Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
The 47 Years Iran’s President Left Out at the United Nations
Thirty minutes at a podium cannot erase 47 years of history. -- YNOT!
Today, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stood before the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a forceful indictment of the United States and Israel. He accused President Trump of a “bullying mentality,” rejected American pressure, condemned U.S. and Israeli military actions against Iran and said his country would not surrender—while also saying Tehran remained open to diplomacy. (
There is a real argument to be had about American actions in the Middle East. In fact, just last week a United Nations fact-finding mission said it had reasonable grounds to believe that U.S. strikes on a school and another civilian site in Iran in February amounted to war crimes. Mistakes happen. The same investigation also found grounds to believe Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their repression of protests.
Those facts should not be hidden.
But neither should 47 years of history disappear when Iran’s government tells its version of the story.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic has been involved in hostage-taking, attacks carried out by organizations it supports, assassination plots, political executions, repression at home and proxy warfare from Lebanon to Iraq and Yemen.
The infographic above lists ten examples. They are not the complete history, and the word atrocity does not carry the same legal meaning in every case. Some involve established judicial findings, some criminal indictments, some human-rights investigations and some intelligence or military assessments.
But they deserve to be examined one by one.
1. 1979–1981 — The U.S. Embassy Hostage Crisis
The relationship between revolutionary Iran and the United States did not begin with economic sanctions or today’s nuclear confrontation.
It began with Americans being taken hostage.
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students and militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens ultimately remained captive for 444 days.
The crisis stretched from the Carter administration until January 20, 1981—the day Ronald Reagan became president. The U.S. State Department’s historical record describes 52 Americans being held after the embassy seizure. (Office of the Historian)
Whatever grievances revolutionary Iran had against Washington—the Shah, the 1953 coup, U.S. involvement in Iranian politics—the people inside that embassy were diplomats operating under international diplomatic protections.
This event did something larger than poison a single administration’s relationship with Iran.
It established one of the themes that would recur for decades: pressure against foreign governments through the detention of people.
The hostage crisis also burned itself into American political memory. For millions of Americans, modern Iran was introduced to them not through a debate over oil, Islam or nuclear power, but through television images of blindfolded Americans held inside their own embassy.
That legacy still matters.
2. 1983 — Beirut: An Embassy and a Marine Barracks
Four years later came Beirut.
On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Sixty-three people were killed, including 17 Americans.
The State Department identifies Hezbollah as responsible for the attack; former U.S. ambassador Robert Dillon later wrote that U.S. officials believed the immediate perpetrators acted under the direction of members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. (U.S. Department of State)
Then came October 23. A suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden truck into the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport.
The explosion killed 241 American military personnel—220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers.
A second bomber attacked French forces minutes later, killing 58 French paratroopers. The U.S. State Department attributes the American barracks attack to Hezbollah, whose principal state patron has long been Iran. (U.S. Department of State)
The importance of Beirut goes beyond the casualty count.
The model of warfare developing around Iran was becoming visible:
Iran did not necessarily have to send conventional Iranian army divisions across a border.
It could cultivate, finance, train or arm aligned organizations that possessed their own local identities while advancing overlapping Iranian strategic objectives.
That concept would eventually become central to Iran’s regional power.
3. 1988 — The Prison Massacres
Iranian violence was not confined to foreign enemies. In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic carried out one of the darkest episodes in its domestic history.
Following an order from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, political prisoners across Iran were subjected to secret proceedings before what became known as “Death Commissions.”
Many prisoners had already been tried. Some were already serving sentences.
Amnesty International’s contemporary reporting eventually documented at least 2,000 political prisoners summarily executed during the second half of 1988, while later investigations concluded that several thousand political dissidents were forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed. (Amnesty International)
A 2024 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur described the executions and continuing concealment of victims’ fates in the framework of potential crimes against humanity. (United Nations Human Rights Office)
These were not casualties produced by a battlefield between two armies.
They were prisoners. And decades later, many families still do not know precisely where their relatives were buried.
That makes 1988 not merely history. The enforced disappearance of victims and disputes over mass graves have continued into the present era. U.N. communications have raised concerns over grave sites believed to contain political prisoners executed during the 1980s.
4. 1989 — The Salman Rushdie Death Decree
Then the reach of the Islamic Republic crossed another boundary.
This time the weapon was not a truck bomb or prison execution.
It was a book.
British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988. The book caused outrage among many Muslims who considered it blasphemous.
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a decree calling for Rushdie—and people knowingly involved in publishing the book—to be killed.
The text survives in Khomeini’s own published collection.
It stated that Rushdie and the publishers aware of the book’s contents were “sentenced to death” and called upon Muslims to execute them. (Emam.com)
Think about the principle involved. A novelist living outside Iran wrote something Iran’s supreme leader considered offensive.
Iran’s leader responded by publicly calling for his death.
The threat did not remain theoretical. Rushdie spent years under protection. People associated with translations and publication of the book were attacked; his Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered in 1991, although responsibility for that killing was never judicially established as Iranian state direction. (HISTORY)
The Rushdie affair demonstrated that Tehran’s conception of its revolutionary authority did not necessarily stop at Iran’s borders.
5. 1994 — The AMIA Bombing in Argentina
Then came Buenos Aires. On July 18, 1994, a bomb destroyed the AMIA Jewish community center.
Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds wounded.
For decades Argentina investigated the bombing and accused senior Iranian officials and Hezbollah operatives of involvement.
In 2024, Argentina’s highest criminal court went further, ruling that the bombing had been carried out by Hezbollah as part of a “political and strategic design” by Iran and classifying the attack as a crime against humanity.
Iran has consistently denied responsibility. (Reuters)
The U.S. Justice Department has separately accused senior Hezbollah operatives of helping plan and execute the attack. (Department of Justice)
This matters because Argentina is nowhere near Iran.
It demonstrated how far the Iran-Hezbollah network was alleged—and later judicially found by Argentina—to have extended.
The Middle East’s conflicts had reached South America.
6. 1996 — Khobar Towers
Two years later, Americans were again killed in Saudi Arabia.
On June 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers housing complex, where U.S. Air Force personnel were living.
Nineteen American airmen were killed and 372 Americans were wounded.
In 2001 a U.S. federal grand jury indicted 14 people associated with Saudi Hezbollah.
The Justice Department’s announcement was unusually specific about Iran.
According to the indictment, elements of the Iranian government “inspired, supported, and supervised” Saudi Hezbollah, and the accused reported surveillance activities to Iranian officials. The indictment did not charge individual Iranian government officials. (Department of Justice)
That distinction matters. It is inaccurate to say an Iranian official was convicted in an American criminal trial for Khobar Towers.
But it is equally inaccurate to pretend the Iranian connection was invented later as political rhetoric.
It was formally alleged by the U.S. Justice Department as part of the criminal case.
7. 2003–2011 — The Iraq Proxy War
After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran gained an enormous strategic opportunity.
Saddam Hussein—Iran’s bitter enemy—was gone.
But American troops were now directly across Iran’s border.
Tehran built relationships with and supplied several Shiite militia organizations operating inside Iraq.
U.S. State Department reporting from the period documented Iranian financing, training and weapons support for groups attacking both Iraqi and American forces. (U.S. Department of State)
The most infamous weapon associated with those networks was the explosively formed penetrator, or EFP.
Unlike an ordinary roadside bomb, an EFP uses an explosive charge to form a metal plate into a high-velocity projectile capable of penetrating armored vehicles.
They killed and mutilated American soldiers.
Years later, the Pentagon revised its assessment and concluded that at least 603 U.S. service members killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 died in attacks carried out by Iranian-backed militants.
That represented roughly one-sixth of American combat deaths in Iraq. (Army Times)
There is legitimate academic debate over the attribution of individual attacks and weapons, and Iraq’s insurgency included many groups that had nothing to do with Iran.
But Iran’s support for major Shiite armed organizations fighting American forces is extensively documented.
Iran had refined the proxy model. Provide weapons. Provide money. Provide training. Build relationships. Let local forces do much of the fighting.
8. 2019 — The Bloody Protest Crackdown
The Iranian government’s security apparatus was not only focused on Americans, Israel or foreign enemies.
In November 2019, protests erupted across Iran after the government abruptly increased fuel prices.
The response was severe.
Amnesty International documented Iranian security forces using lethal force against protesters and bystanders.
Its initial investigation documented at least 304 deaths. A later updated accounting identified 321 men, women and children killed during the crackdown. (Amnesty International)
Amnesty also documented thousands of arrests and allegations of enforced disappearances, torture, electric shocks, beatings, sexual violence and other mistreatment of detainees. (Amnesty International)
Iranian authorities disputed outside accounts of the unrest and argued that violence and armed rioters threatened public order.
But video evidence, witness testimony and subsequent investigations established that unarmed people were among those deliberately fired upon.
This is another important part of the Iranian story.
The security machinery built to defend the Islamic Republic externally is also used to defend the political system internally.
9. 2022 — Mahsa Amini and “Woman, Life, Freedom”
Then came one young woman whose name became known around the world:
Jina Mahsa Amini, 22, was detained in Tehran by Iran’s morality police on September 13, 2022 over allegations that she was improperly wearing her hijab.
She collapsed while in custody and died three days later.
Iranian authorities initially maintained that she had not been physically abused and attributed her death to medical causes. (United Nations Human Rights Office)
But the U.N.’s independent international fact-finding mission subsequently described her death as an “unlawful death in custody.” (United Nations Human Rights Office)
Her death ignited the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
Iranian security forces again responded with force.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee later cited credible reports that more than 550 protesters, including at least 68 children, were killed during the repression and expressed concern about arbitrary detention, torture and impunity. (Universal Human Rights Index)
Women removed their hijabs. Students protested. Workers protested.
Young Iranians challenged the political establishment.
And the response demonstrated that the Islamic Republic’s greatest security concern was not always an American aircraft carrier.
Sometimes it was an Iranian woman refusing to cover her hair.
10. 2023–2026 — Proxies, Shipping and Finally Open War
Then the proxy architecture built over decades collided with a rapidly expanding regional war.
After the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the Gaza war that followed, Iran-aligned armed groups became increasingly active across the region.
Hezbollah fought Israel from Lebanon.
Iran-aligned Iraqi militias attacked American forces in Iraq and Syria.
The Houthis in Yemen began firing missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking international shipping in the Red Sea.
By January 2024, U.S. Central Command said the Iran-backed Houthis had attempted to attack or harass 27 commercial and military vessels in international shipping lanes using drones, cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles. (Central Command)
Iran-backed groups also repeatedly targeted U.S. installations.
On January 28, 2024, a one-way attack drone struck Tower 22 in Jordan, killing three U.S. service members and injuring dozens. CENTCOM subsequently described the broader series of attacks as coming from Iranian-backed militias. (Central Command)
Washington retaliated by striking IRGC-Quds Force and affiliated militia facilities in Iraq and Syria. (Central Command)
What had once been a carefully managed shadow conflict became progressively less shadowy. And in 2026 it crossed into direct warfare between the United States and Iran.
Seven months into that war, Pezeshkian came to New York this week saying Iran would not surrender while remaining open to diplomacy. (Reuters)
The proxy war had finally become something much larger.
The Pattern Behind the Timeline
Look across these ten episodes and several recurring instruments of Iranian statecraft appear.
Hostage-taking and detention
The pattern began dramatically in 1979.
Over subsequent decades Iran has repeatedly detained foreign and dual nationals in cases that Western governments have sometimes characterized as hostage diplomacy.
Support for armed organizations
Hezbollah became the prototype.
Iraqi Shiite militias followed.
The Houthis became another increasingly capable partner.
The U.S. government has formally designated Iran a State Sponsor of Terrorism since January 1984 and has repeatedly cited Tehran’s support for Hezbollah and militant groups in Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Yemen as the basis for that characterization. That designation is a U.S. legal and policy judgment, not a universally accepted international designation. (U.S. Department of State)
Proxy warfare
Iran’s strategic innovation has often been to project military influence without relying exclusively on conventional Iranian troops.
That provides reach.
It can also provide degrees of deniability.
And importantly, the groups involved are not simply Iranian puppets. Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and the Houthis have their own constituencies, leaders and political objectives. Their relationship with Tehran varies substantially.
But Iranian money, training, weapons, technology and political support have repeatedly increased their capabilities.
Domestic repression
The 1988 prison executions.
The 2019 demonstrations.
The 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
These episodes remind us that the history is not simply Iran versus America.
A large portion of it is the Islamic Republic versus Iranians who challenge the Islamic Republic.
Assassination and kidnapping plots
Iranian security and intelligence organizations have also been accused in numerous countries of plotting against dissidents and other targets abroad.
The U.S. State Department’s terrorism reporting, for example, documented the disrupted 2021 plot to kidnap Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad from New York and remove her from the United States. (U.S. Department of State)
The concept of political enemies being beyond Iran’s physical borders has been present since at least the Rushdie decree.
Pressure on international commerce
The Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea shipping transformed what might otherwise appear to be a distant Middle Eastern conflict into a global economic issue.
Ships changed routes.
Insurance costs increased.
Navies were deployed.
The Strait of Hormuz has now become another critical pressure point amid the 2026 conflict, with commercial traffic sharply reduced during the current fighting. (Reuters)
Two Histories Can Exist at the Same Time
This is where discussions about Iran and America often become intellectually dishonest.
One side presents a list of American interventions, sanctions, covert operations, civilian deaths and military actions and concludes:
“Therefore Iran is the victim.”
The other side presents Iran’s hostage-taking, repression, terrorist connections and proxy wars and concludes:
“Therefore every American action against Iran was justified.”
History is not that simple.
America has actions in its record that deserve criticism and investigation.
Iran has legitimate historical grievances against the United States.
Iranian civilians are not synonymous with the Islamic Republic, and thousands of them have themselves been victims of both their own government and foreign military action.
And the current war has produced serious allegations against both sides. The recent U.N. investigation is an unusually stark example: it found grounds to believe U.S. forces committed war crimes in specific February strikes while also finding grounds to believe Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in repressing their own population. (Reuters)
None of that requires erasing the record above.
So Why Does America Distrust Iran?
That question was effectively embedded in President Pezeshkian’s speech today.
And there is no single answer.
There is the nuclear dispute.
There is Israel.
There are sanctions.
There is oil.
There is the struggle for influence across the Persian Gulf.
There are competing interpretations of international law and decades of American intervention in the region.
But there is also history.
444 days of American hostages.
241 American servicemen dead in Beirut.
Thousands of Iranian political prisoners executed in 1988.
A death decree against an author living thousands of miles away.
85 people killed at AMIA.
19 American airmen killed at Khobar Towers.
A Pentagon assessment of at least 603 American troops killed by Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
Hundreds of Iranians killed during the 2019 protests.
Mahsa Amini and the hundreds killed during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Missiles, drones, militia attacks and commercial ships under fire across the Middle East after 2023.
And finally, in 2026, decades of indirect confrontation becoming direct war.
That is not the entire history of U.S.-Iranian relations. But it is part of the history.
And any speech explaining why Iran and the United States arrived at this extraordinarily dangerous moment is incomplete without it.
You can condemn an American action without rewriting Iran’s history.
You can condemn Iranian actions without pretending every American decision was correct.
And perhaps that is the lesson buried beneath 47 years of hostility:
Nations remember what has been done to them far more readily than what they have done to others.
Iran presented its memory to the United Nations today.
This is the part of the record that presentation left out.
