The notorious Quds Force is a unit under Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps with the authority to carry out secretive foreign intervention operations. Its mandate includes unconventional warfare and intelligence activities.
With the hostage-taking of U.S. embassy personnel after the embassy’s 1979 seizure, Tehran demonstrated it would ignore international law in dealing with the U.S. Releasing the hostages the day President Ronald Reagan took office for fear of retaliation, Iran waited three years to test us again. In 1983, it directed its Hezbollah proxy in Beirut to bomb the Marine barracks there, killing 241 Americans. As we did nothing to discourage further violence by Iran, it continues unabated today.
The war Iran has been fighting with us is put into context by the following: as it is estimated that by 2015 Tehran was linked to the deaths of more than 1000 Americans, Iran is most likely responsible for more American deaths than any other nation since the Vietnam conflict. In addition to American lives lost in Beirut in 1983, Tehran has increased this death toll either directly or indirectly by its actions in Iraq — all of which were coordinated through Soleimani.
But Soleimani’s death puts the mullahs on notice: the one-sided war they have been fighting has now officially come to an end.
