Exclusive: Adam Turner cites several incidents of Tehran killing and harming Americans
"The truth is simple. Iran is at war with Israel and with the U.S. It does not seek compromise or accommodation. It does not want its interests respected or its grievances redressed. It wants what it says it wants: a holocaust in Israel and the destruction of the U.S."
– Walter Russell Mead, The Wall Street Journal
Welcome to the party, pal. I don't normally like to grandstand, but in 2013, I wrote this column. In it, I said:
"… Iran and the U.S. are already at war. And every few years, Iran or its proxies (most especially Hezbollah) conducts another hostile act, which results in the death or harming of Americans."
TRENDING: AP's betrayal of truth
Now, Mr. Mead, a foreign policy expert who I do very much respect, agrees with me. However, I do believe that he should have come to this conclusion much earlier.
Why? Because, like in the movie "Die Hard," there are (40-plus years of American) dead and injured bodies all over the place.
- In 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and took 52 (originally 66) of its personnel hostage for 444 days.
- Iranian Foreign Minister Yazdi, along with other Iranian officials, indicated official Iranian regime support for the seizure.
- Iranian dissident Reza Kahlili describes the seizure: "The people who rushed in seemed to know one another and to know what to do. Military members of the (Islamic Revolutionary) Guards (Corps: IRGC) arrived quickly. I wondered how they heard about the break-in so fast. Then the Komiteh, the religious police recently given official status by Khomeini, came and promised to keep order. But the only thing they kept orderly was the takeover itself."
- For its illegal actions, the Iranian regime was cited by the International Court of Justice and by the United Nations, through two U.N. Resolutions for its violation of Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 the international treaty that governs diplomatic immunity.
- Year after year, the U.S. State Department has consistently described Iran as the "leading sponsor of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism."
- Iran set up, continues to support and directs Hezbollah, a State Department-listed Lebanese terror group that has kidnapped, tortured, harmed and/or killed Americans.
- In 1983, Hezbollah bombed the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut and killed 241 American servicemen who were sent to Lebanon for peacekeeping purposes.
- Imad Mughniyah, a former senior Hezbollah leader, was, prior to 911, "responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist."
- Hezbollah has routinely kidnapped and tortured American hostages.
- During the U.S. occupation of Iraq from 2003-2011, at least 603 American soldiers were killed or wounded by roadside bombs or other weapons that were constructed, and supplied, by Iran to Iraqi rebels. The Iranians gave these IEDs to both Shiites and Sunni Islamist terrorists alike.
- This is exactly why the Trump administration correctly eliminated Iranian general and terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani.
- This is why the IRGC was designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.
- Iran has consistently grabbed American citizens and held them hostage. Most recently, the Biden administration paid $6 billion (and probably more) for the release of the latest batch of innocent American hostages that were held by the Iranian regime.
- The money from this ransom, and other appeasement by the administration and the Obama administration before it, led directly to the Hamas attack in Israel that killed 1,300 Israelis and at least 30 Americans.
- Iran was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A U.S. district judge "ruled that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al-Qaida in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case."
- Also, post-9/11, the Iranian regime protected members of al-Qaida, including the son of Osama bin Ladin, even as the latter planned and implemented other bombings that wounded or killed civilians.
- In 2011, Iran plotted to bomb a Georgetown restaurant to kill a prominent Saudi diplomat. This might have killed dozens, if not hundreds, of American civilians on our own soil, although, luckily, this bombing was prevented.
- Year after year, since 1979, on Nov. 4, the day the U.S. Embassy was seized, the Iranian regime sponsors a "Death to America" day. The Iranian regime continually refers to the United States, as "The Great Satan" and Israel as merely "The Minor Satan."
- The Iranian regime teaches its children lessons which are "consistent with their constitution" that endorse "domestic repression of ethnic and religious minorities, the subjugation of women, and the proliferation of anti-US terrorism in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. It provides a roadmap for an apocalyptic commitment to a global, anti-U.S. Islamic revolution."
This is not all I have to say about this matter, however. The title of the Wall Street Journal piece is "Appeasing Iran Has Failed." This is also very true.
As I also argued in this 2019 column, the appeasement of Iran does not work, because we know that in general, the appeasement of any bad actor never works. That is the whole point of the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, "Dane-geld," whose final line was the lesson to be learned: "That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld, You never get rid of the Dane." This poem was published in 1911.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we should learn from our history?
"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." See Winston Churchill in 1948, quoting George Santayana in 1905.
And perhaps, just perhaps, it is way past the time that American's come to understand that Iran means what it says and does, and that it really does want to kill Americans, and destroy the U.S.
Adam Turner is a foreign policy expert and national security professional. He served as General Counsel & Legislative Affairs Director for the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), where he worked on U.S. national security issues focused on the Middle East, and as a former staff counsel for the Middle East Forum's Legal Project, where he worked on the issue of protecting free speech from the threat of radical Islamists. He is also a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he focused on national security, government oversight, and criminal law.
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