Many Democrats and leftists are falsely claiming that the United States launched an “unprovoked attack” on Iran. Everyone from Kamala Harris to Zohran Mamdani have been echoing variations of the same lies.
Iran has been responsible for the deaths of at least 868 American military personnel.
That includes the deaths of 220 Marines, 18 sailors and 3 soldiers in the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, 4 military personnel and 8 CIA deaths in the Beirut embassy bombing in 1983, and 2 more military personnel deaths in the Beirut embassy bombing in 1984.
A Marine had thrown his body in front of the truck to try stop the vehicle and afterward for five days, Nevells and other Marines had dug through the rubble for the bodies of the men they had served with.
One of the first Marines on the scene heard voices coming from underneath the rubble. “Get us out. Don’t leave us.”
The Marines lost more people that day than at any time since Iwo Jima and the number of Americans murdered that day by a terrorist group was a record that would stand until September 11.
They were the lucky ones. When Iran and its assets got its hands on American personnel, genuinely horrifyingly evil stuff happened.
Colonel William R. Higgins was captured by Hezbollah, the terrorist group acting as Iran’s hand in Lebanon, and tortured for months until his body was dumped near a mosque.
An autopsy report found that he had been starved and had suffered multiple lethal injuries that could have caused his death. The skin on his face had been partially removed along with his tongue and he had also been castrated.
Fred Hof, a diplomat who had been a friend of the murdered man, said, “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.”
“The State Department, not the Defense Department, had the lead. That meant diplomacy, not military might. It meant no retribution, no retaliation, no rescue,” Robin L. Higgins, his wife, wrote.
Like Higgins, William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief, was also captured and tortured for months. On video tapes released by his Hezbollah captors, he was incoherent and his mind had been broken by the horrors inflicted on his ravaged body and his soul.
“They had done more than ruin his body,” CIA Director William Casey said. “His eyes made it clear his mind had been played with. It was horrific, medieval and barbarous”
Robert Stethem, a Navy diver, was brutally murdered when Hezbollah terrorists took over TWA flight 847. The Iranian-backed terrorists, one of whom was Imad Mughniyah, beat and kicked him to death.
“They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken,” Uli Derickson, the stewardess, described. “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.”
Then there were the 19 Air Force personnel killed in the Khobar Towers bombing.
After 2001 and U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, another estimated 603 American military personnel were killed using Iranian weapons, tactics and terrorists.
In more recent years, there was the 2024 attack on Tower 22 in Jordan, which killed 3 American military personnel.
That’s a limited list, but it’s big enough. Iran has been killing Americans for nearly 50 years. We lost at least 869 military personnel to their crimes and attacks.
Hitting Iran isn’t an “unprovoked attack”: it’s the slowest burn retaliation in history.
Democrats and Tuckerites may oppose the operation for various reasons. But they shouldn’t lie about what Iran has been doing to us or pretending that we struck first.
“America can’t do a damn thing against us,” Ayatollah Khomeini bragged while holding our hostages.
Its Supreme Leader Khamenei just learned otherwise.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Daniel became CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2025.
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