The long memory Iran’s terrorism regime hopes you don’t have

By SUZANNE DOWNING

April 10, 2026 – The trouble with public memory is that it resets itself every few years when a new crisis arrives, a new slogan takes over the airwaves, a new generation of commentators discovers the same old regime and speaks about it as though history began last Tuesday.

Iran benefits from that amnesia. The clerical regime in Tehran has spent decades cultivating proxies, arming terror networks, directing covert attacks, and leaving behind a trail of dead Americans, dead Jews, dead dissidents, and dead civilians across multiple continents.

Yet every so often, the conversation circles back to whether Iran can be trusted, whether it only wants security, whether the West has somehow misunderstood its intentions. The record says otherwise.

For at least three decades, Iran has been identified by the United States as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It reflects a long pattern tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, which have financed, trained, armed, and directed groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis. Tehran prefers the language of “resistance.” The graves of Americans tell a more truthful story.

Take Khobar Towers in 1996. A truck bomb exploded outside a US Air Force housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American service members and injuring nearly 500 others. US officials, including former FBI Director Louis Freeh, tied the attack to Saudi Hezbollah working with Iranian intelligence and the IRGC. The bombers were trained in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Iranian officers were implicated in planning and support. A federal court later found Iran and Hezbollah directly responsible.

Nineteen Americans were murdered in an act of terror backed by Tehran, yet today most Americans would struggle to recall the name of the place. I even had to look it up.

Then came Iraq, where Iran found a way to kill Americans without formally going to war with the United States. During the Iraq conflict, the Quds Force supplied Shiite militias with explosively formed penetrators, the notorious EFPs that sliced through armored vehicles and shredded the bodies of the soldiers inside them. These were sophisticated, deadly weapons traced back to Iran. Declassified Pentagon data showed they killed at least 196 US troops and wounded more than 860 between late 2005 and 2011. Broader estimates of Iran-linked attacks run far higher. Hundreds of American families buried sons and daughters because Tehran decided proxy, asymmetrical warfare was cheaper than open confrontation.

That chapter deserves far more attention than it gets. Americans were told for years to honor the sacrifice of those who served in Iraq, disarming that nations’ weapons of mass destruction and ending Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism

But honoring sacrifice ought to include telling the truth about who was helping to kill our men. Iran was not some distant observer to that war. Iran was in it, smuggling weapons, directing militias, and shedding American blood while pretending to remain one step removed.

And then there was the 2011 plot in Washington, DC. Authorities uncovered a Quds Force-directed operation to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States by bombing a restaurant in the nation’s capital. Civilian casualties were expected. The conspirators also discussed attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies. An Iranian-American dual citizen was recruited and moved money for the job. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison.

Think about what that means: the regime in Tehran was linked to a plan for mass murder in Washington, using cartel-style methods, with no apparent concern for the Americans who would have died in the blast. That should be unforgettable. Somehow, the world doesn’t seem to remember.

The broader pattern has been hiding in plain sight the whole time: Iran has spent years funding Hezbollah to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. It has backed Palestinian terror groups. It has armed militias in Iraq and Syria, sustained the Houthis in Yemen, and supported networks that destabilize governments and terrorize civilian populations. It has also targeted dissidents abroad, extending its reach into Europe and beyond.

Even in Latin America, the shadow of Iranian-backed terror has loomed for decades, most famously through the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which Argentine courts tied to Iran and Hezbollah.

What Tehran has mastered is deniability, using intermediaries, cutouts, militias, friendly slogans, and useful idiots in the West who describe the regime’s clients as grassroots movements.

The method is consistent: Fund the proxy, arm the proxy, train the proxy, deny responsibility. Then let time and distance blur the record. The arrangement gives Iran leverage without requiring Iran to fly its own flag over every crime scene.

This is why Americans should be wary whenever the conversation about Iran turns sympathetic. Too often, the debate is narrowed to centrifuges, sanctions, oil flows, and diplomatic choreography, as though the regime’s central problem is merely its nuclear ambition. The terrorism file is not some side folder in the cabinet. It is the cabinet. The bombings, assassinations, proxy wars, plots, and covert operations are not exceptions to Iran’s behavior. They are among its defining features.

Iran’s rulers have counted on the world forgetting. They have been rewarded by passing generations and the 24-second news cycle that creates global amnesia.

Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.

A partial list of Iran-sponosred terrorism, as provided by the State Department:

• November 1979: Iranian students, backed by the regime, seized  the U.S. Embassy in Tehran — taking 66 Americans hostage in a 444-day standoff .
• April 1983: The Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed terrorist group, carried out  a suicide car bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans.
• October 1983: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed  241 U.S. military personnel — including 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel — in a truck bombing at a Marine compound in Beirut.
• March 1984: Iran-backed Islamic Jihad terrorists kidnapped  CIA station chief William Buckley on his way to work in Beirut, ultimately killing him the following year.
• September 1984: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed  23 innocent people — including  two American service members — in a car bomb attack at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut.
• December 1984: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists hijacked  Kuwait Airways Flight 221 en route to Pakistan, diverting it to Tehran — where they brutally tortured and killed  two American officials.
• June 1985: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists hijacked  TWA Flight 847 on its way from Athens to Rome, torturing a U.S. Navy diver before shooting him point blank in the head and tossing his body onto the Beirut airport tarmac.
• July 1989: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed  U.S. Marine Col. William Higgins after kidnapping him the previous year while serving with a United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
• April 1995: Iran-backed Islamic Jihad terrorists killed  eight people — including one American citizen — in a car bomb attack in the Gaza Strip.
• August 1995: An Iran-backed Hamas suicide bomber blew up  a bus in Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers, and wounding more than 100 others.
• February 1996: An Iran-backed Hamas suicide bomber blew up  another bus in Jerusalem, killing three Americans and wounding three other Americans.
• March 1996: A suicide bomber linked to the Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups killed  20 people — including two Americans — in a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv shopping center.
• May 1996: Iran-backed terrorists killed  an American-Israeli dual citizen and wounded another American citizen in the West Bank.
• June 1996: Iran-backed Hezbollah Al-Hijaz terrorists killed  19 U.S. Airmen and wounded nearly 500 others in a truck bombing at a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
• September 1997: Iran-backed Hamas suicide bombers blew themselves up  at a shopping mall in Jerusalem, killing an American-Israeli dual citizen and wounding seven other American citizens.
• August 1998: Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, facilitated  by Iran-backed Hezbollah, simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing  224 people — including a dozen American citizens.
• August 2001: An Iran-backed Hamas terrorist blew up  a Jerusalem pizzeria, killing three Americans.
• January 2002: An Iran-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terrorist killed  an American-Israeli dual citizen in the West Bank.
• July 2002: An Iran-backed Hamas terrorist killed  five Americans in a bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
• June 2003: An Iran-backed Hamas suicide bomber killed  17 people — including an American citizen — on a bus in Jerusalem.
• October 2003: Iran-backed Popular Resistance Committees terrorists killed  three U.S. diplomatic personnel in a bombing in Gaza.
• Between 2003 and 2011: Iran-backed militias killed  at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq — “roughly one in every six American combat fatalities in Iraq.”
• August 2003: An Iran-backed Hamas terrorist blew up  a bus in Jerusalem, killing five Americans and wounding one other American.
• August 2006: Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists killed  American citizen and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Michael Levin during the Second Lebanon War — the only American to die in the conflict.
• January 2007: A dozen men affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force killed  five U.S. soldiers and wounded three others in Karbala, Iraq, after disguising  themselves as U.S. soldiers and entering the Provincial Joint Coordination Center.
• March 2007: Former FBI Agent Robert Levinson disappeared  in Iran, likely dying in an Iranian prison.
• July 2014: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed  two American citizens serving in the IDF.
• October 2015: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed  an American citizen and his wife in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.
• December 2019: Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists killed  an American civilian contractor and wounded several U.S. service members in a rocket attack at K1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq.
• January 2020: 109 U.S. troops suffered  traumatic brain injuries in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq.
• September 2020: U.S. intelligence indicated  the Iranian regime was considering a plot to assassinate the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa.
• February 2021: An Iran-backed militia fired  a rocket at coalition forces in Erbil, Iraq, wounding a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.
• July 2021: Iranian-backed militias wounded  two U.S. service members in a series of rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
• September 2022: An Iranian rocket attack killed  an American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan.
• November 2022: An IRGC captain orchestrated  the killing of an American citizen in Baghdad.
• March 2023: An Iranian drone attack killed  an American contractor and wounded five U.S. service members and another contractor in a strike on a coalition base in Syria.
• October 2023: Iran-backed Hamas terrorists killed  46 Americans and kidnapped at least 12 Americans in the October 7th massacre.
• December 2023: Iran-backed militias wounded  three U.S. service members in an attack on Erbil Air Base in Iraq.
• January 2024: Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah  terrorists killed  three U.S. service members and wounded more than 40 other service members in a drone attack against the Tower 22 military base in Jordan.
• Between October 2023 and November 2024: Iran and its proxies conducted  more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East, wounding  more than 180 U.S. service members and killing three service members.
• November 2024: An Iranian national and IRGC asset was charged  for plotting to assassinate President Trump.
• June 2025: Iran-backed militias attacked  at least three U.S. bases in Syria and two U.S. bases  in Iraq.