‘America can’t do a damn thing against us.’
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been killing Americans for decades. Fighting back isn’t escalation. It’s long overdue.
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This is a guest essay by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Editor’s Note: A directive from U.S. President Donald Trump on a potential strike on Iran is expected in the coming days, once all of the U.S. military assets heading to the region are in place, a senior U.S. official recently told Israel’s Channel 12.
“America can’t do a damn thing against us,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini bragged while holding our hostages.
Then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s administration had undermined the Shah’s government in favor of the Islamists who seized power and then prevented the U.S. Embassy’s Marines guards from defending the facility and the people inside against the Muslim “student” groups who claimed to be coming in peace.
The “peaceful” student activists took over our embassy and held our people hostage.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei taunted President Trump with the same slogan in June after being asked to give up Iran’s nuclear weapons program, echoing his regime’s founder. “Our response to the U.S. nonsense is clear: They cannot do a damn thing in this matter.”
Carter’s failure to defend Americans had turned Khomeini’s taunt into a confident slogan. America couldn’t stop its diplomats and soldiers from being taken hostage and paraded through the streets. In subsequent decades, future administrations couldn’t stop other Americans from being taken hostage again, tortured, and executed. By the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian IEDs alone had accounted for as many as 1,000 American victims.
Qasem Soleimani — a commander of the Quds Force, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations — had thought that America couldn’t do a damn thing. In January 2020, President Trump taught him otherwise with a Reaper drone, leading to his assassination. It was the first time in a long time that America had done a “damn thing” about Iran.
In 1983, Iranian backed terrorists set off truck bombs in Beirut that killed 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other servicemembers. Mohsen Rafighdoost, Khomeini’s bodyguard who helped found Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps terror force, boasted that, “both the TNT and the ideology, which in one blast sent to hell 400 officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marines headquarters, were provided by Iran.”
Beyond a few airstrikes, America didn’t do a “damn thing” because the intelligence proving Iran was behind the attack was suppressed so that it never reached then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Eventually we placed multimillion dollar rewards on the heads of Hezbollah’s commander-in-chief Ibrahim Aqil and senior member Fuad Shukr, who continued to live without a care in the world until Israel took them out following October 7th. Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration assured the media that it had nothing to do with the Israeli strikes.
Over the decades, Iran’s Hezbollah proxies took dozens of American hostages. Some were released after months or years in exchange for concessions, while others were killed. In 1984, Hezbollah kidnapped, tortured and killed CIA Station Chief William Francis Buckley, whose identity they learned from classified documents seized from the embassy in Tehran. Buckley was transferred to Iran and tortured there, before being returned to Lebanon. Videos distributed by Iran’s jihadists showed him in agony: “Buckley was close to a gibbering wretch. His words were often incoherent; he slobbered and drooled and, most unnerving of all, he would suddenly scream in terror, his eyes rolling helplessly and his body shaking.”
America once again did not do a “damn thing.”
In 1985, Hezbollah hijacked a Trans World Airlines flight from Cairo to San Diego with en route stops in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. The hijackers demanded the release of a total of 766 Shia Muslims from Israeli custody and took the plane repeatedly to Beirut and Algiers. One of the terrorists was Imad Mughniyeh, who had also interrogated Buckley. Navy diver Robert Stethem was beaten and kicked to death before his body was dumped on the tarmac.
“They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken,” said Uli Derickson, one of the onboard flight attendants. “I was sitting only 15 feet away. I couldn’t listen to it. I put my fingers in my ears. I will never forget. I could still hear. They put the mike up to his face so his screams could be heard by the outside world.”
Instead of sending a message and holding Iran and its terrorists accountable, the United States made a deal to have Israel free hundreds of jihadists.
In 1988, Hezbollah kidnapped Colonel William R. Higgins and tortured him for months. An autopsy found that he had been starved, the skin on his face had been partially removed along with his tongue, and he had also been castrated. Finally his body was dumped near a mosque.
“I am one of a small handful of Americans who knows the exact manner of Rich’s death. If I were to describe it to you now — which I will not — I can guarantee that a significant number of people in this room would become physically ill,” a friend of Higgins stated.
Finally, decades later, in the last days of U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration, the CIA teamed up with Israel to take out Mughniyah with a car bomb. America had finally done a “damn thing.” But Iran continues to hold American hostages today, such as former FBI agent Robert Levinson.
In 1996, Shiite terrorists backed by Iran bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemembers, but Iran was also pursuing other options, including a new Sunni terror group named Al-Qaeda. In fact, the 9/11 Commission noted, “Iran facilitated the transit of Al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11” (with the aid of Soleimani, later taken out by Trump) and “Al-Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah.” Following 9/11, some Taliban leaders relocated to Iran to fight America. By 2010, Iran was paying $1,000 for each American soldier killed, and Iranian IEDs were claiming American lives.
After losing in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda relocated much of its operations to Iran. Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, responsible for the bombings of American embassies across Africa, was taken out in Tehran in a joint Israeli-American operation during President Trump’s first term.
Saif al-Adel, the current leader of Al-Qaeda, lives in Tehran and has been there for two decades. Even while supposedly in Iranian custody, he ordered the 2003 bombings in Saudi Arabia that killed nine Americans.
As recently as 2024, Iran and its terrorist proxies continued murdering American soldiers and contractors, including Scott Patrick Dubis in 2023 and Sergeant William Rivers, Specialist Kennedy Sanders, and Specialist Breonna Moffett in 2024.
No matter how much politicians and social media influencers may insist that we’re not at war with Iran, the Islamic terrorist state has been at war with us for 47 years. And it is still fighting us. It only takes one side to have a war. Fighting back isn’t what makes the war endless. Refusing to fight back or to fight back effectively is what makes wars endless.
For the most part, the Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush Junior administrations for failed to act. The Obama and Biden administrations took it one step further by aiding Iran. President Trump finally stood up to Iran and showed the Islamic terrorist state that there would be consequences.
“America can’t do a damn thing against us,” the ayatollahs mocked us as they killed our people. For the first time in two generations, the smirks have been wiped off their murderous faces.
Those complaining that President Trump is too tough on Iran aren’t upset because the president isn’t keeping his campaign promises, but because he is. They’re not upset because he changed his foreign policy, but because they want the old Carter and Obama appeasement of Iran back.
America is not contemplating bombing some “random middle eastern country.” After 47 years of kidnapping, terrorism, torture, and murder, we’re fighting back against Iran’s war on us.
The Regime's leaders are supposed to have their money in Dubai, The UAE and elsewhere.
If we do take them out, wonder if can "persuade" these countries to return that money to the Iranaian people.
I thought I had control over my weeping. This tore me apart. I know I’m supposed to follow that admission with something fierce -roar like a lion. Sometimes it is all too overwhelming and you need “leave me alone time” before you once again” gird your loins”. Even my own cliches are annoying