This June 15, 2026, “CAMERA Eye on the Media” Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Shay Khatiri appeared in JNS.
Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the movie “Captain America,” a German dissident says: “People forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.”
An even more extreme dynamic is at play in the American media. Journalists have forgotten that the Islamic Republic not only invaded Iran 47 years ago, but also subsequently invaded many other countries. The U.S. media’s blind spot on this point is all the more puzzling given the American intelligentsia’s anti-imperialism creed.
But first, let us explore the Islamic Republic’s expanding empire.
Immediately after the Islamic Revolution’s triumph in 1979, regime founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini created the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose charter explicitly mandates exporting the revolution abroad. His provocative saber-rattling about imposing his Shi’ite revolution on Iraq fueled Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran.
Khomeini’s response was not patriotic but one of imperialism and ideology: “The road to Quds (Jerusalem) passes through Karbala,” meaning that Iraq was the first step to conquering Israel.
Along with its conventional war against Iraq as a waypoint towards Israel’s conquest, Iran also began supporting militant Islamist, anti-Zionist and anti-American groups, beginning with the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hezbollah.
The eight-year-long war between Iran and Iraq, which began in 1980, ended in a draw in 1988. Khomeini died the next year, but the regime he founded, including institutions such as the IRGC, has continued his quest.
In fact, out of all the revolutionary promises that brought the Islamic Republic to power in 1979—economic, social and foreign policy—only the imperial mandate has remained an unrelenting priority. Poverty, inequality and corruption are rampant, despite the regime’s ideological imperatives. In some ways, the regime has decreasingly enforced Islamic laws on the people since the 1990s. Simultaneously, it became more aggressive in its militancy.
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at JNS.