Born in the heat of the civil war that Lebanon experienced between 1975 and 1990, the Hezbollah group had, since its dawn, the support of the Iranian regime. This is explained by researcher Matthew Levitt in his book Hezbollah: The Footprints on the World of the Party of God: “The Israeli invasion of 1982 and the subsequent occupation of southern Lebanon created the perfect setting for Iranian diplomats and agents to help create a centralized organization, based on groups very varied and Shia militants”.
According to a CIA report quoted by Levitt, in the first years following its founding, Hezbollah had established a “radical Islamic canton in the Bekaa Valley” in southern Lebanon. The area would become, over the years, one of the main strongholds of the group and the scene of clashes, such as the 2006 escalation of war that pitted Israel against Hezbollah.
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“Since 1982, Hezbollah has built an extensive global network that is supported by operations and support mainly from communities in Lebanese Shia diasporas,” explains Levitt, current director of the Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He adds: “During the 1980s, the organization studied Western interests in Lebanon, planning to bomb embassies and military barracks, kidnap Westerners and airplanes.”
The first major coup occurred on April 18, 1983: on that day, a car bomb attack on the U.S. The US government in Beirut left 63 dead, including 17 Americans. It was followed, six months later, on October 23 that same year, by two simultaneous attacks on the headquarters of the US Marine Battalion and against the building of the French Multinational Force in the same city, with a total of 299 deaths. Subsequently, the group returned to the charge against the new US diplomatic headquarters in the Lebanese capital, on 20 September 1984, causing 24 fatalities.
THE SEAL OF IMAD MUGHNIYAH
Behind the planning of these actions was Imad Mugniyah, who would appear again in the 1990s as responsible, among other actions, for the attacks on the Israeli Embassy and AMIA in Buenos Aires. According to the trajectory that Levitt reconstructs in his work, this elusive agent of Hezbollah joined the organization's Advisory Council (Majlis al-Shura) in 1986 and held multiple positions in the security of the group, until he assumed the leadership of Islamic Jihad, the group's military wing and seal used for the actions terrorists abroad. It was precisely this organization that claimed responsibility for the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires 24 hours after the fact.
It is believed that until his murder with a car bomb in Damascus in 2008, Mughniyah was the highest ranking military commander within the Hezbollah. The CIA never forgave him a particularly cruel action that struck the US intelligence center: the kidnapping, torture and murder of Agent William Buckley, which occurred in Lebanon in March 1984. Although news of his execution was announced by Hezbollah in October 1985, the body would only be found in December 1991.
Mughniyah's brain would be behind Hezbollah's global campaign for the next decade. “During the 1990s, the scope of operations expanded, reaching Europe and South America,” explains Matthew Levitt. This new strategy includes the attacks in Buenos Aires, which were inconcealed with the inconcealable help of senior authorities and diplomatic personnel of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Argentina.
“On May 16, 1992, two months after the attack, Hadi Soleimanpour, the Iranian ambassador, traveled to Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, along with the senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official, an official of the Iranian embassy in Chile and a small group of tourists,” Levitt reconstructs in his book. The meeting they held with the Brazilian ambassador would conceal, according to the author, a darker purpose of that trip: “to make a payment related to the terrorist attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires”. Among those suspected of involvement in the bloody terrorist attacks against our country, is also the former Iranian embassy cultural attaché, the cleric Mohsen Rabbani, who is being held by an Interpol international arrest warrant.
The most worrying thing, Levitt warns, is that Iran and Hezbollah are still active in South America. Worse, according to this expert, “the penetration of Iranian intelligence into South America has spread significantly since the attack on AMIA.”
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