|
Trending Topics
|
Iran Official Admits Country's Role in Beirut Bombing that Killed 241 American Troops
(MEMRI) The Iranian news agency IRNA published an interview on Sept. 13, 2023, with Issa Tabatabai, the representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Lebanon. Tabatabai had previously served as the representative in Lebanon of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic Republic. Tabatabai recounted that his home served as military headquarters for Hizbullah. He acknowledged receiving, directly from Khomeini, a fatwa ordering suicide operations to be carried out against the Americans and Israelis in Lebanon. "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." No official Iranian representative had ever said that Iran had any involvement in the bombings of 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 Lebanon in October 1983, in which 241 U.S. service personnel and 58 French troops were killed.