The US State Department informed the Lebanese Embassy in Washington that its Detroit consul, Ibrahim Charara, was declared persona non grata and had 48 hours to leave the country, Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Sunday.
Citing Lebanese Foreign Ministry sources, the Saudi-owned newspaper reported that the US decision came in response to old social media posts attributed to Charara regarding the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut.
Lebanese Embassy in Washington D.C., file imageIn October of that year, a truck bomb destroyed the US Marine barracks near Beirut International Airport in Lebanon, killing 241 US military personnel.
In 2021, the Lebanese consul described that attack by calling it an act of "heroic resistance" that ended the "American military occupation of Beirut with a single strike."
The attack has been attributed to a group known as the Islamic Jihad Organization, which received backing from Iran and later evolved into the Lebanese Shia resistance movement Hezbollah.
US Marines had been deployed to Beirut in 1982 as part of a multinational peacekeeping force during the Lebanese Civil War, following Israel's invasion of Lebanon, which killed some 20,000 Lebanese.
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