[FoxNews] 220 Marines, 18 sailors, 3 soldiers, 17 US civilians, 58 French troops killed in 1983 terror attack in Beirut.The Islamic Republic of Iran’s representative in Lebanon issued the first public announcement of the Iranian regime’s role in the mass murder of American military and diplomatic personnel in the early 1980s in Beirut.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) first located and translated the bombshell interview with Sayyed Issa Tabatabai, who serves as the representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Lebanon.
The state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quickly scrubbed the damning disclosure that Tabatabai made about Iran’s role in the suicide bombings of Americans, but MEMRI preserved a copy.
Iran and its chief strategic ally, the U.S.-designated terrorist movement Hezbollah, in Lebanon have been blamed for bombing the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 in which 63 people, including 17 Americans, were murdered, and dual suicide truck bombers blew up the barracks of American and French members of a multinational force in Lebanon in 1983, in which 220 U.S. Marines, 18 U.S. Navy sailors and 3 U.S. Army soldiers lost their lives. Fifty-eight French troops were also murdered in the terrorist attack.