That line comes from the worst sportscaster ever, Ball State student Brian Collins.
Today it has a slightly different meaning. The IDF struck the Hamas headquarters building in Beirut this morning. The strike was massive. It has been reported that the IDF used 1000lb bunker-busters among other munitions in the strike. It leveled 6 apartment blocks.
I’ve held off on writing about it until now because there has not been confirmation that the main target of the strike, Hassan Nasrallah, was eliminated. While it is still unconfirmed, there are legitimate sources saying Nasrallah was killed in the strike. It is also alleged that Ali Karaki, Hezb’s southern front commander was in the bunker with Nasrallah.
If, and at this point those two letters are doing some heavy lifting, Nasrallah and Karaki were killed in the HQ bunker when it was struck, that leaves one man, Abu Ali Rida, as the lone member of Hezbollah senior leadership. I cannot stress enough how big of a deal this is.
In less than two weeks, the IDF and Israeli intelligence have completely dismantled the Hezbollah leadership. The elimination of Nasrallah also affects the Iranians, as he was a top advisor to the Ayatollahs. He took over from Sulaimani after he got missile-with-swords-ed as the point man for Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.
As I type this, the Iranians have convened their national security council to discuss this. Keep in mind, it is after 2300 in Tehran and Khamenei is 85.
Around 0630 local time 40 years ago today, Lebanese Islamic Jihad detonated a truck bomb in the Beirut International Airport barracks of 1/8 Marine Battalion Landing team killing 220 Marines, 18 Sailors and 3 soldiers and wounding another 128. The explosives used were estimated to be the equivalent of 21,000 pounds of TNT.
BIA Marine Barracks before the bombing.BIA Marine Barracks after the bombing.
About ten minutes later, another truck bomb was detonated at the Drakkar building, where a French contingent was stationed, killing 58 French paratroopers. The two bombs also killed 6 Lebanese civilians.
Both countries troops were in Lebanon as part of a multi-national peacekeeping mission during the Lebanese civil war. As a peacekeeping mission, there were strict rules of engagement in place.
When on post, mobile or foot patrol, keep loaded magazine in weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe, no round in the chamber.
Do not chamber a round unless instructed to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized.
Keep ammo for crew-served weapons readily available but not loaded in the weapon. Weapons will be on safe at all times.
Call local forces to assist in self-defense effort. Notify headquarters.
Use only minimum degree of force to accomplish any mission.
Stop the use of force when it is no longer needed to accomplish the mission.
If you receive effective hostile fire, direct your fire at the source. If possible, use friendly snipers.
Respect civilian property; do not attack it unless absolutely necessary to protect friendly forces.
Protect innocent civilians from harm.
Respect and protect recognized medical agencies such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, etc.
The Marines on guard on that fateful Sunday were in compliance with rules 1-3 and did not have time to fire on the truck as it sped to the barracks.
Aftermath of the bombing
The blast lifted the building, shearing the 15″ diameter support columns, and the building collapsed on itself. The explosive mechanism was a gas-enhanced device consisting of compressed butane in canisters employed with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) to create a fuel-air explosive.
Recovery efforts began almost immediately. Marines not billeted in the BLT building started removing debris and searching for survivors and bodies using whatever they had at hand. Engineering units brought in some heavy equipment and a local Lebanese contractor brought a 40 ton crane from a project elsewhere on the Airport to assist in moving large slabs of concrete. As the surviving Marines dug through the rubble, CH-46 helos from HMM 126 were medevacing wounded to the USS Iwo Jima and naval medical personnel were triaging and treating the wounded.
The last survivor found during the recovery effort was LTJG Danny G. Wheeler, Lutheran chaplain for BLT 1/8.
Neither the US or French would retaliate in any serious way. The final Marines supporting the MNF would leave Lebanon on 26 February 1984. An enhanced Embassy guard of 100 Marines would stay until late July 1984, as the US Embassy in Beirut closed.
Beirut Barracks Bombing memorial Arlington National Cemetery
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s representative in Lebanon, Sayyed Issa Tabatabai, claimed in an interview that the despotic regime was involved in multiple terror attacks in the Middle East in the 1980s, including the 1983 Beirut truck bombing which killed 220 Marines in their barracks.
Tabatabai said he was authorized to carry out martyrdom operations:
According to the MEMRI translation of Tabatabai’s interview with the IRNA, Tabatabai said, “I quickly went to Lebanon and provided what was needed in order to [carry out] martyrdom operations in the place where the Americans and Israelis were.” He added, “The efforts to establish [Hezbollah] started in [Lebanon’s] Baalbek area, where members of [Iran’s] Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) arrived. I had no part in establishing the [political] party [Hezbollah], but God made it possible for me to continue the military activity with the group that had cooperated with us prior to the [Islamic] Revolution’s victory.”
The list of atrocities they allegedly carried out in the name of Jihad is lengthy:
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.
The state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quickly moved to suppress news of the interview when they found out about it:
The MEMRI report continued, “It is noteworthy that the part of the interview in which Tabatabai acknowledged receiving Khomeini’s fatwa ordering attacks on American and Israeli targets in Lebanon was removed by IRNA from its website shortly after publication. This is apparently because no official representative of [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic, or of Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, had ever said that Iran had any involvement in ordering, planning and carrying out the massive bombings in Lebanon against U.S.,” wrote MEMRI.
American officials have long suspected Iranian involvement in myriad terrorist acts across the world. Yet, somehow former President Obama thought it wise to enter into a nuclear deal with the country that our own State Department deems a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Last month, meanwhile—on 9/11, unbelievably—President Biden released $6 billion in frozen Iranian money in order to secure the freedom of five prisoners.
Said Iran expert for the American Enterprise Institute Michael Rubin:
Americans have astonished both Iranians and the victims of Iranian terrorism with the diplomatic contortions undertaken to avoid holding Iran to account. Now that the supreme leader’s representative has confessed, the questions are: (1) Will Americans who carried water for Iranian terrorism apologize? (2) Will Iran pay compensation to the victims of their terror? If [President] Biden prices five Americans at $6 billion, the U.S. should demand no less than $289.2 billion from Iran today.
Iran has always strenuously denied involvement in the bombings. It’s unclear whether this apparent new admission by a top-level official will change the tenor of relations between the two countries.
Neither Biden nor Obama has a strong record of holding the Islamic Republic to account, though, so I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting the president to do so now.
Around 0630 local time 39 years ago today, Lebanese Islamic Jihad detonated a truck bomb in the Beirut International Airport barracks of 1/8 Marine Battalion Landing team killing 220 Marines, 18 Sailors and 3 soldiers and wounding another 128. The explosives used were estimated to be the equivalent of 21,000 pounds of TNT.
BIA Marine Barracks before the bombing.BIA Marine Barracks After the bombing
About ten minutes later, another truck bomb was detonated at the Drakkar building, where a French contingent was stationed, killing 58 French paratroopers. The two bombs also killed 6 Lebanese civilians.
Both countries troops were in Lebanon as part of a multi-national peacekeeping mission during the Lebanese civil war. As a peacekeeping mission, there were strict rules of engagement in place.
When on post, mobile or foot patrol, keep loaded magazine in weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe, no round in the chamber.
Do not chamber a round unless instructed to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized.
Keep ammo for crew-served weapons readily available but not loaded in the weapon. Weapons will be on safe at all times.
Call local forces to assist in self-defense effort. Notify headquarters.
Use only minimum degree of force to accomplish any mission.
Stop the use of force when it is no longer needed to accomplish the mission.
If you receive effective hostile fire, direct your fire at the source. If possible, use friendly snipers.
Respect civilian property; do not attack it unless absolutely necessary to protect friendly forces.
Protect innocent civilians from harm.
Respect and protect recognized medical agencies such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, etc.
The Marines on guard on that fateful Sunday were in compliance with rules 1-3 and did not have time to fire on the truck as it sped to the barracks.
Aftermath of the bombing
The blast lifted the building, shearing the 15″ diameter support columns, and the building collapsed on itself. The explosive mechanism was a gas-enhanced device consisting of compressed butane in canisters employed with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) to create a fuel-air explosive.
Recovery efforts began almost immediately. Marines not billeted in the BLT building started removing debris and searching for survivors and bodies using whatever they had at hand. Engineering units brought in some heavy equipment and a local Lebanese contractor brought a 40 ton crane from a project elsewhere on the Airport to assist in moving large slabs of concrete. As the surviving Marines dug through the rubble, CH-46 helos from HMM 126 were medevacing wounded to the USS Iwo Jima and naval medical personnel were triaging and treating the wounded.
The last survivor found during the recovery effort was LTJG Danny G. Wheeler, Lutheran chaplain for BLT 1/8.
Neither the US or French would retaliate in any serious way. The final Marines supporting the MNF would leave Lebanon on 26 February 1984. An enhanced Embassy guard of 100 Marines would stay until late July 1984, as the US Embassy in Beirut closed.
Beirut Barracks Bombing memorial Arlington National Cemetery
Most of us are in agreement that it was ammonium nitrate that caused the the explosion. But many are asking why that much of the chemical was stored there.
An independent journalist from Lebanon may have the answer. Hachem Yassine has a couple of Twitter threads that explain the situation.
Here’s the graphic from the tweet, so you can see it without having to click through.
It was produced by a law firm that represented the crew from the MV Rhosus, the vessel in question. Hachem goes into greater detail in the following thread:
There are a few things to keep in mind. This is Lebanon. Things happen in third world countries that would never happen here.
Beyond the normal corruption you’ll see in those types of places, Hezbollah is a big part of daily life there. It’s rumored they control the port and at least part of the customs service in Beirut.
My guess is the someone who didn’t want the shipment destroyed or re-exported was someone from Hezbollah. As I noted in yesterday’s The View from Here, Hezbollah has been caught trying to stockpile AN in England and Germany.
And a little mea culpa, I said yesterday the TNT equivalent of the 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate was 2.2k/t. It isn’t. That’s the equivalent yield of ANFO. Straight, un-boosted AN is less explod-y. The TNT equivalent is more like 1.2k/t.
The massive explosion that rocked the Lebanese capital yesterday has left at least 135 people dead and more than 5,000 wounded. Upwards of 300,000 people are now homeless because of the blast. Lebanese officials are still searching the rubble for victims and survivors.
The blast is being blamed on 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It appears that what would have been a “normal” fire at the port caused the ammonium nitrate to cook off. In some of the footage of the explosion you can see flashes of what look like fireworks going off, which was an early explanation of the blast.
Ammonium nitrate is an industrial chemical commonly used as fertilizer for plants and can be used to make explosives. It does not readily burn, but will do so if contaminated with combustible material. It’s also an oxidizer, meaning that it draws oxygen to a fire and can make it more intense.
ANFO explosives are approximately 80% of the value of TNT, so based on my calculations, the blast at the port was equivalent to approximately 2200 tons of TNT.
For reference, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols used approximately 4800lbs of ammonium nitrate explosives when the bombed the Murragh building in Oklahoma City. That’s equivalent to about 3800 pounds of TNT. The MOAB (massive ordnance air burst) is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT. What I’m saying is this was a huge blast.
The Beirut blast leveled an area 2km from the blast site and left a 70m crater.
Smoke can still be seen rising over the remnants of the port. The grain silos that stored as much as 80% of the grain for the country have been destroyed. Much of downtown was littered with damaged vehicles and debris that had rained down from the shattered facades of buildings.
