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Khobar Towers Bombing: Iran Becomes Expert in Concealing Tools of Sabotage

Investigators inspect the Khobar Towers complex after an attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in June 1996. (Reuters)
Investigators inspect the Khobar Towers complex after an attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in June 1996. (Reuters)
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Khobar Towers Bombing: Iran Becomes Expert in Concealing Tools of Sabotage

Investigators inspect the Khobar Towers complex after an attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in June 1996. (Reuters)
Investigators inspect the Khobar Towers complex after an attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in June 1996. (Reuters)

“The truth will be revealed in the future.” This was the response of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani in December 1996 when asked if his country was involved in the Khobar Towers bombing in June of that year. This was just a statement from an interview then Asharq Al-Awsat Editor-in-Chief Othman Al Omeir conducted with the former ruler.

“You always speak of Iran’s good intentions and then come the accusations, such as the one related to the Khobar bombing. Can you confirm otherwise?” Al Omeir asked at the time. Rafsanjani replied: “The rumors over this issue are similar to previous ones. There is no doubt that the truth will be revealed in the future.”

He added that he was officially informed that those involved were Saudi residents, some of whom fled the Kingdom. He said they may have turned to Iran. “We have seriously searched for them, but could find no trace of them in Iran,” he added. One of the suspects is known to authorities, he continued, revealing that it was alleged that he was in Iran, but it turned out that he died in prison in Syria.

In June 1996, Khobar was rocked late at night by a massive truck bombing that destroyed an eight-story building in a housing complex. The building was home to American and other western families. The entire complex also housed Saudi families, but the building was targeted specifically because it was home to mostly Americans.

Nineteen Americans and a Saudi were killed in the attack, which also left 400 people wounded. Days later, the United States officially accused the Hezbollah Al-Hejaz party of being behind the bombing, which was one of the strongest attacks against Saudi Arabia. The US Justice Department formally charged 13 Saudis and a Lebanese man in the attack.

Facts revealed
Riyadh and Washington continued to cooperate with each other in the investigation. In June 2001, the US indicted 13 members of the Hezbollah Al-Hejaz, saying they received backing from Iran. In 2002, the Iranian government was demanded to respond to accusations that it, along with the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, were involved in the crime.

In 2004, an American federal judge ordered Iran to pay 254 million dollars in damages to the families of 17 American military personnel who died in the attack. An indictment was issued against the Iranian government and its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as the Revolutionary Guards. High court judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the attack was carried out by people recruited by Guards General Ahmad Shah Cheraghi. The truck used in the assault was put together at a Hezbollah and Guards base in the Lebanese Bekaa region and Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei approved the bombing.

“The totality of the evidence at trial . . . firmly establishes that the Khobar Towers bombing was planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of Iran," Lamberth said. The terrorists carried out the attack and then fled to Iran. They include prime suspect, Ahmed Al-Mughassil, who led the military wing of the Hezbollah Al-Hejaz. He remained in Iran from 1996 to 2015. He was wanted by the FBI that offered 5 million dollars for anyone who would provide information that would directly lead to his whereabouts.

Mughassil arrest
In August 2015, Asharq Al-Awsat ran the exclusive news of Mughassil’s arrest in Beirut from where he was flown to Riyadh. According to official Saudi sources at the time, Saudi security services received confirmed information that the suspect was in the Lebanese capital. They swooped in, putting an end to a 19-year search.

Another suspect, Jaafar Shuweikhat, reportedly died in his cell three days after his arrest by Syrian authorities. Plans were underway for his deportation to Saudi Arabia. He allegedly committed suicide by swallowing a bar of soap. A third suspect, Abdulkarim al-Nassar, is still at large and believed to be in Iran, where authorities are giving him safe haven. Other suspects include Ibrahim al-Yacoub and Ali al-Houri.

New judgment against Iran
On Friday, a US judge ordered Iran to pay another $879.1 million over the bombing, ruling again that Tehran bore responsibility. President Donald Trump's administration hailed the judgment, the latest over the attack against Iran, which denies involvement and refuses to pay.

Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the US federal district court in Washington, cited previous evidence as she wrote that Iran "aided Hezbollah in carrying out a horrific, violent attack that killed 19 people and injured hundreds more."

In a July 2 ruling that was made public this week, she ordered the damages for 14 US service members who were injured in the attack as well as 21 family members. Explaining why the amount includes punitive damages, she said that the plaintiffs "suffered physical injuries and psychological trauma" and that "there is a need to deter future terrorist attacks."

State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus hailed the decision, writing on Twitter: "Justice is overdue for the many victims of Iranian-supported terror."

Howell in 2018 had ordered Iran to pay $104.7 million in a similar case over the Khobar Towers bombing.

Hezbollah Al-Hejaz
The Revolutionary Guards first started to form the Hezbollah Al-Hejaz in 1980. The terrorist group was formally established in 1987 after the Hajj incidents and clashes with Saudi security forces that left dozens of pilgrims and members of the security dead. The terrorists were trained in Iranian camps to carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia.

The group operated with a political and military council under the Revolutionary Guards. It made its first statement a week after the Hajj incidents, vowing to work against Saudi leaders. It was behind the August 1987 bombing of an Eastern Province gas plant and the March 1988 bombing of oil installations at Ras Tanura and Jubail.

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A Train Station was Once the Pride of Syria's Capital. Some See it as a Symbol of Revival after War

The Qadam train station, which was damaged during the war between rebel forces and ousted President Bashar Assad's forces, is seen in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
The Qadam train station, which was damaged during the war between rebel forces and ousted President Bashar Assad's forces, is seen in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
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A Train Station was Once the Pride of Syria's Capital. Some See it as a Symbol of Revival after War

The Qadam train station, which was damaged during the war between rebel forces and ousted President Bashar Assad's forces, is seen in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
The Qadam train station, which was damaged during the war between rebel forces and ousted President Bashar Assad's forces, is seen in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

A train station in Damascus was once the pride of the Syrian capital, an essential link between Europe and the Arabian Peninsula during the Ottoman Empire and then a national transit hub. But more than a decade of war left it a wasteland of bullet-scarred walls and twisted steel.

The Qadam station's remaining staff say they still have an attachment to the railway and hope that it, like the country, can be revived after the swift and stunning downfall of leader Bashar Assad last month.

On a recent day, train operator Mazen Malla led The Associated Press through the landscape of charred train cars and workshops damaged by artillery fire. Bullet casings littered the ground.

Malla grew up near the station. His father, uncles and grandfather all worked there. Eventually he was driving trains himself, spending more than 12 hours a day at work.

“The train is a part of us," he said with a deep, nostalgic sigh, as he picked up what appeared to be a spent artillery shell and tossed it aside. “I wouldn’t see my kids as much as I would see the train.”

The Qadam station was the workhorse of the iconic Hejaz Railway that was built under the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Abdulhamid II in the early 1900s, linking Muslim pilgrims from Europe and Asia via what is now Türkiye to the holy city of Madinah in Saudi Arabia.

That glory was short-lived. The railway soon became in an armed uprising during World War I backed by Britain, France and other Allied forces that eventually took down the Ottoman Empire.

In the following decades, Syria used its section of the railway to transport people between Damascus and its second city of Aleppo, along with several towns and neighboring Jordan. While the main station, still intact a few miles away, later became a historical site and events hall, Qadam remained the busy home of the workshops and people making the railway run.

As train cars were upgraded, the old wooden ones were placed in a museum. The Qadam station, however, retained its structure of Ottoman stone and French bricks from Marseille.

But war tore it apart after Assad's crackdown on protesters demanding greater freedoms.

“The army turned this into a military base,” Malla said. Workers like him were sent away.

Qadam station was too strategic for soldiers to ignore. It gave Assad's forces a vantage point on key opposition strongholds in Damascus. Up a flight of stairs, an office became a sniper's nest.

The nearby neighborhood of Al-Assali is now mostly in ruins after becoming a no man’s land between the station and the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk that became an opposition stronghold and was besieged and bombarded for years by government forces.

The fighting entered the railway station at least once, in 2013. Footage widely circulated online showed opposition firing assault rifles and taking cover behind trains.

Malla and his family fled their home near the station to a nearby neighborhood. He heard the fighting but prayed that the station that had long been his family's livelihood would be left unscathed.

Assad's forces cleared the opposition from Damascus in 2018. The train station, though badly wrecked, was opened again, briefly, as a symbol of triumph and revival. Syrian state media reported that trains would take passengers to the annual Damascus International Fair. It broadcast images of happy passengers by the entrance and at the destination, but not of the station's vast damage.

Syria’s railway never returned to its former prosperity under Assad, and Malla stayed away as the military maintained control of much of Qadam. After Assad was ousted and the factions who forced him out became the interim administration, Malla returned.

He found his home destroyed. The station, which he described as “part of my soul,” was badly damaged.

“What we saw was tragic,” he said. "It was unbelievable. It was heartbreaking.”

The train cars were battered and burned. Some were piles of scrap. The museum had been looted and the old trains had been stripped for sale on Syria’s black market.

“Everything was stolen. Copper, electric cables and tools — they were all gone,” Malla said.

The trains' distinctive wooden panels had disappeared. Malla and others believe that Assad's fighters used them as firewood during the harsh winters.

In the former no man's land, packs of stray dogs barked and searched for food. Railway workers and families living at the train station say an urban legend spread that the dogs ate the bodies of captives that Assad’s notorious web of intelligence agencies killed and dumped late at night.

Now Malla and others hope the railway can be cleared of its rubble and its dark past and become a central part of Syria's economic revival after war and international isolation. They dream of the railway helping to return the country to its former status as a key link between Europe and the Middle East.

There is much work to be done. About 90% of Syria's population of over 23 million people live in poverty, according to the United Nations. Infrastructure is widely damaged. Western sanctions, imposed during the war, continue.

But already, neighboring Türkiye has expressed interest in restoring the railway line to Damascus as part of efforts to boost trade and investment.

That prospect excites Malla, whose son Malek spent much of his teenage years surviving the war. At his age, his father and uncle were already learning how to operate a steam engine.

“I hope there will soon be job opportunities, so my son can be employed,” Malla said. “That way he can revive the lineage of his grandfather, and the grandfather of his grandfather."