It was a seven-story building that sat along the Mediterranean and looked out over the sea.
That was the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. On April 18 of that year, it was targeted by a recently formed Iranian-backed terrorist group.
“Lebanese police and witnesses said the front of the embassy was blown out by 500 pounds of explosives packed into a vehicle witnesses described as a GMC pickup truck,” the New York Daily News reported the next day.
“The massive blast killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, eight of whom were CIA officers, and wounded more than 100 others.” the Central Intelligence Agency would later state.
Six months later — on Oct. 23, 1983 — another terrorist attack killed Americans in Beirut.
“A truck full of explosives crashed through the gates and into the Marine battalion headquarters building,” Marine spokesman Maj. Robert Jordan was quoted as saying by the Daily News that day.
“The explosion struck a building housing the 1,200-member Battalion Landing Team of the Marines amphibious unit stationed at Beirut International Airport,” the Daily News reported.
“The attack killed 241 and injured 60 military personnel, mostly U.S. Marines,” the Defense Intelligence Agency would later state.
So, who perpetrated these evil attacks on Americans who were serving their country?
The National Counterterrorism Center has posted a historical timeline of the “operational activity” of the Hizballah terrorist organization. Among the first actions on this timeline are Hizballah’s murderous 1983 attacks on the U.S. embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut.
On April 18, 2023, exactly 40 years after Hizballah’s attack on the embassy, the State Department published a statement “announcing a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to the identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction of Hizballah key leader Ibrahim Aqil.”
“During the 1980s, Aqil was a principal member of Hizballah’s terrorist cell the Islamic Jihad Organization, which claimed responsibility for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which killed 63 people, and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 U.S. personnel,” said the State Department.
Hassan Nasrallah was another leader of the Hizballah terrorist organization in that era.
“Nasrallah was one of the early founders of Hezbollah,” reports the American Jewish Committee. “After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Nasrallah, along with several other members of Amal, defected to form Hezbollah (the ‘Party of God’).”
“During his rise to power,” says the AJC, “Hezbollah was behind several major terror attacks targeting the U.S., including the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984, as well as the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985.”
At the current U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 2023, then-Ambassador Dorothy Shea presided over a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of the Hizballah attack.
“Those who made the decision to violently murder 63 innocent people, and to wound our embassy family, underestimated us,” she said. “Let us show, with our continued commitment to this community, to our shared goals, that in their effort to break us, Hizballah failed.”
But at that time, neither Aqil nor Nasrallah had been brought to justice.
When the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched its attack on Israel a year ago, Hizballah immediately followed with its own attacks.
“A day after Hamas (a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, or FTO) led October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel that began their ongoing war, Lebanese Hezbollah (another FTO) started shooting rockets and missiles across the Lebanon border into Israel in a show of solidarity with Hamas,” said a report from the Congressional Research Service.
“Amid the fighting after October 7, some 60,000 Israeli and 95,000 Lebanese residents evacuated the border area,” said CRS.
One action that Israel took in defending itself against Hizballah, said CRS, was a “September 20 airstrike in Beirut that killed Ibrahim Aqil.”
“Then, on September 27,” said CRS, “Israeli airstrikes in Beirut targeted Hezbollah’s headquarters, killing its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and other senior leaders.”
At a Sept. 30 press briefing, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller stated that the U.S. supported Israel’s move to take out Nasrallah.
“Number one, we support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism, and that includes by bringing brutal terrorists such as Hassan Nasrallah to justice,” he said. “He is someone who’s attacked, obviously, civilians of Israel, he’s attacked American citizens, and he’s attacked civilians in Syria.”
“It’s just a fact, when you have a brutal terrorist with that much civilian blood on his hands no longer operating, that is a good outcome,” he said.
President Joe Biden also expressed support for the Israeli strike on Nasrallah.
“Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror,” said Biden in a written statement. “His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”
The only regrettable thing is that it did not happen 41 years ago.
Terence P. Jeffrey is an investigative editor for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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