Thirty Years After Beirut: Analysts and Journalists Focus on Legacy of the Iran-Ordered Attack

 TIP Press: press@theisraelproject.org

·  President Obama mourns servicemen lost to "Hizballah suicide bomber who attacked the Marine barracks"

·  Iranian commander at the center of plot now defense finister in Hassan Rouhani cabinet

·  Rouhani, Iranian officials have embraced Hezbollah

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the 1983 Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 American servicemen. President Barack Obama issued a statement mourning the victims and describing the atrocity, in which "220 Marines, 18 sailors, and 3 soldiers lost their lives to a Hizballah suicide bomber who attacked the Marine barracks." New York Governor Andrew Cuomo directed all state buildings to fly their flags at half-staff. Memorial ceremonies took place at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, and around the country.

The attack was at the time the largest non-nuclear explosion since WWII. It was carried out by a group calling itself Islamic Jihad, which took joint direction from Iran and what would eventually become Hezbollah (Hezbollah wouldn't be officially founded for another two years).

Journalists and analysts spent much of the day working to contextualize the attack, describing both what happened thirty years ago and how the events bear on geopolitics and diplomacy today.

Information released since that day has pinned down the exact day that Iran transmitted the order to attack the barracks. The attack was carried out by an organization headed by Imad Mughniyeh, who would later become a key figure in Hezbollah. The order - to say nothing of the training and funding to carry it out - came via Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

At the center of the plot was Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, who at the time was in Lebanon directing Hezbollah at the mullahs' behest. Dehghan later became a brigadier general. His current job is as Defense Minister in the cabinet of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Israeli analyst Shimon Shapira has noted that that the Iranian order to strike the U.S. barracks were intercepted by the NSA and that "it is difficult to imagine that such a high-level directive to the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon would be transmitted without the knowledge of their commander, Hossein Dehghan."

Lebanese outlet Ya Libnan today made a very explicit point of profiling Dehghan beneath coverage of commemoration services, noting that before he became Rouhani's "choice for Defense minister" he was "commander overseeing Hezbollah forces." Dehghan is not the first of Rouhani's cabinet ministers to draw concerns. His justice minister, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, who has long been a target of human rights criticism, was one of three Iranians who in the 1980s went from prison to prison on the orders of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordering the deaths of dissidents. Iranian opposition groups estimate the purge involved the murders of as many as 30,000 dissidents.

Washington Institute Fellow Matthew Levitt this morning expanded the focus from the specifics of Rouhani's cabinet to Iran's ongoing support for Hezbollah. Levitt called particular attention to a recent highly sophisticated plot, disrupted by Israeli officials, which involved an Iranian operative photographing among other things the American embassy in Tel Aviv.

Iran's continued support for Hezbollah has been repeatedly and explicitly emphasized by Iranian officials since Rouhani was elected. Rouhani himself has in recent months vowed to continue supporting the terror group, celebrating it for attacking Israel. Suggestions that he might do otherwise - that he might distance Tehran from Hezbollah - have been openly ridiculed by Iranians who speak to the press.