Thread by @arash_tehran

Anis Naqqash, a notorious Lebanese assassin and pro-Iranian regime activist, is dead at 70. He died in a Damascus hospital after contracting Covid-19.

Naqqash had been sentenced to life in prison by French courts after his failed 1980 assassination attempt on the life of Iran's last pre-republican prime minister, the social democratic Shapur Bakhtiar, in which two other people died.

Bakhtiar himself would be killed by another team supported by Tehran, 11 years later, at the age of 77.

In the 1980s, as #France President Francois Mitterand attempted to push Iran to free French hostages in Lebanon, it pardoned Naqqash and released him.

Naqqash came to Iran to a hero's welcome and with no shame gave an interview and explained in detail about how he had gone to France to kill Bakhtiar under the order of Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Beirut-born activist who had been a member of Palestinian Fatah in his youth before quitting to join pro-Iran groupings, continued to run corrupt business interests in Iran and appeared as a pundit on Iran-backed media. He moved between Tehran, Beirut and Damascus.

Iran's assassination of more than 300 people around the world since 1979 is something that should never be forgotten. Hundreds of people, like Naqqash, responsible for these crimes need to be hold accountable.

I wrote about it last month:

nytimes.com/2021/01/12/opi…

& what do you think Hezbollah thought of Naqqash who was a close comrade of Imad Muqniyah, its slain commander?

Hezbollah praised Naqqash as "one of the most important thinkers & researchers in our region [who] qualitatively contributed to confrontation with the Zionist enemy."

This is who these thugs are! This is how they praise a cold-blooded assassin like Naqqash