The Islamic regime is ideologically committed to challenging Washington’s global domination
Ever since the theocratic Iranian regime came to power in 1979, the mullahs have been at war with the United States.
The first and most obvious illustration was the so-called Iran hostage crisis, when a group of students loyal to the newly-formed Islamic Republic held 52 American diplomats and citizens for 444 days – from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981 – at the US Embassy in Tehran.
Not long thereafter, in October 1983, two truck bombs crashed into barracks housing members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, a collection of ostensible international peacekeepers deployed during the Lebanese civil war. Most analysts attribute the attack – which killed 307 people, including 241 Americans – to Hizbullah, an Iranian terror proxy created a year earlier that to this day still receives financing from, and acts at the directive of, Tehran.
According to Dr. Thamar E. Gindin, a senior lecturer at Shalem College of Liberal Arts in Jerusalem and a research fellow at Haifa University’s Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Research, Iranian hatred of the US actually predates the Islamic Revolution.
“The Shah’s openness to the West was one of the major causes,” she explained to The Media Line in an email. “Foreign powers (mostly, but not only, western) had interfered with the Iranian economy and internal affairs for more than a century, and one of the slogans of the revolution was Na sharghi, na gharbi, jomhuriye eslāmi – Not eastern, not western, Islamic Republic.”
Over the course of the 1980s, Hizbullah consistently held US hostages, which eventually precipitated the Iran-Contra Affair. Then-president Ronald Reagan, in violation of an arms embargo, green-lighted US weapons sales to Iran in a bid to reestablish bilateral relations and thus facilitate the release of American captives in Lebanon. (The US used the proceeds of the illicit deal to fund rebels attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.)
“Although the [Ayatollahs] declared war, the United States has encouraged them by making repeated concessions, and even when there has been [limited] cooperation, this was because it was in Tehran’s interest,” Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh, director of the London-based Center for Iranian and Arab Studies, emphasized to The Media Line.
“Sequential US administrations thought they could moderate Iran’s behavior, but they completely misunderstood the mullahs,” he elaborated, adding that “there is no such thing as a ‘moderate’ or ‘hardliner’ in the regime – they are all devoted to expansionism.”
Nevertheless, there have been instances when the US directly confronted Iran and vice-versa. For example, in 1988, Washington launched Operation Praying Mantis to prevent the Islamic Republic from laying maritime mines in Gulf waters as part of its war against Iraq (which, somewhat ironically, was at the time backed by the US). During the mission, the American military struck two oil platforms and sank a warship belonging to Tehran.
Later that year, a US guided-missile cruiser downed an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 civilians. Washington dubiously contended that the flight was military in nature, whereas Iran considered the attack intentional and not a case of mistaken identity.
While former US president George H.W. Bush would also make overtures to Tehran, his successor, Bill Clinton, in 1995 imposed a total ban on trade. A few years later, “reformer” Mohammad Khatami assumed the Iranian presidency, vowing to build bridges with the White House.
Under Khatami’s guidance, Iran proceeded to accelerate its nuclear program, the military dimensions of which Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last year exposed by revealing an atomic archive that the Mossad had smuggled out of the Iranian capital.
Notably, Iran has been accused of facilitating the 9/11 attacks by harboring al-Qaida terrorists and allowing some of the perpetrators to transit through the country. Within months, then-president George W. Bush delivered his famous “axis of evil speech,” which labeled Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, as state sponsors of terrorism.
While Bush subsequently ordered the overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, many, including top-ranking Iranian officials, feared the Islamic Republic was next on his list. (This concern induced the Iranian regime to put the brakes on its nuclear program for years.)
Incidents between American soldiers and Iranian proxies in Iraq are too numerous to recount, although it suffices to highlight the Pentagon’s move in April to reveal previously classified information blaming Tehran for the killing of 603 US personnel since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. On the flip side, the prevailing sentiment is that the invasion was a disastrous mistake that set off a chain of events culminating in the Arab Spring and the destruction of entire states, the death of millions and an ongoing volatility in what was already the world’s most unstable region.
Then there is President Donald Trump’s withdrawal last May from the 2015 nuclear accord aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear potential, a move that only reinforced the Islamic Republic’s longstanding belief that the US cannot be trusted.
“Any such step can serve as ‘proof’ that America is the Great Satan,” Gindin told The Media Line. “And while the economic calamity caused by the sanctions can bring people to the streets [against the regime], it can also unite them around the [Iranian] flag. On November 4, 2018, a day before the United States reimposed a new round of [financial penalties] on Iran, rallies were organized against the ‘World Arrogance,’” a term that is generally used when referring to the United States.
“The date commemorates a few events,” she continued, “one of which was the exiling to Turkey in 1964 of [the country’s first post-revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini – this, following one of his most famous speeches criticizing the shah’s capitulations.… Among other things, he said that everything that is bad in Iran [stems] from America and Israel.”
The perpetual tensions between Washington and Tehran have repeatedly manifested themselves in violence in the Middle East. In fact, many view the recent assaults, allegedly by Iranian proxies, on Saudi oil and shipping assets; Sunday’s firing of a Katyusha rocket into the Green Zone in Baghdad; and the on-and-off beating of war drums by Trump (“If Iran wants to fight, it will be the official end of Iran”) and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (“Our choice is resistance only”) as a natural progression of history.
“The White House must be clear: If the regime confronts the US, it will be destroyed,” the Center for Iranian and Arab Studies’ Nourizadeh told The Media Line. “But not all of Iran – which was a mistake for Trump to say, as Persian civilization goes back 6,000 years and there is a difference between the [mullahs] and the Iranian population,” he stressed.
“Currently, the regime is a bit fearful because it has been told that Trump is serious about his threats,” he continued. “The Saudis have also invited Arab League nations for an emergency summit, which shows that Riyadh is also [preparing] for a potential conflict.”
Indeed, experts have noted that chanting “Death to America” is as much a part of the Iranian regime’s raison d’etre as is its declared intent to export the Islamic Revolution across the Middle East – most evidently in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen – and then around the world.
When two nations with diametrically opposed worldviews have been at odds for decades, a direct major conflict is often liable to break out. While most hope that cooler heads will prevail, the disparate ideological underpinnings of the United States and Iran have placed them on a decades-long collision course that seems destined to reach an end sooner or later.