US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun major combat operations against Iran on February 28. This was a different type of speech from his past comments about Iran. He reached deep down into the long list of the Iranian regime’s crimes. He focused initially on Iran’s long history of chanting “death to America,” a slogan of the regime.
Trump is saying that America won’t put up with this anymore. For decades, Iran has targeted and killed Americans and US allies. Its proxies took hostages. It attacked ships in the Gulf of Oman. In almost every instance, Iran suffered no repercussions. It behaved with impunity since the Islamic regime came to power.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and innocent people in many, many countries,” Trump said.
A history of Iranian attacks on America
Trump channeled Iran’s crimes in his speech. He is deeply familiar with how it all began back in the 1980s. These were formative years for Trump when he was building his real estate empire in New York City and initially dabbling in politics. Americans of that generation remember the hostage crisis and how the Ayatollahs sought to humiliate Americans.
We are all families with films about this era as well, such as Argo. Iran’s regime also preyed on the world at the time, taking advantage of a sense that Iran had been harmed by American actions in the Cold War, particularly in the 1950s. Iran argued that it had a kind of right to attack Americans.
Trump said, “among the regime's very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days. In 1983, Iran's proxies carried out the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel. In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on the USS Cole.”
Trump added that “many died. Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq. The regime's proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as US naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lanes. It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.”
This is Trump at his most genuine. His "Make America Great Again" movement, often abbreviated "MAGA," taps into this America of decades ago. To tap into this former greatness also means righting the wrongs of the past. Iran has been attacking America for more than 40 years. It has killed large numbers of Americans. Now, America is responding.