Ken Timmerman’s 12th book of non-fiction, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, was recently released by Post Hill Press. Timmerman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and has covered the Middle East for 40 years.
This Sunday is the 39th anniversary of the Iranian attack on the US Marines barracks in Beirut, which took the life of 241 US Marines. It was the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima.
Every year on this date families gather for memorial services around the country to commemorate the lives of these first American victims of Islamic Iran’s vicious, relentless, and still unending war on America.
The attack on the US Marines followed on the heels of the April 18, 1983, attack on the US Embassy in Beirut. In my new book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, I call these attacks the “first blood” in Iran’s unending war on America.
For years we have known the names of the main perpetrators. Until now, only one has been brought to justice: Imad Fayez Mughniyeh.
Prior to 9/11, he was the terrorist with the most U.S. blood on his hands. A Lebanese-born Shiite Muslim who worked in Yasser Arafat’s elite Force 17, he was hired by Iran as their chief overseas terrorist once Arafat was forced out of Beirut in September 1982.
Mughniyeh was quick to prove his worth to his new masters with a series of massive car bombs in Lebanon. The first, on Nov. 11, 1982, took down the seven-story Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, Lebanon, killing 67 IDF personnel and Border Guards.
Next was the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. embassy on the Beirut corniche, which I witnessed first-hand. Sixty-three people perished in that blast, including seventeen Americans. Among them were Kenneth Haas and Robert Ames, the CIA’s top spies in the Middle East. Indeed. Mugniyeh’s target was a top secret meeting of CIA station chiefs from around the region. In a single blow, Iran decapitated the Agency’s intelligence apparatus in the region.
Emboldened by these successes, Mughniyeh’s Iranian masters next instructed him to strike against Western peace-keeping troops, with the goal of driving them out of Lebanon. Shortly after 6 AM on October 23, 1983, an Iranian terrorist drove a red Dodge water truck past unarmed sentries at the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines. Less than ten minutes later, a second explosive-laden truck smashed into the Drakkar building several miles away, killing 63 French Marines. Mughniyeh watched both attacks with binoculars from a nearby hill while his underlings captured them on videotape.
Mughniyeh’s terrorist rap-sheet is a mile long. He went on to blow up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, and the AMIA Jewish Center in 1994. His men instructed al Qaeda bombers in the art of the simultaneous truck bombs they set off against US embassies in Africa in 1998. Later, he helped Osama bin Laden and his men plan the 9/11 attacks, and killed hundreds more Americans in Iraq following the US invasion in 2003.
Israel and the US finally brought him to justice in a joint operation in Damascus on February 12, 2008.
As effective as he was, Mughniyeh never could have carried out this killing spree without sponsors, money, and mentoring.
Among his early mentors were Ali Reza Asgari and Hussein Dehghan, who commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) contingent in Lebanon between 1982 and 1984.
Asgari defected to the United States in 2007, provided significant intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and now lives under a pseudonym thanks to US taxpayers. Dehghan rose to become Iranian regime defense minister from 2013-2017, and currently serves as an advisor to the Supreme Leader. The Trump administration sanctioned him as a “specially designated terrorist” in 2019.
But Mughniyeh’s ultimate bosses were Ahmed Vahidi, head of the Quds Force, and Mohsen Rezai, the IRGC commander. Vahidi was indicted by the US for his involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 US servicemen; today he serves as Iranian regime interior minister, in charge of repressing pro-freedom protestors. Rezai was indicted by the government of Argentina for his role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing, and is now an Iranian regime vice-president for economic affairs.
In January, Rezai was invited by Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega to visit Managua. Given that Rezai was the subject of an Interpol “Red Notice” for his role in the AMIA bombings – an administrative procedure that requested assistance from all Interpol members in detaining and extraditing him – his government Falconjet charted a circuitous route to reach Managua, avoiding flying over the airspace of countries such as Cape Verde that had a history of detaining Iranians wanted by Interpol.
The government-owned Tehran Times called his trip in blatant violation of US sanctions and Interpol a “slap in the face” to the U.S.
In Washington, Rep. Jim Banks (R, IN) introduced a resolution in March opposing the removal of terror-designations and sanctions against Mohsen Rezai, Dehghan, and Vahidi that won just 65 co-sponsors, none of them Democrats.
Rezai was on the road again earlier this week, this time flying to Qatar to support Iranian exporters and meet with Qatari officials. Once again, the Argentinean government launched an official protest, demanding that Qatar arrest him. Both the Qatari and the US governments ignored the request (with total silence from the US embassy in Qatar and the State Department).
In the thirty-nine years since the Iranian regime drew first blood against America, the United States has yet to exact a price from the Iranian regime for its actions. We have yet to stand up to Iran’s aggressive behavior and, as I argue in my new book, this failure has encouraged Iran to continue attacking us because they see that they can do so with impunity.
The very fact of naming men such as Mohsen Rezai and Hossein Dehghan to top government positions shows the utter disdain Iran’s Islamic rulers have for the current U.S. administration. President Biden may want to be loved by the mullahs; but President Trump, with the killing of top Iranian terrorist Qassem Suleymani, showed it is much wiser to be feared.
I bristle at the phrase “brining them to justice.” This was an act of war. We should have brought “justice” to them. In the form of an airstrike that leveled Qom or Bushehr.
Good point! Trump did exactly that – bringing justice to Qassem Suleymani.
I 2nd that good point, because President Trump did more than that. He also took out a bunch of lieutenants.
(Plugs *Biden, on the other hand, managed to take out a car full of women aid workers & children. Press didn’t seem to care.)
I also bristle. The blood our our marines is precious and should be swiftly and brutally avenged to inspire a settled disinclination to attack again and cause the enemy to understand our marines are properly to be both feared and respected.
That would be justice. And I think our boys would like it very much.
The Marines were under orders not to have chambered rounds or magazines in their rifles and pistols as they stood guard. Political concerns ruled the day not military standards, the Marines were sacrificed and President Regan turned tail and ran! This was all brought out in the Congressional investigation. Even one of my liberal college professors would not believe that we left the Marines there as sitting ducks, and I had to give him my copy of the report. He was dumb founded at the political and military incompetence at the time.
Reagan didn’t tuck tail. The chickenshit congress made sure we left – leaving Reagan with no options except to shell some islamist positions on the way out.
(Reagan penned six criteria needed before deploying troops as a result.)
Idiot generals have a fetish for servicemen carrying arms with no ammo. Hence, when a muslim prick stormed a bus near Ramstein, the airmen had no way to respond. The attacker’s gun jammed, and an airman chased him down in the airport terminal.
Now servicemen have the added burden of memorizing bullshit personal pronouns correctly, and attending sensitivity training classes.
There are US politicians who care nothing about American troops. They care even less about avenging them if they know who the killers are, it might upset the apple cart they have been feeding from, even if that apple cart is one of the enemies who killed Americans. To them, money and power is more desirable than justice or right. One of the latest examples cost thirteen Marines their lives and the politician and his party could care less. After all, it wasn’t their blood or lives lost.
Judging by the way Sleazy *Biden kept checking his watch when the 13 servicemen where brought home, you have a point.
With the open border policy, God only knows how many more Islamic terrorists have entered.
I was with Wpns Co 2/8. I was on a Med Float rotation in 1982 and was with the first Marines evacuating civilians, the embassy and the PLO in the summer of 82 then at the airport as part of the MNF. We rotated home in Nov.
It is true we could not chamber a round. In fact we were only allowed to load our mags when we started losing ammo from bandoliers. Unexploded ordinance was everywhere on the ground. But the locals were very happy to see us, until early Nov when the Iranians showed up.
My unit rotated back in Oct of 83, we did short stop in Grenada 2 days after we learned of the bombing.
Upon our return the Beirut the Shiites where pretty quite for a couple of weeks. That changed.
Long story short, I can assure you that we got plenty of payback. Once the powers that be allowed us to shoot back (that’s a story for another time) we did the military equivalent of pulling their pants down, bending them over our knees and paddled their a$$. It wasn’t even a contest.
Islamists have learned to not confront us directly, reference Iraq and Afghanistan. We have not learned a thing.
I was with the “Med cruise,” 1/8 in 1966. We were there when bill clinton was with a bunch of college students who were pulling anti-Vietnam war protests and changing to anti-American protests the next day. We were in Canns and Gulf wan but the brass wouldn’t let us go to Paris to debate with them. 70% of the float were just back from Nam and wanted to go real bad.
Important article about a key event in modern U. S. history. God bless our front-line military. They deserve much more support from our brain-dead political leadership.
One of the reasons for that murderous and destructive jihadist vehicle bombing at the US Marine barracks on April 18, 1983, is that the tragic reality that many young and impressible Muslim males are sent to Islamic mind programming centers that are called “schools.” which are known as a madrasa.
If the imams who do this Islamic brainwashing of violent and deadly jihad actually believe that doing that such a horrendous action is really then they should Practice what they preach and strap bomb vests on themselves and then go out and then blow themselves up.
That they never, ever, do so only exposes what manipulative insincere cowards that they truly are.
The west has been treating Muslim supremacists/terrorists with kid gloves since the Iranian Revolution. Even after the 9/11 attacks, we still didn’t get serious, being more concerned with offending Muslims’ ridiculously delicate sensibilities — really, an extension of their supremacist ethos — than in taking this evil and totalitarian ideology head-on.
the August 2020 explosion that flattened the port of Beirut and killed over 140 people could almost be regarded as divine retribution for the US lives lost in this act of terrorism
About all those Jihad suicide /homicide attack committed by jihadist/Muslim, on April 18, 1983, who had a very strong and firm but unquestioning and blind faith In Islam which promise a sex-filled paradise with many virgins. houris, in it for a Muslim male who dies in the jihad fighting for cause of Islam.
This bizarre doctrine of such a place of far-fetched and weird , nevertheless in the jihadist males in the deluded belief in the strange and far-out teachings of Islam go out and engage in horrendous murderous jihad attacks.
This is a reflection of the wisdom from the French philosopher who had written “As long as men continue to believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.”
I had heard and still trying to confirm that after the Bombing of Marine Barracks President Reagan order a mission to bomb Beirut but was convinced not too so he order the attack to abort.
Any jihadist just after his Islamic suicide /homicide attack right after he died, to his shock and horror, he found himself trapped and suffering in the fires of an awful place the Bible calls “hell.” Luke 16:19-31. That jihad minded Muslim of ISIS was dangerous to self and others because that he was indoctrinated with and likewise believed in the doctrine found in the Quran, 44:54. 55:56. 78;31.,of a lust –filled sex paradise with many virgins, in in for his use only, because he died as a “martyr” for the cause of Islam. That jihadist will discover the hard way that he was instructed in and put his faith in a false doctrine that is from a false religious book of false religion. This doctrine of a paradise for the jihadist who died fighting for Islam was only an enticing religious story of fiction. The Bible does give warning against giving “heed to fables…” First Timothy 1:4. [N.K.J.V]
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As for dying in a murderous jihad attack, in spite, of the Muslim clerics falsely calling it a “martyrdom operation.” That jihadist after in dies in a jihad murder attack, and learn too late, the truth of Bible with informs its reader that a murderer “will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:21. [N.K.J..V]
Those imams and mullahs, who teach and ingrain false yet enticing doctrines as that a lust /sex fill place with virgins into the hearts and minds of others had been predicted in the Bible. For it is written, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.” Second Timothy 3,4.