State Sponsored Terrorism Timeline

Formation of Hezbollah

• 1982: Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim terrorist organization, is created with the help of Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Iran's ambassador to Syria at the time.
• Founded with the aid of at least 1,500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards and financially supported by the Iranian government. Hezbollah’s ideology is inspired from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Ayatollah Khomeini’s radical brand of Islam.
• The 1983 U.S. embassy suicide bombing was one of Hezbollah’s first terrorist acts.
• Hezbollah was the originator of modern suicide bombing, a tactic that spread throughout the Middle East and Asia as a blueprint for other terrorist organizations. The group is regarded as “the region’s most technically advanced outfit, one that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the GIA [Armed Islamic Group of Algeria] sought to emulate.” (Gunaratna, Rohan, Inside Al Qaeda, pp. 194-195)
• Hezbollah is the terrorist group responsible for the most deaths of Americans outside of Al Qaeda.
• Hezbollah’s annual financial and military assistance from Iran is believed to amount to $100-200 million annually. Hezbollah has used this money throughout its existence to launch attacks on US military installations throughout the Middle East and against Israel. Hezbollah's propagandist television network, Al-Manar, is also funded by Iran. By 2002, Iran reportedly provided Al-Manar with some $15 million annually.
• Hezbollah has had extensive cooperation with Sunni Al Qaeda, a strategic partnership forged by Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda received explosives from Iran and training by Hezbollah. Collaboration extended to working relationships between Hezbollah leadership and bin Laden. Hezbollah leader and security expert Imad Mughniyeh “inspired Osama to develop coordinated, simultaneous attacks as a regular modus operandi, and this has been the hallmark of most subsequent Al Qaeda operations, including 9/11 and the East Africa bombings.”(Gunaratna, Rohan, Inside Al Qaeda, p. 196)
• “Both Hezbollah trainers and experts from Iran’s Ministry of Information and Security trained Al Qaeda fighters in Sudan (in existing Al Qaeda facilities), Lebanon (in Hezbollah camps) and Iran (in officially run bases).”(Gunaratna, Rohan, Inside Al Qaeda, p. 196)

President Ahmadinejad embracing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah

Hezbollah militants

U.S. Embassy Bombing – Beirut, Lebanon

• 63 people killed, including 17 Americans
• The attack occurred when a suicide bomber in a pickup truck drove into the Embassy
• According to the U.S., Hezbollah operatives were responsible for the bombing, and received support – financially and logistically—from Syria and Iran.
• Deadliest terror attack on Americans outside of U.S. soil until the U.S. Marine Barracks Bombing six months later.

Aftermath of the Embassy Bombing

Barracks Bombings – Beirut, Lebanon

• 241 U.S. marines, soldiers and sailors killed and 100+ wounded in a suicide truck bombing using 15,000-21,000 pounds of TNT
• 58 French troops killed in a simultaneous suicide truck-bomb attack at a French base.
• The bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks was the "largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth," according to U.S. federal court order in 2003.
• The U.S. force there had been sent to separate the factions involved in the Lebanese Civil War. The U.S. government accused Hezbollah, with the support of Iran and Syria, of orchestrating the attack. Hezbollah denied involvement.

The destroyed U.S. marine barracks

U.S. Embassy Bombing in Kuwait

• 6 people killed, including the suicide bomber
• 80+ injured
• The suspected perpetrator of the attacks was Al Dawa, a group backed by Iran.

The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, following the bombing

Lebanese Hostage Crisis

• 96 foreign nationals taken hostage in systematic abductions across Lebanon targeting primarily Western nationals.
• 7 or more hostages killed or died during their time in captivity.
• U.S. government held Hezbollah accountable for the majority of the kidnappings. Iran, desperate for military supplies for the Iran-Iraq war, used the hostages as leverage to illegally obtain arms from the Reagan administration, leading to the Iran-Contra Affair.
• American hostages Killed by Iran-backed groups during the Lebanon Hostage Crisis:
• CIA Station Chief William Buckley, kidnapped on March 16, 1984.
• American Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins. Captured in 1988 by Iranian-backed terrorists during a UN peacekeeping mission. Killed during his captivity.

CIA Station Chief William Buckley

U.S. Embassy Annex Bombing – Awkar, Lebanon, Northeast of Beirut

September 20, 1984

• 22 people killed by a truck bomb outside U.S. Embassy annex; two were U.S. military personnel
• U.S. government implicated members of Hezbollah in the attack.

Bombed U.S. Embassy Annex

Hijacking of TWA Flight 847

• Flight hijacked en route from Athens to Rome to secure the release of fellow militants. Plane held in Beirut for 17 days.
• Hostage Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, killed when demands not met.
• U.S. sources held Hezbollah responsible for the attack.

Captain John Testrake held at gunpoint during the hijacking of Flight 847

1989 Khomeini’s Fatwa against Salman Rushdie

• Khomeini issued a fatwa (religious decree) calling to kill Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born British Muslim author, for writing the book Satanic Verses, which Khomeini proclaimed as "blasphemous against Islam"
• The fatwa “…signal[ed] the beginning of an assassination campaign against individuals associated with Rushdie’s book as well as other ‘enemies of the revolution.’”

Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie

Iran-Sponsored Assassinations of Iranian Dissidents and Opposition leaders

• “Iran's primary targets are members of the regime's main opposition groups, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), as well as former officials of the late Shah's government who speak out against the clerical regime.”

July 13, 1989
• Dr. Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou, then Secretary-General of Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), killed with two associates in Vienna, where secretly meeting with envoys sent by then Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
• Dispatched diplomat-terrorists of the Iranian Islamic regime were suspected of direct involvement at the time. Austrian sources have since connected current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the assassination through weapons sales.

1991
• Former Iranian Prime Minister and opposition leader Shapour Bakhtiar assassinated in Paris.

September 17, 1992
• 4 Iranian Kurds killed at Mykonos Café, including the leader of the KDPI, Dr. Mohammad Sadegh (Saeid) Sharafkandi.
• German courts link Iranian government and Minister of Intelligence Ali Fallahian to assassination.

Bodies of Kurdish leader Ghassemlou and follower in the apartment following the attack

1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Argentina

• Suicide truck bombing targeting the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
• 29 people killed, 242 injured, including 4 Israelis, Argentine citizens and children.
• In 2008, an American judged ruled that Iran was responsible for the bombing, saying that Hezbollah committed the attack and could not have done so without Iranian assistance.

Rescue workers in the rubble of the Israeli embassy

1993 World Trade Center bombing

• Truck bomb detonated in the garage below the World Trade Center.
• 6 people killed, more than 1,000 injured.
• The New York Times reported that at least $100,000, primarily coming from Iran, had been deposited in the account of the prime suspects of the February bombing.

1993 World Trade Center Bombing

1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina

• AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires targeted in bombing.
• 85 people killed,and some 300 injured
• Deadliest bombing and terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.
• Iran was directly responsible for the attack. Argentine intelligence implicated former Qods Force commander Ahmad Vahidi as mastermind of the bombing.

AMIA center ruins

1996 Khobar Towers bombing

• Truck bomb exploded at U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
• 19 American servicemen and one Saudi killed, 372 people wounded.
• 13 members of pro-Iran Saudi Hezbollah and one member of Lebanese Hezbollah were charged by a U.S. Federal Grand Jury in the attack.

Khobar Towers Attack Aftermath

Iran provides money, weapons and training to several Shia militias operating in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, directly contributing to American and allied deaths in the region.

Iranian involvement in Iraq

• The Qods Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has provided mortars, automatic weapons, advanced rockets, and sniper rifles to Iraqi militants. The Qods Force has also provided insurgents with explosively formed projectiles (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of improvised explosive device that is specially designed to penetrate the armored vehicles used by our troops.
• In 2004, Defense Minister Hazem Sha'alan accused Iran of backing terrorism in Iraq and said that there was “clear interference in Iraqi issues by Iran.”
• In January 2005, Muayed al-Nasseri, former commander of Saddam's “Army of Muhammad,” said in a television interview that Iran and Syria supplied his group with funds and arms, and that Iran was the dominant financer of the insurgency in Iraq: “We got aid primarily from Iran. The truth is that Iran has played a significant role in supporting the Army of Muhammad and many factions of the resistance. I have some units, especially in southern Iraq, which receive Iranian aid in the form of arms and equipment.” In the same month, a senior Iranian Qods Force member is arrested in Iraq with $150,000 in cash and plans to attack U.S. forces.
• In August 2010, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq assessed that Iran-backed insurgents groups are responsible for about a quarter of the more than 4,400 U.S. deaths in Iraq.

Iranian Supplying of Weapons

• July 19, 2005 - The U.S. sent a diplomatic protest to Iran accusing Tehran of providing Iraqi Shiite militants with advanced armor-piercing roadside bombs known as “explosively formed penetrators,” or E.F.P.’s.
• In the report, the U.S. identified long-term connections between the Shi’ite insurgents and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
• The U.S. also asserted that the Revolutionary Guards and Iran-supported Hezbollah were training Iraqi Shiite extremists in Iran and equiping them with bomb-making materials.
• 2006 - 18% of combat deaths of American and allied forces fighting in Iraq in last quarter of year due to E.F.P. attacks, according to classified data compiled by the U.S. military. Increases in allied casualties from E.F.P. attacks attributed to Iran’s role supplying weapons.
• “According to U.S. intelligence, the explosives are going to Shiite militias that include rogue elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army militia and a breakaway faction of the Badr Corps, the armed wing of a powerful Shiite party.”

Support of the Taliban

• The Iranian Qods Force supplies the Taliban with weapons and funds to assist anti-U.S. and anti-coalition activity in Afghanistan.
• In 2004, Defense Minister Hazem Sha'alan accused Iran of backing terrorism in Iraq and said that there was “clear interference in Iraqi issues by Iran.”
• "Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged frequent shipments of small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107 mm rockets, plastic explosives, and probably man-portable defense systems to the Taliban," according to the statement made by the Treasury Department in 2007 regarding economic sanctions against Iran.
• Army General McChrystal, then commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, stated in May 2010 that there is “clear evidence” that some Taliban fighters have trained in Iran and received weaponry from the regime.

Following the Trail of Iran’s Meddling in Iraq (The Long War Journal)

Seized weaponry in Iraq reportedly smuggled from Iran

Taliban Militants

Iranian Support of Terrorism against Israel, 1980 – Present

• The U.S. government asserts, “Iran has supplied funding, haven, training and weapons for the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” In addition to demanding that Israel be “wiped off the map” and developing nuclear weapons programs, Iran has been working to undermine Israel from within via terrorism, and increasing its power in the Palestinian territories.
• Beginning with support of groups like Hezbollah in the 1980s, Iran’s efforts have increased since the early 2000s, as Iran has increasingly backed Palestinian groups directly involved in the conflict: “Since 2000, Iran has invested increasing amounts of funds, training, and logistical support that is dispensed via Hezbollah to Fatah affiliates in the West Bank and Gaza, effectively opening a new front for Iran and Hezbollah's war against Israel.”
• More recently, Iran has provided greater financial and material backing to Hamas, particularly since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. In Iran’s 2010 country report, the U.S. State Department noted, “Iran’s provision of training, weapons, and money to HAMAS since the 2006 Palestinian elections has bolstered the group’s ability to strike Israel.”

Israel has intercepted Iranian weaponry intended for Palestinian groups