IRGC seizes two US Navy Riverine Command boats operating from Kuwait toward Bahrain, with a combined crew of 10 sailors, holding them for 16 hours and releasing video of them in a state of humiliation.
December 27, 2019: Iran proxy Kataib Hezbollah kills an American contractor and wounds four US troops in rocket attack at K-1 Air Base in Iraq.
December 31, 2019: Iran proxies storm American Embassy in Baghdad.
2019-2020: Iran places bounties to kill American forces in Afghanistan, including a 2019 Taliban bombing that killed US troops.
2020-2021: Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria assassinate American contractors and aid workers.
January 8, 2020: Iran fires ballistic missiles at Al Asad and Erbil bases housing US troops in Iraq, injuring over 100 with traumatic brain injuries.
September 2020: Iran plots to assassinate American Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks.
2021-2022: Iran-backed militias in the Persian Gulf plot and execute anti-ship attacks on US Navy and commercial vessels, wounding American crew members.
2021-2023: Iran wages more than 100 proxy rocket and drone attacks on American forces in Iraq and Syria, wounding dozens.
2022-2023: Iran-backed groups in Gulf Arab states plot to attack American diplomatic missions and commercial targets.
March 23, 2023: Iran fires drone on American base in Syria, killing a US contractor and wounding five US troops.
October 7, 2023 – 2026: Iran provides direct military aid to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi proxies which kill 12 Americans and kidnap 12, and attack US and allied maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, including cargo ships with US crew and owners.
2024-2025: Iran runs cyberattacks on energy and critical infrastructure across the United States, with indictments tying the efforts to IRGC-linked operatives.
January 28, 2024: Iran-backed forces fire drone at American base in Jordan, killing three US soldiers and injuring more than 40.
November, 2024 – January 2025: IRGC plots to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump. The operation involves Iran-based operatives coordinating with American and foreign intermediaries.
June, 2025: Iran threatens to attack American bases if the US intervenes in the Israel-Iran conflict. US responds with military strikes on Iranian nuclear weapons sites.
2025-2026: Iran wages attacks on American forces in the Middle East via proxy forces.
