Lebanon Blackmail in Beirut

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The U.S. has warned the government of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which is believed to be providing Islamic Jihad with material and spiritual assistance, that the U.S. will hold Iran responsible for the fate of the Beirut hostages. Three months ago, when Islamic Jihad threatened to kill one of the Americans it was holding, Secretary of State George Shultz told Iran that it would suffer military consequences if any of the captives in Lebanon were harmed. Though it was by no means clear precisely what the Secretary had in mind, a senior State Department official added last week, "That is a permanent warning that Iran should take seriously."

When a car bomb exploded on March 8 in a Beirut suburb, killing more than 80 people and injuring 200, there was little doubt as to the attack's target. The detonation took place just 50 yds. from the home of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, spiritual leader of the Hizballah (Party of God), a militant pro-Iranian Shi'ite group. Several of Fadlallah's bodyguards were among the victims, but the sheik, who was in a nearby mosque, was uninjured. No one ever claimed responsibility for the incident.

Last week the Washington Post reported that the bomb attack was the work of mercenaries hired by members of a Lebanese intelligence unit that had secretly received counterterrorist training and assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA did not know about the attack beforehand and had no control over it, the Post said. Alarmed that even this indirect association with such an incident could damage U.S. interests in the Middle East, the Reagan Administration canceled its connection with the Lebanese intelligence agency.

Though not identified in the Post story, the Lebanese unit involved was widely presumed to be the Deuxieme Bureau, the intelligence branch of the Lebanese Army. The unit is dominated by Maronite Christians with close ties to the 6,000-member Christian militia called the Lebanese Forces. Intelligence sources in Washington speculate that agents of the Deuxieme Bureau, possibly acting on their own, hired outsiders to carry out the car bombing. The Lebanese Army high command flatly denied any official involvement in the attack. As for the CIA , it insisted that it had not trained the agents involved in the bombing.