Iran’s War on the United States Did Not Start Yesterday

Iran started a war against the United States in 1979. It has never stopped.

That is not rhetorical flourish. It is historical fact.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. That was not a protest. It was a declaration. The newly established Islamic Republic defined itself in opposition to the United States and built its foreign policy around confrontation with America and its allies.

Since then, the pattern has been consistent.

In 1983, 241 American Marines were murdered in the Beirut barracks bombing, an attack carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian backing. It remains one of the deadliest single days for the Marine Corps since World War II.

During the Iraq War, Iranian-backed militias killed 603 U.S. service members, according to Pentagon assessments. Iranian-supplied explosively formed penetrators tore through American armored vehicles. I know this personally. My soldiers and I faced those weapons. These were not isolated incidents. They were part of a deliberate strategy by Tehran to attack American forces.

The campaign never ended. It evolved.

In January 2020, Iran fired ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq. More than 100 American service members were later diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. Between October 2023 and early 2024, Iranian-backed militias conducted more than 170 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Assassination plots targeting senior American officials have been disrupted on U.S. soil. The regime’s reach is not theoretical.

For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has targeted Americans directly or through proxies.

At the same time, Iran has steadily advanced its nuclear program and expanded its ballistic missile arsenal. It has enriched uranium to levels far beyond civilian energy requirements. It has developed longer-range missile systems with the clear ambition of extending its deterrent and coercive reach. These capabilities are not defensive in nature. They are designed to threaten regional stability, intimidate neighbors, and eventually hold broader targets at risk.

Diplomacy has been attempted repeatedly over decades. Negotiations, sanctions relief, inspections, back-channel talks. The theory was that integration or incentive would moderate behavior. The historical record shows otherwise. While talks proceeded, Iran continued to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis. It continued to refine missiles. It continued enrichment. It continued attacks on Americans.

At some point, a pattern must be acknowledged for what it is.

Under Article II of the Constitution, the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief. That authority is not symbolic. It carries the duty to protect American lives, American forces, American assets, and American interests. When a hostile regime wages a decades-long campaign of proxy warfare, missile attacks, nuclear advancement, and assassination plots, the constitutional responsibility of the executive is clear.

This is not about regime change rhetoric. It is not about ideological transformation. It is about threat reduction and deterrence restoration.

Iran’s war on the United States did not begin this year. It began in 1979. The question today is not whether that conflict exists. It is whether the United States end it.

History suggests that when America fails to respond decisively to sustained aggression, the aggression grows.

For 47 years, Americans have been targeted.

Enough.

.John Spencer is the Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute

He is the coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare

Learn more at www.johnspenceronline.com

X: @SpencerGuard

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.