The Half-Century War

After the Trump administration announced that an armada of B-2 bombers and waves of Tomahawk land-attack missiles (TLAM) had struck Iranian nuclear facilities, the consensus reaction among the press was that America and Iran were, suddenly, “now at war.”

For example, an ABC reporter said, “This is the beginning of our conflict with Iran.” An MSNBC host declared, “We are at war with Iran now.” The New York Times blared—in all caps—“U.S. Enters War against Iran.” AP reported, “U.S. Steps into War between Israel and Iran.”

The U.S. airstrikes on Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, represent many things—a history-making mission for the Air Force and its B-2 fleet, an impressive display of the U.S. military’s unmatched reach, a restoration of some measure of deterrence, a setback for Iran’s outlaw nuclear program, a blow against Iran’s terrorist tyranny—but they do not represent the beginning of a war between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran. That’s because the United States and the Islamic Republic have been at war since November of 1979.

Lacking any sense of history older than today’s funniest or meanest tweet, most press outlets and many of those who consume their reporting seem unaware that the Islamic Republic’s founding act—the attack on the U.S. Embassy—was technically an act of war and literally the beginning of the conflict between the Islamic Republic and the United States.

The conflict may be entering a new phase, but the conflict isn’t new. The decades between the attack on America’s embassy and the attack Iran’s nuclear program have been marked by continual hostility.

Iranian Aggression

Let’s start with attacks carried out by Iran and its proxies against U.S. targets.

The first of these, as noted, is the 1979 assault on the U.S. Embassy in Iran. Under international law, embassies are considered “inviolable,” but that meant nothing to Iran’s lawless revolutionaries. Their siege of our embassy lasted 444 days and held hostage 52 Americans.

Next is the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. Washington dispatched the Marines to the war-torn country as part of an international peacekeeping force. An Iran-backed, Iran-directed terrorist group calling itself “Party of God”—better known as Hezbollah—targeted the U.S. base with a truck bomb. The attack claimed 241 Americans.

Three years later, the CIA’s Lebanon station chief was kidnapped, transported to Iran and tortured to death. In addition, an American working at the American University in Lebanon was murdered by Iranian-affiliated terrorists.

In 1987, Iran started mining international waters in the Persian Gulf. In 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck one of those mines and nearly sank.

In 1989, Iran-funded Hezbollah tortured and murdered William Higgins, an American Marine serving in Lebanon; his lifeless body was strung up, desecrated and videotaped to maximize the humiliation.

That same year, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who launched the Islamist revolution in Iran, died. Power was transferred to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Iran’s terror tactics remained unchanged.

In 1996, a Saudi branch of Hezbollah bombed the Khobar Towers, an apartment complex housing U.S. personnel. The attack killed 19 Americans.

After the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Iran began providing Iraqi militants IED training at bases in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. The Iran-backed militants killed at least 608 American troops. The operation was orchestrated by Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elite Qods Force.

In 2011, an Iranian national and a Qods Force commando attempted to assassinate a Saudi diplomat on U.S. soil. The plot was “directed by elements of the Iranian government,” according to the Justice Department.

During the Obama administration and first Trump administration, Iranian military assets encircled U.S. ships in international waters, captured and held U.S. sailors, and harassed U.S. aircraft in international airspace.

During the first Trump administration, Iran used mines to attack an oil tanker in international waters, fired rockets at U.S. bases, killed an American contactor and directed attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

During the Biden administration, IRGC-trained militias launched attack-drones at a U.S. base in Jordan known as Tower 22. That attack killed three U.S. soldiers.

In 2023, the Houthis—an Iranian-funded organization controlling parts of Yemen—began targeting maritime traffic, including U.S. warships, in the international waters of the Red Sea. Iran provided the Houthis with missiles, attack-drones and targeting data via an intelligence-gathering ship.

In 2024, the Justice Department indicted operatives hired by Iran to assassinate then-former President Trump and members of his cabinet.

Finally, throughout the last quarter-century, Tehran gamed the IAEA inspections regime, flouted the letter and spirit of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and invested enormous resources into building a nuclear arsenal. As Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine observes, “You do not build a multi-layered underground bunker complex with centrifuges and other equipment in a mountain for any peaceful purpose.” By springtime of this year, Tehran had generated enough material to produce a nuclear weapon in three weeks—which explains U.S. and Israeli military action.

U.S. Response

This nearly-half-century war has not been one-sided. By my count, Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden ordered military operations in and/or against Iran.

In 1980, Carter sent commandoes and aircraft into Iran—a small-scale invasion of the Islamic Republic—in hopes of freeing the hostages. That well-intentioned operation ended in disaster.

Responding to Iranian piracy, Reagan authorized America’s military to go after Iran’s sea-mining operation. In 1987, Navy SEALs and support aircraft neutralized four mine-laying ships and two staging platforms. In 1988, after the USS Samuel B. Roberts was crippled by an Iranian mine, Reagan ordered a more expansive counterstrike known as Operation Praying Mantis. U.S. forces eliminated half of Iran’s fleet—in eight hours.

In 2006, Bush 43 authorized the “Olympic Games” cyberattacks against computer systems that run Iran’s nuclear program. The Obama administration continued the effort, which featured an ultra-sophisticated computer virus known as Stuxnet. For 17 months, Stuxnet quietly ripped through Iran’s nuclear program; sabotaged the systems controlling Iran’s uranium-enrichment process; tricked centrifuges into running faster than normal, then abruptly slowed them down; and corrupted the uranium that was produced. Stuxnet was the first cyberattack “used to effect physical destruction,” as Gen. Michael Hayden, Bush 43’s CIA director, explained.

In 2019, the USS Boxer took down an Iranian drone that strayed too close to the ship.

In 2020, Trump authorized a drone strike that eliminated Soleimani, who was brazenly operating in Baghdad.

After waves of Iranian-backed Houthi attacks against international shipping, Biden in 2024 authorized airstrikes against Houthi missile launchers. Also in 2024, in response to the Tower 22 attack, Biden ordered a bombardment of IRGC bases and Iranian-backed militia in Iraq and Syria—a bombardment that hit 85 targets.

Before he authorized Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran’s nuclear program, Trump authorized Operation Roughrider against Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen.

Enemy

Perhaps last month’s B-2 and TLAM strikes will mark a turning point toward more stability in the region and less hostility between the U.S. and Iran. But owing to the nature of the Iranian regime, we shouldn’t count on that.

After all, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a regime that engages in terrorism, but rather a terrorist organization that runs a regime. Yes, other regimes fund terrorism; other regimes harbor terrorists; other regimes train terrorists. But the men who run Iran have normalized terrorism into a basic government function, like building roads.

Until that changes—until the very nature of the Iranian regime changes—Iran will be an enemy of America and the rest of civilization.