So says a retired Navy Admiral James “Ace” Lyons also called “the father” of the Navy SEALs’ Red Cell counter-terror unit.
“We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon,” 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.
Does this make the revolution in Iran any less important?
No.
Ed Morrissey makes a good point that the Mullah’s completely fumbled this whole election almost accidently starting a full blown revolution. If they would have simply allow Mousavi to win, this would have never happened. Mousavi, after all, is a radical Islamist like Ahmadinejad, just not so brazen on the international scene.
Mousavi would have played ball had mullahs allowed him to take office — perhaps somewhat less enthusiastically than Ahmadinejad, but still Mousavi would have worked within the system. They’ve practically forced Mousavi to serve as a beacon for the opposition that wants the mullahs out of power, and in doing so actually make Mousavi less important as a safety valve, a loyal member of the ruling class that could mainstream the opposition so as to make it benign to the real power in Tehran. It’s inexplicably stupid, like deliberately throwing gasoline on a fire.
Still, it’s good to remind people in the West of Mousavi’s actions within that ruling class. Perhaps he regrets his actions, and the Guardian statement seems to suggest that, but we’d need to see a lot more than a reference to Gandhi. We need to focus our support on the people of Iran and not Mousavi, and hope that they can soon choose leaders outside of the mullahcracy that has choked Iran for 30 years.
Related posts:
- Lebanon: Hizbullah not happy with 1/3rd of seats in parliament
- Lebanon Elections: Pro-US coalition claims victory over Hezbollah
- Hezbollah pushes for a new civil war in Lebanon
- Israeli Army asks Lebanon to prevent further rocket attacks against Israel
- LEBANON: WELL-KNOWN SINGER FOUND DEAD, DISFIGURED IN DUBAI
- Major riots in Tehran over Election Fraud; opposition candidate Mousavi arrested?; reports of 50-100 dead?
- Syria deploys 10,000 troops across Lebanon border
- Wow: Obama to block Iran sanctions at G8 Summit.
- Death toll from car-bomb in northern Lebanon rises to 7
- Lebanon: Women gain right to open bank accounts
