Via Defense News:
A new report from an Israeli think tank links the new Iranian defense minister to a 1983 terrorist attack that killed 220 peacekeeping Marines and 21 US sailors and airmen.
The Aug. 11 report, written by former Israel Defense Force Brig. Gen. Dr. Shimon Shapira, connects Iranian Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan to the deadly attack at the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which was carried out by a Shiite suicide bomber who drove a dump truck into the compound. A second, simultaneous suicide attack killed 58 French paratroopers at their nearby barracks. Dehghan was appointed to the country’s top defense post by new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and confirmed by the Iranian parliament Aug. 15.
Dehghan spent his military career in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, serving from its inception in 1979 and taking command of its air force in 1990. Shapira writes that Dehghan was given command of the Revolutionary Guard force in Lebanon around 1983, and moved later that year to set up a Revolutiontary Guard headquarters in the country’s Beqaa Valley.
“It was from this headquarters that Iran controlled Hezbollah’s military force and planned, along with Hezbollah, the terror attacks on the Beirut-based Multinational Force and against IDF forces in Lebanon,” Shapira wrote. “The attacks were carried out by the Islamic Jihad organization, headed by Imad Mughniyeh, which was actually a special operational arm that acted under the joint direction of Tehran and Hezbollah until it was dismantled in 1992.”
The orders for the attack, Shapira said, came from Tehran and were passed from the Iranian ambassador to Damascus on to the Revolutionary Guard troops in Lebanon.
“According to the U.S. Marine commander, the US National Security Agency intercepted the Iranian orders to strike on Sept. 26, 1983,” he wrote. “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.”