He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as Iran's ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.
Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut
The ambassador in turn hosted several meetings of the cell that would carry out the Beirut attacks, which were overheard by the National Security Agency.
"We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Syria," retired Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in Lebanon.
"The Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target U.S. personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a 'spectacular action' against the Marines," said Lyons.
"He was prime minister," Lyons said of Mousavi, "so he didn't get down to the details at the lowest levels. "But he was in a principal position and had to be aware of what was going on."
Lyons, sometimes called "the father" of the Navy SEALs' Red Cell counter-terror unit, also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Center in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons, including the first Navy woman to die in a terrorist attack.
Bob Baer agrees that Mousawi, who has been celebrated in the West for sparking street demonstrations against the Teheran regime since he lost the elections, was directing the overall 1980s terror campaign.
But Baer, a former CIA Middle East field officer whose exploits were dramatized in the George Clooney movie "Syriana," places Mousavi even closer to the Beirut bombings.
"He dealt directly with Imad Mughniyah," who ran the Beirut terrorist campaign and was "the man largely held responsible for both attacks," Baer wrote in TIME over the weekend.
"When Mousavi was Prime Minister, he oversaw an office that ran operatives abroad, from Lebanon to Kuwait to Iraq," Baer continued.
"This was the heyday of [Ayatollah] Khomeini's theocratic vision, when Iran thought it really could export its revolution across the Middle East, providing money and arms to anyone who claimed he could upend the old order."
Baer added: "Mousavi was not only swept up into this delusion but also actively pursued it."
Retired Adm. Lyons maintained that he could have destroyed the terrorists at a hideout U.S. intelligence had pinpointed, but he was outmaneuvered by others in the cabinet of President Ronald Reagan.
"I was going to take them apart," Lyons said, "but the secretary of defense," Caspar Weinberger, "sabotaged it."
Recent Posts
- AIPAC Spy Figure Larry Franklin Describes Mafia-Style Murder Threat
- Israel 'Spy Scandal' Figure Larry Franklin Breaks Silence
- U.S. Journalist Quizzed on Foreign Contacts After Landing at Miami
- Harman Comes Out Swinging Once More in Israel Wiretap Flap
- Ex-CIA Columnist Suspects Interference by His Former Employer
- Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut
- Times Was Prepared to Pay Ransom for Rohde
![[RSS]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/rss_icon.gif)
Subscribe to RSS feed![[ARCHIVES]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/archives_icon.png)
Archives
Comments
It should be noted that it is Jeff Stein's interpretation that Mousavi is the "Butcher of Beirut."
I find the title of this post misleading compared to the content of the post.
Would it be better to call Imad Mughniyah the "Butcher of Beirut"? As Imad was, according to Bear "the man largely held responsible for both attacks."
Also, the "Butcher of Beirut" is a very America-centric term as the causalities that resulted from these attacks were insignificant as compared to the total toll that the civil war in Lebanon took on the residents of the city. In fact, the Siege of Beirut resulted in +10,000 civilian deaths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Beirut
Overall, I think your headline is inappropriate and misleading and lacks an understanding of the Lebanese civil war toll, but if you were going for sensationalism that only has a loose association with reality, then I guess it fits.
Posted by: Ben
| June 23, 2009 12:54 PM
Ben, red herring. Red herring. The question is not about Israel, or the PLO, in 1982. Nor is it about whether Reagan should have had US troops in Lebanon. (He shouldn't.)
Rather, it's about Mousavi's past, and the implicit question about whether this leopard, who oversaw the beginning of Iran's attempt to install a Hizbullah-driven hegemony outside its borders, has changed his spot enough to really be a "reformer."
Or not.
I say "or not," given that just last week, he publicly called for a "reformation" for the Islamic Republic of Iran and saluted the memory of Khoumeni and the spirit of the 1979 revolution.
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/06/mousavi-wants-new-islamic-republic-of.html
Posted by: SocraticGadfly
| June 23, 2009 11:08 PM
How interesting that all that information on Musavi gets out now, "after" Musavi has become the contender to Khamenei. So for 27 years, no one investigated him, but suddenly after the Iranian uprising was about to shake off the Ayatollahs, Western investigators are now diligent at finding every piece of information about Musavi to bring him down as an alternative to Ahmedinijad. Why? Because the US Administration and its Iranian "partners" and the financial interests behind that deal prefers the current Terrorists in Tehran over the ex terrorists. Why? Because the current bad guys have cut the deal, not the ex bad guys..isn't it capitalism?
I prefer to see Musavi crumble Khamanei and Ahmedinijad the heirs of the regime that killed the Marines in Beirut and continue to kill them in Iraq, over watching the regime crushing all the protesters including the ex bad guys.
I certainly preferred Communists Gorbatchev and Yeltsin over Communists KGB in 1991.
Iranians will have a better chance to change Musavi after Ahmedinijad/Khamenei and Americans to re-investigate the attacks of 1983, than to stand by Ahmedinijad against Musavi.
Nice try from the Iranian lobby in DC, but this time it is not working..
We prefer the former Prime Minister "who may have had an idea about the attack in 1983" over the Grand Ayatollah and Ahmedinijad who "are waging" terror against us in 2009..
Our priority is to help the Iranian people defeat the current regime even if the Iranian youth are using an ex bad guy to beat the current bad guy. I am sure all US Marines agree with us. They are smarter than the Iranian propagandists and they will get their revenge on the regime, the entire regime.
Posted by: Cortez
| July 5, 2009 11:26 AM
It is sad that the writer deleted my comments..very telling..
Posted by: Cortez
| July 5, 2009 7:12 PM
Post A Comment