Just about every week, more headlines emerge exposing Iran’s malevolence.

Last week came the revelation from Western intelligence sources that Iran’s Islamic Guardsmen are flooding Syria by the hundreds in order to help put down the popular rebellion against Bashar Assad. “The Iranians are now running the show,” one source said. According to this intelligence source, the Iranian officers are working with the Syrian Army and security forces on major operations and are in control of Syria’s intelligence (Geostrategy-Direct, March 21).

Also last week, in testimony before a House committee, the New York Police Department’s director of intelligence analysis revealed that 13 Iranian diplomatic personnel have been caught over the last decade staking out possible points of attack within New York City; he labeled their behavior “hostile reconnaissance.” The official, Mitchell Silber, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month that “Iran is the subject of the vast majority of our discussions right now.” With tensions increasing between the United States and Iran over sanctions, New York is being seen as a prime target for a strike by Iran or its proxy Hezbollah.

Peter King, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, last week testified that the greatest threat on American soil is not al Qaeda, but Hezbollah. King said there may be hundreds—even thousands—of Hezbollah agents in the U.S. capable of launching a terrorist attack. He also spoke of the 84 Iranian diplomats at the United Nations and in Washington who, “it must be presumed, are intelligence officers.” Add to this the fact that Hezbollah is known to be working with the powerful Mexican drug cartels, which are entrenched in cities all over America.

Iran continues to play cloak and dagger with its nuclear program. In its most recent yo-yo-like iteration, it has agreed—for now—to meet with six major powers to discuss its “peaceful” nuclear agenda. The last round of talks, over a year ago, broke down after just a couple of days, with Iran refusing to give any ground or even have meaningful discussion on the subject.

Meanwhile, Tehran is spending billions of dollars to develop long-range missiles. Israel estimates that within three years the mullahs will have a missile that can hit the East Coast of the U.S. Iran is aiming not just to hold Israel at gunpoint, but also to directly threaten Europe and America. This is yet more proof that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, since the obvious primary motive for developing intercontinental missiles would be to deliver a nuclear payload.

To all these provocations, the West has responded forcefully by pushing—to re-start negotiations.

How is that America—a nation that faced off against the British Empire, Imperial Germany, the Axis powers and the Soviet Union—now finds itself afraid of … Iran?

This story is actually one of the most stunning in our modern world.

Fifty years ago, few Americans paid attention to a Middle Eastern nation named Iran. It had not been a major factor in World War ii, and it was ruled by a shah who was friendly to the West. Things changed in 1979 when Islamists overthrew the shah and quickly began to show their character. They took the American Embassy and 52 Americans hostage for 444 days and contributed to a spate of terrorist acts that included the infamous Beirut truck bombing that killed 299 American and French servicemen.

In dealing with more terrorist crises, including the hijacking of twa Flight 847 and a separate kidnapping of seven Americans in Lebanon, President Reagan put Iran at the head of a list of rogue countries that were in “a confederation of terrorist states … a new, international version of Murder, Inc.” He called Iran’s leaders “the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.” Yet Iran continued to be considered a fringe threat, and no major military operation was launched.

During the Clinton administration, Iran was at the top of the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The administration that followed waged a supposedly out-and-out “war on terrorism.” When President Bush spoke of that war after 9/11, he said, “Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.” By that definition, Iran was the primary target. The president branded Iran as a member of an “axis of evil.”

However, America’s determination to follow through on its rhetoric was weak. The first target in the war was the shaky, friendless Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, as Washington cobbled together a worldwide coalition of anti-terrorist nations, remarkably, it invited Iran—the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism—to join.

The mullahs denied the request—and surely savored the opportunity.

In response to this sequence of events, the Trumpet wrote, “[T]here will soon come a point when the U.S. won’t even be a factor in this war. … [P]rophecy shows that it is, regrettably, underestimating its enemy. … As we now examine the facts emerging from this war, we can see unequivocally that the terrorist snake will survive America’s aggression—head intact, and stronger than ever. … Make no mistake about it: Iran is the head of the snake.” You can read the prophetic reasoning behind that forecast in our booklet The King of the South.

The Trumpet’s assessment proved all the more true a year and a half later, when the White House chose its second target in the war on terrorism. As American troops rolled through Iraq in three weeks and turned its proud dictator into a fugitive cave-dweller, the neighbors noticed. The ayatollah to the east was well aware of the fact that the U.S. Army was on his doorstep, but he was also celebrating. Saddam Hussein had been Iran’s archenemy for decades. The U.S.-led strike had just knocked out the biggest regional obstacle in the way of Iran’s ambitions.

The U.S. might have used its victory in Iraq to press its advantage against Iran. But that is not what happened. Instead, it undertook the impossible task of transforming Iraq into a functional, Western-friendly democracy.

The painful years since have seen a slow, inevitable illumination of a fact that was there all along. Ignoring Iran from the beginning was a fundamental error from which the U.S. could not recover.

Today, the bitter reality is plain: America does not have the means or the political will to successfully attack Iran. In fact, Tehran has gained such influence over the Middle East that the U.S. couldn’t even extricate itself from Iraq without its help.

This turn of events ranks as one of the most stunning in post-Cold War geopolitics.

It appears America sees itself has having little choice but to come to terms with Iran’s power over Iraq—and the Middle East. The U.S. continues to address the Iranian nuclear question through the clunky Security Council, which by nature cannot agree on anything but the most anemic punitive measures. And Washington is pressuring Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“It’s clearer all the time. The world has already seen the toughest U.S. policy toward Iran it is going to see,” we wrote in 2007. “Don’t expect President Bush to get tougher during his final year in office; he has already revealed—even within one month of 9/11—the direction his administration will take with Iran. And you can be sure the next American president will lurch even further toward the appease-and-concede camp.”

America’s foreign policy toward Iran is a patent demonstration of the fulfillment of an end-time prophecy. “I will break the pride of your power,” God said, if the descendants of ancient Israel would not hearken to Him and obey His commandments (Leviticus 26:19).

Meanwhile, two decades ago, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry spotlighted Iran as the coming prophesied “king of the south.” To find out what he forecast in 1992 and how he knew in advance the power we have since witnessed Iran gain, read The King of the South.