By Reza Shafa
On September 7, a Federal Court ruled that the mullahs should compensate families of U.S. Marines killed in the 1983 bombing in Beirut $2.65 billion as compensation for the loss of their loved ones.
On October 23, 1983, around 6:20 am, a yellow Mercedes-Benz truck drove into Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines, under the U.S. 2nd Marine Division of the United States Marine Corps, had set up its local headquarters. The truck had been substituted for a hijacked water delivery truck. The truck turned onto an access road leading to the Marines’ compound and circled a parking lot. The driver then accelerated and crashed through a barbed wire fence around the parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate and barreled into the lobby of the Marine headquarters. The Marine sentries at the gate were operating under their rules of engagement, which made it very difficult to respond quickly to the truck. By the time the two sentries had locked, loaded, and shouldered their weapons, the truck was already inside the building’s entry way.
The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 12,000 pounds (about 5,400 kg) of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story cinder-block building into rubble, crushing many inside. It is said by a U.S. federal district court judge to have been the largest non-nuclear blast ever (deliberately) detonated on the face of the earth.[1] According to Eric Hammel in his history of the Marine landing force, "The force of the explosion initially lifted the entire four-story structure, shearing the bases of the concrete support columns, each measuring fifteen feet in circumference and reinforced by numerous one and three quarter inch steel rods. The airborne building then fell in upon itself. A massive shock wave and ball of flaming gas was hurled in all directions."
Aside from planning and commanding the entire operation, the leaders of the mullah’s regime openly bragged about it.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who has just been elected head of the Iranian regime’s Assembly of Expert was among the first ones to welcome the operation. On May 6, 1989, during Friday prayers he said, "…in Lebanon we witnessed a sample of it when the American Marines landed in that country…the Lebanese youths destroyed their building over their heads… The U.S. in Lebanon received a devastating blow, what a disgrace it was…They undoubtedly will blame on us. It is true we claim the responsibly for it."
In a speech before Friday sermons on August 28, 1986, the then Minister of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohsen Rafiqdoust said, "The explosives blended with the ideology and sent some 400 U.S. servicemen to hell in Beirut."
The planning, logistics and operation of the terrorist attacks in Beirut was supervised by then IRGC’s commander Hossein Mosleh.
On November 8, 1986, the French News Agency quoted an article from Newsweek as saying, "Eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) on the telephone conversation of Ali Akbar Mohtashami, then Iranian ambassador to Syria, revealed that he told the Iranian Foreign Minister that he had ordered the 1983 bombing which left 241 Marines dead."
Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime’s intelligence networks, both in Iran and abroad. He has done extensive research on VAVAK (MOIS), IRGC’s Intelligence Office, and Quds Force among others. Currently he is a contributor to NCRI website.
