One of the primary sources of Shiite terrorist activities, directed against the United States and the West, the state of Israel, and non-Shiite Islamic or Arab governments is found in the group named Hezbollah. Hezbollah, which is centered in war-torn Lebanon, occupies a position on the U.S. State DepartmentÆs formal list of official ôforeign terrorist organizations (Cobban 1). This characterization is due, in part, to the position taken by Hezbollah and its largely Shiite Muslim membership regarding the United states and other Westerners in the period before 1985, the period before the organizationÆs actual establishment as a unified organization.
Among the myriad terrorist actions attributed to or claimed by this Shiite group one can list spectacularly bloody attacks on United States Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon (and a French caserne as well) in October of 1983 (Cobban 1). A total of 241 U.S. Marines were killed, along with 57 of the French counterparts; scores of others, including civilians and non-combatants, were wounded in this attack.
The council on Foreign Relations (1) identified other important Shiite Hezbollah terrorist atrocities, to wit: 1) a series of kidnappings, including several of Americans, in the early to mid- 1980s; 2) the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, in which Shiite gunmen demanded that 700 Arabs held by the state of Israel be released; and 3) two major 1990s attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina, including the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy that killed 29 and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center which killed 95. In the 1985 hijacking, a U.S. Navy driver was killed and 38 Americans held for several months as hostages; diplomatic efforts eventually resolved this crisis, but military threats were tendered. Further, Gerth (1) reported that in Saudi Arabia, Shiite groups have consistently opposed the Saudi Royal Family, demanding an end
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