Iranian regime must be punished for 1983 Beirut bombing: U.S. court

                   

A federal court in Washington, D.C. has ruled that the Iranian regime “must be punished to the fullest extent legally possible for the bombing in Beirut on October 23, 1983.”

Judge Royce Lamberth described the bombing which killed 241 Marines and wounded many others, as “an evil and cruel attack, intended to cause death, destruction, and emotional devastation.”

Judge Royce Lamberth awarded the 62 relatives of six Marines and two Navy corpsmen $454 million.

“The Court applauds plaintiffs’ persistent efforts to hold Iran accountable for its cowardly support of terrorism,” Lamberth wrote in the Oct. 14 judgment.

On October 23, 1983, at 6:22 a.m., a suicide bomber drove a large water delivery truck to the Beirut International Airport where the Marine Barracks was located.

After turning onto an access road leading to the compound, the driver rushed through a barbed-wire fence, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through the gate, and slammed into the lobby of the barracks. The huge explosion crumbled the four-story building, crushing the soldiers to death while they were sleeping.

In July 1987, the Iranian regime's then-Minister of Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Mohsen Rafiqdoost, said, "Both the TNT and the ideology which in one blast sent to hell 400 officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marines headquarters were provided by Iran".

Rafiqdoost's comments were published in the Tehran daily Ressalat on July 20, 1987.

In January, the current Iranian regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif laid a wreath on the grave of Imad Mughniyeh in Lebanon.

Imad Mughniyeh was a principal leader and operative for a number of years within Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses and one of those responsible for 1983 Beirut bombing.