The threat of Iran is not new, and it was not new a decade, or even two decades ago. Since the radical Islamic theocracy took over Iran from the Shah in 1979, Iran rarely deviated from its terroristic behavior. Ceaselessly attempting to spread terror and revolution across the Middle East, Iran and its terrorist proxies have been waging a bloody war against the civilized world for decades. On January 3, 2020, the United States took out General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps subsidiary Quds Force, and the second-most powerful man in the country. Soleimani was a terrorist —one with thousands of innocent lives to his name, including hundreds of Americans. The vast swath of negative reactions to this justified strike rejects the reality of decades of Iranian provocation and outright violence. There is no question that Soleimani, and Iran generally, posed an imminent threat to the United States and its allies, regardless of whether or not that involved a future strike on a U.S. Embassy compound. From its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made clear its desire for the destruction of the U.S. and Israel, and its actions have fit such a goal. In the face of consistent provocation, it was high time that the United States reassert its message of strong and resolute deterrence. American policy towards Iran must fit the world as it is, not the world as politicians want it to be.
It is impossible to give justice to the entirety of Iran’s provocations in an article of this length, but it can be summed up best in an analysis of Iran’s relations with known and accepted terrorist organizations. Beyond the more concrete goals, Iran’s relationships with terrorist groups allow it to spread its tentacles across the Middle East, and exercise undue power in the area. As far back as 1996, Iran’s state-sponsored terror was widely recognized, with President Clinton saying, "Terrorism has many faces, to be sure... but Iran and Libya are two of the most dangerous supporters of terrorism in the world.” To this day, Iran is the largest state-sponsor of terror in the world.
In the 1980s, Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist group now based in Lebanon, was founded by around 500 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at the behest of the Iranian government. With its roots based in the IRGC, it should come as no surprise that the relationship remains tight. Hezbollah’s most prominent goal is the destruction of the state of Israel; a goal which Tehran wholeheartedly supports. Hossein Salami, then-Deputy Commander of the IRGC, left little room for speculation:
“In Lebanon alone, over 100,000 missiles are ready to be launched… and strike at the heart of the Zionist regime [Israel]... they are just waiting for the command so that when the trigger is pulled the accursed black dot [Israel] will be wiped off the map.”
Iran is responsible for the vast majority of Hezbollah’s multi-hundred million dollar budget, and provides vast quantities of weaponry to the organization. It is not just small arms– Iran has provided Hezbollah with significant firepower, ranging from drones and anti-ship missiles to anti-air systems. Hassan Nasrallah, currently the Secretary General of Hezbollah, openly admits Iran’s support.
Hezbollah is internationally recognized as a leading terrorist organization, and Tehran is wholly complicit in its bloody reign of terror in the Middle East and beyond.
Iran’s relationship with Hamas is more complex, but not less significant. A Sunni terrorist group, one would assume that Iran, a Shiite state, would have no interest in supporting it. Yet it does. The Iran-Hamas relationship lays bare Tehran’s priorities: the destruction of Israel, and the extermination of its Jewish population, supersede internal sectarian divides.
From 1990 to 2000, Iran provided Hamas with funds totaling around $20 to $50 million annually. In 2006, Iran provided Hamas with $250 million in funding, partly in support of the group’s activities in the 2006 Gaza War, which beyond funding included weaponry. The aid reached an astounding $23 million per month in 2012 despite a flagging domestic economy, further underscoring Tehran’s priorities.
In keeping with Iran’s support for terrorist groups, the country also props up the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another organization geared towards the dissolution of Israel through violent means. Like with Hezbollah, Iran’s relationship with the PIJ began in the 1980s as Tehran stepped up its efforts to destroy the Jewish state. A Sunni extremist group like Hamas, the PIJ is also an unusual, but revealing, partner for Iran. With varying funding levels over the decades, Iran provided the PIJ with around $70 million in 2016. In 2017-2018, Iran increased its support of both Hamas and the PIJ by around $100 million total.
Iran has also worked with terrorist entities that bear more direct relevance to the United States. Tehran, more specifically the IRGC’s Quds Force, has since at least 2010 been materially supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan with both weapons and training. While the support was limited, it was not irrelevant. Iran also placed a bounty of $1,000 for every American killed in Afghanistan and $6000 for every U.S. vehicle eliminated. More troubling, however, is Iran’s relationship with Al-Qaeda. The extent of the support is not entirely clear, but Iran is known to have provided safe passage for Al-Qaeda terrorists before and after the 9/11 attacks. Some of those allowed to pass through Iran before 9/11 later participated in the attack itself. Negotiations between Tehran and Al-Qaeda also involved discussions over potential funding and arms transfers to the terrorist organization.
It is only in the context of Iran’s substantial record of state-sponsored terror that Soleimani’s killing can be more closely analyzed and justified. Qassem Soleimani built up a presence and power of huge proportions, and by the mid-2000s was effectively involved in every major extra-territorial Iranian activity.
Soleimani became a commander in the Quds Force, a subsidiary expeditionary branch of the IRGC, in 1998. Since then, he has worked tirelessly to expand Iran’s malign influence, with little care for the methods used. His hands were first stained with American blood in 2004 in Iraq: the IRGC Quds Force provided resistance and terrorist fighters with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) for use against American forces which were responsible for around 600 American deaths, and thousands of others maimed.
Soleimani’s Quds Force has managed to become involved in nearly every Middle Eastern hotspot. In the Syrian Civil War, Soleimani was instrumental in keeping Bashar Al-Assad’s murderous regime in power. Without Iranian support, led by Soleimani, it is highly likely Assad would have fallen to the rebels like most of the other governments impacted by the Arab Spring. In the Yemeni Civil War, which began in 2015, the Quds Force has been the principal benefactor of the Houthi rebels. The Houthis, at the behest of Soleimani, were provided with vast quantities of both small and more advanced arms, which have contributed greatly to the tens of thousands of deaths and humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
More recently, and most relevant to the strike that killed Soleimani, is his direct activity against the West. By June 2019, Iran, without reason or pretext, attacked no less than six oil tankers in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. The tankers were of numerous different countries, and the attacks were a blatant assault on innocent actors. Also in June 2019, Iran shot down an American RQ-4A reconnaissance drone in international airspace over the Persian Gulf, again without reason or pretext. The provocations continued in September 2019, when Iran was responsible for a major attack on Saudi oil production by 10 drones. The attack forced Saudi Arabia to shut down half of its production capacity, and cut worldwide production by 5%. Again, Iran was taking provocative and violent action without any serious pretext.
In late December 2019, Iranian proxies killed an American contractor and wounded four American troops in a rocket attack on a U.S. base. Shortly thereafter, Iranian-backed militant groups attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. This was all occurring in the context of domestic protests in Iran, which were brutally put down with the help of Soleimani’s IRGC, with at least 450 killed, and estimates running over 1000. All of these provocations could not have occurred without the express blessing of Soleimani. He was in near complete control of Iran’s external military activities, and no major action happened absent his consent.
It is in this context that Soleimani was killed, and rightfully so. The U.S. had not responded to any of these provocations in any meaningful way, and the rising frequency and seriousness of Iran’s actions indicate what happens when deterrence is nonexistent. Absent decisive U.S. action, there is no reason to expect that Iran’s terrorist activities would have lessened; in fact quite the contrary. When a country lacks deterrence and fails to enforce proper boundaries, its enemies will always push the limits. Iran, with a robust terrorist past and a desire to harm both the U.S. and Israel, was bound to continue to provoke.
As a country with diminishing international partners, a poor economy, and a restless populace, the regime in Tehran turned, as it always has, to terrorism and violence. It is likely that their hope was to try to force concessions from the world’s powers in return for a reprieve from international isolation, particularly from the spineless Europeans, who still cling to the hapless and neutered JCPOA. The U.S. had to reset its standard of deterrence to stop this escalating violence from the Islamic Republic. While it is likely that the short-term violence from Iran will increase from a retaliatory standpoint, the long-term credibility of U.S. deterrence has been re-established. The message to Iran is clear: attack American interests, murder American citizens, and attempt to spread your malignant power, and severe consequences will follow. Tehran would do well to heed the warning.