Iran Official Admits Role in 1980s Beirut Bombings

Iran played a major role in ordering, planning, and carrying out massive deadly bombings in Beirut in 1983, according to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s representative in Lebanon.

Sayyed Issa Tabatabai’s comments marked the first public acknowledgment of Iran’s involvement in the bombings: at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, in which 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed; and the barracks of American and French members of the Multinational Force in October 1983, in which 242 U.S. Marines and 58 French troops were killed.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) first located and translated the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) interview with Tabatabai, who represents Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Lebanon.

MEMRI reported that the part of the interview in which Tabatabai acknowledged receiving then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering attacks on American and Israeli targets in Lebanon was removed by IRNA from its website shortly after publication.

“This is apparently because no official representative of [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic, or of Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, had ever said that Iran had any involvement in ordering, planning and carrying out the massive bombings in Lebanon against U.S.,” MEMRI said in explaining the deletion.

MEMRI’s report could lead to new lawsuits against Iran’s regime for its role in the murder of American military and diplomatic personnel.

“Iran has always vehemently denied any role in the bombings,” MEMRI reported. “It submitted no defense in response to the 2001 U.S. lawsuits filed against it by families of the hundreds of Americans killed or wounded in the barracks bombings.”

Iran and Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist movement Hezbollah, have been blamed for the attacks.

“I quickly went to Lebanon and provided what was needed in order to [carry out] martyrdom operations in the place where the Americans and Israelis were,” Tabatabai told IRNA, MEMRI reported.

“The efforts to establish [Hezbollah] started in [Lebanon’s] Baalbek area, where members of [Iran’s] Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) arrived. I had no part in establishing the [political] party [Hezbollah], but God made it possible for me to continue the military activity with the group that had cooperated with us prior to the [Islamic] Revolution’s victory.”

Tabatabai also said Hezbollah was established in the summer of 1982 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

“For two years, [Hezbollah’s] military base was located in my home,” Tabatabai told IRNA. “‘The group’ [supporters of the Islamic Revolution] signed a contract declaring their willingness to become martyrs. Perhaps more than 70 [of them] signed this contract in my home.”