History & the Revolutionary State
The Islamic Republic of Iran was born from the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader. Khomeini's revolutionary doctrine — Velayat-e Faqih, or "guardianship of the Islamic jurist" — held that clerical rule was a religious obligation and that the export of Islamic revolution was a strategic imperative. From its earliest days, the new republic defined itself in opposition to the United States ("the Great Satan"), Israel ("the Little Satan"), and the Sunni Arab monarchies of the Gulf, a posture that has structured Iranian foreign policy for more than four decades.
The regime's first act of state-sponsored terrorism came within months of the revolution's triumph. In November 1979, Iranian students — with tacit government support — seized the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. In 1982, Iran's IRGC established and funded Hezbollah in Lebanon, creating the template for the proxy network that would become Iran's primary instrument of regional power projection. The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings — for which Hezbollah, under Iranian direction, killed 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers in simultaneous truck bomb attacks — established the pattern of deniable mass-casualty terrorism that Iran has used ever since.
"Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. Through the IRGC and its proxies, it is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of others around the world."
US Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism, 2023The IRGC Quds Force — the external operations branch of the Revolutionary Guards, commanded for two decades by the legendary General Qasem Soleimani until his killing by a US drone strike in January 2020 — serves as the operational brain of Iran's proxy network. Soleimani personally directed the construction and coordination of the "Axis of Resistance": the interlocking web of Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and dozens of Iraqi Shia militias that Iran supplies with weapons, training, intelligence, and financing. Under his stewardship, Iran transformed these groups from local insurgencies into conventional-capable military forces equipped with precision missiles, armed drones, and anti-ship weapons.
Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons — consistently denied but documented extensively by the International Atomic Energy Agency — has added a qualitatively different dimension to its threat profile. Despite the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran continued advancing its enrichment capacity. Following the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran accelerated its programme; by 2023, it was enriching uranium to 83.7% purity — a threshold below weapons-grade (90%) by a margin that IAEA officials described as "a few weeks" from breakout capability.
Timeline
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1979The Islamic Revolution overthrows the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini establishes the Islamic Republic. Revolutionary students, with government backing, seize the US Embassy in Tehran and hold 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days — the opening act of four decades of state-sponsored confrontation with the West.
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1982–1983IRGC establishes and funds Hezbollah in Lebanon. In October 1983, Hezbollah — acting under Iranian direction — detonates truck bombs at US and French military barracks in Beirut, killing 299 peacekeepers. The attack remains the deadliest single act of terrorism against Americans before 9/11.
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1984The United States designates Iran a State Sponsor of Terrorism — a designation that has been maintained continuously for over forty years through administrations of both parties.
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1994AMIA bombing, Buenos Aires: Hezbollah, directed by Iranian intelligence, bombs the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association, killing 85 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history. Argentine prosecutors issue arrest warrants for senior Iranian officials, including a former president and foreign minister.
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2003–2011IRGC Quds Force under Qasem Soleimani arms and trains Iraqi Shia militias — including Kata'ib Hezbollah and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq — that kill hundreds of US and coalition soldiers in Iraq using Iranian-supplied explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and other weapons. A US military study attributes over 600 American deaths to Iranian-backed attacks.
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2006Iran provides Hezbollah with advanced weaponry — including Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and anti-tank missiles — enabling Hezbollah to fight Israel to a standstill in the 34-day Second Lebanon War and strike cities deep inside Israel. Iran also provides weapons and training to Hamas in Gaza.
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2011–2012US Justice Department disrupts an Iranian government plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington using a Mexican drug cartel. Separately, Iranian-linked operatives carry out bomb attacks on Israeli diplomatic missions in India, Georgia, and Thailand.
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2015JCPOA nuclear deal signed between Iran, the US, EU, and other world powers. Iran agrees to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. Critics argue the deal leaves Iran's proxy network and ballistic missile programme unconstrained.
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2019–2020Iranian-backed attacks damage oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and a drone/missile strike — attributed to Iran — devastates Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq facility. In January 2020, a US drone strike kills Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. Iran retaliates with ballistic missile strikes on US bases in Iraq; accidentally shoots down Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752, killing 176 civilians.
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2022The Women, Life, Freedom uprising erupts across Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in morality police custody. The regime kills over 500 protesters, wounds thousands, and arrests over 19,000 people. Iran simultaneously supplies Russia with Shahed-136 kamikaze drones used to strike Ukrainian cities, expanding its weapons export to authoritarian partners.
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2023–2024Following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel — planned and enabled with Iranian knowledge and support — Iran activates its full Axis of Resistance: Hezbollah opens a northern front against Israel, the Houthis launch a Red Sea shipping campaign, and Iraqi militias strike US bases across the region. In April 2024, an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus kills an IRGC commander. Iran retaliates with its first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory — the largest drone strike in history and the largest ballistic missile attack in Iranian history. Of over 300 drones and missiles launched, nine reach Israeli soil. Israel retaliates with strikes disabling Iranian air defence radar systems.
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May 2024President Ebrahim Raisi is killed in a helicopter crash in a mountainous region near the Azerbaijan border. Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian wins the subsequent presidential election. In October, Iran launches 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the Israeli assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and IRGC officer Abbas Nilforoushan. Israel strikes Iranian military sites in response.
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June 2025The IAEA formally finds Iran non-compliant with its nuclear obligations. Iran responds by announcing the activation of a new enrichment facility. On 13 June, Israel launches a large-scale strike campaign across Iran, targeting nuclear facilities and killing top members of Iran's military leadership. Iran retaliates with missile strikes. On 22 June, the United States directly strikes Iranian nuclear facilities — the first such US military action against Iran's nuclear programme. Iran attacks US bases in Qatar in retaliation. On 24 June, a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Iran takes effect.
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December 2025 – January 2026Mass demonstrations erupt across Iranian cities calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, sparked by a deepening economic crisis and the regime's weakened regional position following the destruction of much of its proxy network. The government responds with extreme lethal force under an internet blackout. Iran International estimates at least 16,500 people killed and approximately 330,000 injured in what has been described as the 2026 Iran massacres — among the most deadly episodes of state repression in the country's modern history.
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February 2026On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel conduct coordinated military strikes against multiple targets across Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury — a significant escalation in the long-running confrontation between Tehran and the US–Israel alliance. During the strikes, an unnamed Israeli official claims that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's body has been found. As of early March 2026, no clear successor to Khamenei has been identified and the future of the Islamic Republic's leadership structure remains unresolved.
Ideology & the IRGC Architecture
Iran's state ideology — the Islamic Republic's founding doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih — holds that political and religious authority are inseparable and that the Supreme Leader's mandate extends beyond Iran's borders to the entire Muslim world. This revolutionary universalism provides the ideological underpinning for Iran's export of its model through armed proxies: Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and the Iraqi Shia militias are not merely convenient tools of Iranian foreign policy but ideological partners in a pan-Islamic revolutionary project directed against US influence, Israel, and Sunni Arab monarchies.
The operational architecture of Iran's proxy network is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a parallel military force established in 1979 to protect the revolution from both external enemies and the conventional Iranian army. Within the IRGC, the Quds Force functions as Iran's external operations and intelligence directorate: it recruits, trains, funds, arms, and commands proxy groups across the Middle East and beyond. The IRGC also controls Iran's ballistic missile programme — the largest in the Middle East, with missiles capable of reaching Israel, Saudi Arabia, and US bases from eastern Europe to the Gulf — and oversees the nuclear weapons research programme.
"Soleimani was not just a general. He was the architect of an entire regional order — a network of militias, weapons pipelines, and political dependencies that will outlast his death by decades."
Vali Nasr, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2020Iran's domestic governance is characterised by systematic repression of political opposition, minority rights, women's rights, and freedom of expression. The regime's security apparatus — including the IRGC, the Basij paramilitary, and the Ministry of Intelligence — operates a pervasive surveillance and enforcement system that monitors, arrests, tortures, and executes dissidents, journalists, trade unionists, LGBT individuals, ethnic minorities (including Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Azeris), and religious minorities (including Baha'is, Christians, and Sunni Muslims). Iran executes more people per capita than almost any country in the world; in 2023, it carried out at least 853 known executions — the highest figure in over a decade.
Iran's economic model funds its regional aggression through oil revenues — managed to circumvent US and EU sanctions through a network of front companies, shadow tanker fleets, and complicit intermediaries including China — alongside income from the IRGC's vast domestic business empire, which spans construction, telecoms, manufacturing, and the black market. The IRGC is estimated to control 30–40% of Iran's formal economy, making it simultaneously the country's most powerful political institution, its primary military force, and one of its largest commercial conglomerates.
The Axis of Resistance
Iran's most consequential instrument of regional power is its network of armed proxy groups — the self-described "Axis of Resistance" — which allows Tehran to project military force, threaten adversaries, and wage war while maintaining plausible deniability. Each group receives varying combinations of weapons, financing, training, intelligence, and political direction from the IRGC Quds Force.
Major Attacks & Operations
Iran has conducted or directed terrorist attacks, assassinations, and acts of armed aggression on five continents over four decades. The following represents a selection of the most significant directly attributable or proxy-executed operations:
Affected Populations & IFC Desks
The Iranian regime's foreign sponsorship of terrorism and its domestic repression have produced severe harm across a vast range of affected populations — spanning the Iranian civilian population itself, communities targeted by Iranian-backed proxies across the Middle East, and citizens of countries worldwide targeted by Iranian state terrorism operations.
