Days of Infamy

How Iran’s revolution turned anti-American hatred into state doctrine.

LUTHMANN NOTE: Greg Maresca nails a brutal truth: America keeps forgetting the opening chapters of wars that later explode in our faces. Beirut wasn’t some obscure Middle East skirmish. It was a declaration of war against the United States—241 Marines buried under concrete because Iranian-backed terrorists believed Washington lacked the stomach to fight back. History suggests they weren’t entirely wrong. For decades, the mullahs shouted “Death to America,” funded Hezbollah, and played nuclear brinkmanship while diplomats chased illusions. The lesson of October 23, 1983, is simple: when a regime announces its intentions loudly enough, ignoring it doesn’t buy peace. It buys more days of infamy.

By Greg Maresca

When the phrase “days of infamy” is mentioned, two dates come to the forefront for most Americans: December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.  For me, there are three and have been since 2001. Tucked between 1941 and 2001 is October 23, 1983.

This particular date draws a blank for the majority of Americans, especially for the Generation Z young man who questioned it. For Marines in 1983, it was anything but. On a Sunday morning at 0622 hours, nearly 12,000 pounds of TNT exploded, destroying the Marine Barracks at the Beirut International Airport.  It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded that killed 241 and was the deadliest attack on Marines since Iwo Jima in 1945.

The consensus said the Iranian-backed Hezbollah executed the attack. This Shia Muslim organization functions both as a political party and an armed militant group operating with the Islamic Jihad Organization.  The attack was an extension of the time when Islamic radicals overran the American embassy in Iran on November 4, 1979.

Ever since that fateful day, Iran’s ruling theocracy has behaved less like a government and more like a crusading political cult armed with a messianic blueprint that reformed their country overnight. Their purpose was to export an apocalyptic strain of Shia Islam the world over.  The mullahs recast themselves as the vanguard of this divine revolution, undeterred by sectarian fault lines or the shifting sands of geopolitics.

In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini mocked, “America can’t do a damn thing against us.” The regime turned it into a national catchphrase.  For nearly five decades, the Iranian mullahs have been parroting it nonstop.

Overrunning the American embassy was the opening salvo in what has become an ominous, two-generation highlight reel of terrorism.

Since 1984, the State Department has branded Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, a title the regime has held with the passion of a team dynasty defending its world championship.

Decades of feckless leadership inspired the mullahs at every turn, who suppressed protests with unmarked graves, prison cells, and public executions, while exporting terrorism that never runs out of infidels.

Despite a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution condemning the violence, global institutions have been worthless at protecting Iranian civilians.  Since January, the regime is estimated to have murdered over 30,000 Iranians.

The regime belongs to the Twelver branch of Shia Islam that drives their political and military philosophy. Their apocalyptic religious expectations are that they go to Heaven and the rest of us to Hell.

Their faith is irrational as it is extreme.

However, from their perspective, it remains a principled pursuit of religious truth and destiny.  We see them as insane, but they see themselves as warriors for the truth who desire nuclear weapons to accomplish their crusade.

For almost half a century, Iran’s mullahs have chanted in chorus “Death to America” as their national anthem, while Washington kept trying to pacify, bargain, and buy their sanity.

You do not pacify zealots with reason or by air-freighting pallets of cash as Obama did because coddling extremism only guarantees more contempt.

Iran has always negotiated in bad faith.

The Iranians were never going to stop until they possessed a nuclear arsenal. The most dangerous person is the one who does not care if he lives or dies. It is past time for this to end and not plague future generations.

For the mullahs, this has always been a zero-sum game, believing they are God’s chosen.

A nuclear Iran is a nonstarter, and for the first time in two generations, a president is refusing to punt the problem but instead is averting another day of American infamy.