Introduction
Seventy years of grievance, terror and deal-making
For most Americans, the story begins with the hostages of 1979. For the Islamic Republic, the confrontation with the "Great Satan" is part of its identity, and it has been fought with proxies, hostages, assassins, hackers and propagandists, as well as at the negotiating table.
Our argument is that Tehran's campaign against America has run on two tracks. The first is violence and coercion: the embassy seizure, Hezbollah's bombings in Beirut, Khobar Towers, roadside bombs in Iraq, hostage diplomacy, and murder plots in Washington, Brooklyn and Maryland, run by the IRGC, the Quds Force and the Ministry of Intelligence. The second is money and influence: Hezbollah's cocaine and used-car laundering through U.S. banks, front companies buying American technology, Press TV and fake news sites, cultivated experts, and hack-and-leak operations against American elections.
Opinion and fact are kept separate. Every entry gives the documented record with linked sources and a status label. Our interpretation appears only in clearly marked Our Take boxes. Being critical of the regime also means being fair: Iranian-Americans are overwhelmingly its critics and victims, not its agents; the U.S. role in 1953 and the downing of Iran Air 655 are part of the record; and Washington's Iran scandals are covered under Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump again. The Named Spies theme lists every publicly documented Iranian or IRGC-directed spy, officer, plotter, hacker, financier and procurement agent we could find, with each case's outcome.
Central Theme
Exporting the Revolution
From the occupied embassy in 1979 to synagogue plots in 2026: how the Islamic Republic and its proxies have spied on, bombed, hacked, kidnapped, lobbied and bargained with the United States.
The Timeline
Choose an era
Themes
Threads that run through the eras
Pick a theme to see every related entry, from 1953 to now, in the search section below. Exporting the Revolution comes first because it ties the proxy, terror and influence stories together. Named Spies is the full audit of named Iranian and proxy operatives; Washington's Iran Scandals covers every administration. Red marks the regime, the IRGC, Hezbollah, terror, espionage and repression; green marks the Iranian people and diaspora; everything else stays neutral.
Search
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Sources & Method
How this guide was built
Entries were researched in October 2026 from primary government documents (Justice Department, FBI, DEA and Treasury releases, indictments, court opinions and dockets, State Department and ODNI statements, Inspector General reports, Rewards for Justice notices and Congressional Research Service reports), contemporary reporting (AP, Reuters, BBC, CNN, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Semafor, Iran International), research organizations, and Wikipedia overview articles that cite them. Source links were checked at the time of writing; a few government and news sites block automated checks and were confirmed by search.
Quotations appear only where the wording was found in a primary or cited source. Elsewhere the guide paraphrases. Widely repeated claims that could not be traced to a reliable source, such as stories of Hezbollah training camps in Venezuela, were left out or marked as disputed.
Point of view. This guide has an editorial position: it is critical of the Islamic Republic. That position appears only in boxes labeled Our Take and in the central essay. The sections labeled The Record contain only sourced statements of fact. Where U.S. policy failed or caused harm, from the 1953 coup to the Minab school strike, the guide says so.
Fairness. Charges are allegations until proven; a conviction is labeled as such, and a decision not to charge is not proof of innocence, nor proof of guilt. Iranian-Americans are not described as agents unless a court or official finding says so. Iran's own convictions of Americans are hostage-taking, not justice. Scandals are covered under every administration from Carter to Trump's second term, using the same standard.
Limits. Much of Iran's intelligence work is known only from U.S. charging documents, many of which were never tested at trial because the defendants are in Iran. The Named Spies audit covers people convicted, charged, sanctioned or officially identified as working for Iran or its proxies, plus a few clearly labeled 'inspired' cases where no Iranian direction was alleged.
Status labels
Key overview sources
Image Credits
Pictures & licenses
All images come from Wikimedia Commons and are public domain or under the licenses shown. They were downloaded and resized for this guide. When no free photo of the person or event itself was available, the entry uses an image of a related place, document, or institution, and the caption marks it as illustrative.