It was perhaps the single most important meeting that Hussein Amir Abdul-Lahian held in Beirut. There were four in that closed room: the assistant foreign minister of Iran; Iranian Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi; Iranian charge d'affaires Mohammed Sadiq al-Fadhli; and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. The meeting took place a day after the twin suicide bombing that struck the Iranian embassy building in Beirut on November 19, meaning this issue topped the meeting agenda, but the talks also branched out to tackle other issues.
Abdul-Lahian, who was in charge of explaining the particulars of the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries, wanted to hear Nasrallah’s opinion about the terrorist attack. In the end, only the Hezbollah leader could provide satisfying answers.
“The operation was meticulously planned,” Nasrallah told his audience, stressing that the planners “must have known the embassy building brick by brick.” Nasrallah also said that Ambassador Roknabadi was “the target both as a person and as a symbol,” along with the charge d'affaires, who had served as a diplomat for years in Bahrain.
It is unclear whether the attackers knew that Roknabadi had to leave the embassy building at the time of the bombing with Ibrahim al-Ansari (who was killed in the attack) for a previous engagement with Lebanese Culture Minister Gaby Lyon. Logic says if they knew, they would have waited for the ambassador to leave and carried out the attack at that moment. At any rate, the bombing was “meant to destroy the facade of the building opposite the main gate, as the attackers knew the offices of the ambassador and the charge d'affaires were located in that part.”
Nasrallah said that the type of the explosives used in the attack was “new,” pointing out that previous attacks “aimed at claiming the largest number of lives, while the last attack sought to cause the greatest possible destruction.” The Hezbollah secretary general predicted that similar attacks would continue, noting that they are meant to “offset the setbacks the enemy suffered on many fronts, especially in Syria.”
He added, “It is a difficult stage that we need to endure,” and cautioned that the embassy would remain a target for other attacks. Nasrallah continued, “True, the attack went through, but they did not achieve their targets. They will keep trying until they do.”
The talks between Nasrallah and his Iranian guests then moved on to regional issues, especially the situation in Syria. Nasrallah advised Abdul-Lahian that Iran should not comply with Manama’s request to send an ambassador to Bahrain.
“The timing is not right,” he said, because there is a new Reformist-leaning administration in Tehran, which has already restored flights between the two countries. Returning the Iranian ambassador to Manama under an administration of this kind, Nasrallah said, could imply a sudden and gratuitous rapprochement, and might adversely impact the opposition in Bahrain.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.