Aftermath of the bombing of the US Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, October 1983. (Photo: Screenshot)

For the first time, a senior Iranian official has acknowledged Iran’s role in a series of bombings in Lebanon in the 1980s that claimed the lives of hundreds of Americans.

In an interview with Iran’s state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Issa Tabatabai described how he helped establish the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and carry out attacks against Americans and Israelis while serving as the representative in Lebanon of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamist regime in Iran.

“With the victory of the Islamic Revolution [in Iran], Hezbollah was established [in the summer of 1982],” Tabatabai said. “When Israel occupied South Lebanon, we had to launch a movement, and the military movement started in my home … The military courses we had with the Palestinians prompted us to launch the struggle, and from the Imam [Khomeini], I received approval for the struggle against Israel and even the fatwa [ordering] to carry out martyrdom operations [suicide bombings], and he confirmed this three times.”

Tabatabai — who currently serves as Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s official representative in Lebanon — told IRNA that he soon put Khomeini’s fatwa into action.

“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 said.

The interview was first published on IRNA on Sept. 13 but was translated and posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) last week. According to MEMRI, IRNA removed the relevant quotations about Iran’s involvement in Hezbollah’s terror activities in the 1980s shortly after publication.

Tabatabai’s description of the formation of Hezbollah and his role in organizing the group’s terrorist operations is the first public acknowledgement by an Iranian official of Iran’s involvement in the April 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, and the October 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed nearly 300 US and French troops. In the latter attack, 220 US Marines, 18 US Navy sailors, 3 US Army soldiers, and 58 French troops were murdered.

At the time, the attacks were claimed by the obscure “Islamic Jihad” organization, which is now generally recognized as Hezbollah’s nom de guerre before the group’s official public emergence in 1985.

Islamic Jihad also initially claimed responsibility for the 1982 explosion at an Israel Defense Forces base in Tyre, Lebanon, that killed 76 Israelis. While Hezbollah eventually claimed responsibility under its own name in 1985, for decades Israel officially maintained that the blast was caused by a gas leak. Earlier this year Israel re-opened an inquiry into the explosion and concluded that it was most likely a Hezbollah attack.

Iran has always denied any role in the bombings, though US civil courts have repeatedly found Iran to be responsible in decades of litigation to recover compensation for the victims. Most recently in March, a New York judge ordered Iran’s central bank and a Luxembourg-based intermediary to pay out $1.68 billion in damages to victims of the Beirut barracks bombing. American victims of the attacks have also been compensated through the US Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which distributes assets seized from Iran.