1996 жылғы Хобар шабуылы

1996 terrorist attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia

The Khobar Towers bombing was a terrorist attack on part of a housing complex in the city of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, near the national oil company (Saudi Aramco) headquarters of Dhahran and nearby King Abdulaziz Air Base on 25 June 1996. At that time, Khobar Towers was being used as living quarters for coalition forces who were assigned to Operation Southern Watch, a no fly zone operation in southern Iraq, as part of the Iraqi no fly zones. A truck bomb was detonated adjacent to Building #131, an eight story structure housing members of the United States Air Force's 4404th Wing (Provisional), primarily from a deployed rescue squadron and deployed fighter squadron. In all, 19 U. S. Air Force personnel were killed and 498 of many nationalities were wounded. The official 25 June 1996, statement by the United States named members of Hezbollah Al Hejaz as responsible. In 2006, a U. S. court found Iran and Hezbollah guilty of orchestrating the attack.

On 13 November 1995, a car bombing in Riyadh outside the headquarters of the OPM SANG killed six Americans and two Indian citizens and injured about 70 others. This attack led the U. S. forces stationed at Khobar Towers to raise the threat condition to THREATCON DELTA. Days after this car bombing, military commanders briefed soldiers and airmen at Khobar that the U. S. had received anonymous communications from an organization claiming to have carried out the Riyadh attack. The attackers claimed their goal was to get the United States Armed Forces to leave the country, and that Khobar Towers would be attacked next if troop withdrawal did not begin immediately. It was at this time that surveillance and other suspicious activity near the perimeter fences of Khobar Towers was noted by United States Air Force Security Forces; however, the forces were forbidden by the Saudi government to act in any capacity outside the perimeter of the compound, and the surveillance continued with near impunity. The attackers were reported to have smuggled explosives into Saudi Arabia from Lebanon. Al Mughassil, Al Houri, Al Sayegh, Al Qassab, and the unidentified Lebanese man bought a large latrine service tanker truck in early June 1996 in Saudi Arabia. Over a two week period they converted it into a truck bomb. The group now had about of plastic explosives, enough to produce a shaped charge that detonated with the force of at least of TNT, according to a later assessment of the Defense Special Weapons Agency. The power of the blast was magnified several ways. The truck itself shaped the charge by directing the blast toward the building. Moreover, the relatively high clearance between the truck and the ground gave it the more lethal characteristics of an air burst. It was originally estimated by U. S. authorities to have contained of explosives. Later the General Downing report on the incident suggested that the explosion contained the equivalent of of TNT. The attackers prepared for the attack by hiding large amounts of explosive materials and timing devices in paint cans and bags underground in Qatif, a city near Khobar. The bomb was a mixture of petrol and explosive powder placed in the tank of a sewage tanker truck. Initially, the attackers attempted to enter the compound at the main checkpoint. When they were denied access by U. S. military personnel, at around 9:43 p. m. local time, they drove a Datsun scout vehicle, another car and the bomb truck, to a parking lot adjacent to building #131. A chain link security fence and a line of small trees separated the car park, used for a local mosque and park, from the housing compound. The perimeter of Building #131 was approximately 72 feet (22 m) from the fence line, with a perimeter road between the fence and building which was often used by military personnel for jogging. The first car entered the car park and signaled the others by flashing headlights. The bomb truck and a getaway vehicle followed shortly after. The men parked the truck next to the fence and left in the third vehicle. The bomb exploded three to four minutes later at approximately 10:20 p. m. local time. The blast was so powerful that it was felt 20 mile (32 km) away in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain. A U. S. Air Force security policeman, Staff Sergeant Alfredo R. Guerrero, was stationed atop Building #131 when he witnessed the men, recognized the vehicles as a threat, reported it to security, and began a floor by floor evacuation of the building. His actions are credited with saving dozens of lives. Many of the evacuees were in the stairwell when the bomb went off. The stairwell was constructed of heavy marble and was located on the side of the building away from the truck bomb, perhaps the safest location in the building. For his actions, Guerrero was awarded the Airman's Medal. Another security measure is thought to have minimized damage; along the security fence were Jersey barriers, concrete barriers commonly used along roadways. These deflected the blast energy upward, and away from the lower floors of the building, perhaps even preventing a total collapse of the structure. The force of the explosion was enormous. The size of the explosion created an intense dust storm as the forces of the high pressure blast wave and the subsequent vacuum forces caused considerable damage in their own right. Several military vehicles parked to the left side of building #131 suffered no direct impact from debris, but were heavily damaged by the sheer intensity of the shock wave. The explosion heavily damaged or destroyed six high rise apartment buildings in the complex. Windows were shattered in virtually every other building in the compound and in surrounding buildings up to a mile (1.6 km) away. A very large crater, 85 feet (26 m) wide and 35 feet (11 m) deep, was left where the truck had been. Within a few hours of the blast, the crater began to fill with salt water from the Persian Gulf. In the minutes following the blast, the residents of the complex evacuated severely injured U. S. military personnel from the area. With power out in many of the buildings near #131, the scene was chaotic and tense as little was known about the safety of the area from further attacks. Many residents later gathered in the local dining facility, set up as a triage center, and saw breaking news of the event on large projection televisions intended to bring news of events back home to the troops.

After the blast, an assessment crew consisting of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), and United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) was sent to assess the risk to other security compounds in Saudi Arabia, and to offer suggestions for the Khobar Towers complex. It was suggested that Mylar tape be used to coat the windows for a barrier, but the cost, about US$4.5 million, was considered prohibitive. Numerous warnings had been made available to the intelligence community and military command, and up to "ten incidents [were] reported suggesting that the Khobar Towers are under surveillance" from April to June 1996. These warnings came both before and after the beheadings of four Saudi nationals after their publicly confessed role in the November 1995 attacks in Riyadh. Clinton Administration officials admit that they "received a wave of threats against Americans and American installations in Saudi Arabia" in the weeks leading up to the attack, "but failed to prepare adequately for a bomb of the power that killed 19 American military personnel." Threats were also downplayed by the Saudis when Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abd al Aziz al Saud characterized acts carried out by Saudi Islamic jihadists in 1995 as "boyish", and stated that the Saudi "Kingdom is not influenced by threats". The CIA was blamed for misjudging the bomb making capabilities of Saudi militants, arbitrarily deciding that no bomb could exceed the size of that used in the November 1995 bombings in Riyadh (200 lbs). According to official U. S. government estimates, the Khobar bomb weighed in at approximately 5,000 pounds.

Within days of the blast, counterterrorism officials on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff concluded that elements inside Iran, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were the perpetrators. They put pressure on the president and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, to take action. They were joined by others inside and outside the administration, notably FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Before taking action, President Clinton insisted on proof that could stand up in both a court of law and the court of public opinion. In the meantime, he ordered a review of military options in case of a decision to punish Iran. By the time Saudi Arabia and the FBI concluded their investigations, Iranians had elected a new president, Mohammad Khatami, in May 1997. Khatami surprised the international community by urging a “dialogue of civilizations” with the West in order to overcome almost two decades of animosity and Iranian isolation. Clinton, who had initially taken a stand toward the Islamic Republic, including imposing major economic sanctions on the country, reversed his thinking in the hope that Khatami potentially represented a game changing shift in Iran’s conduct. The prospect of an opening with Tehran, which intrigued many U. S. allies and even domestic critics of administration policy, drove Clinton’s response to the Khobar attack. The White House and State Department sent various signals to the Iranians, some of which they reciprocated, but ultimately hopes for a significant improvement in relations remained unfulfilled. In June 1999, Clinton authorized what he later called a “Hail Mary,” sending a direct message to Khatami. Delivered by Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi in July, the letter attempted to achieve multiple purposes: to signal Tehran that Washington was open to a rapprochement but also to make clear that the United States held the IRGC responsible for the bombing. Clinton was under pressure from FBI Director Freeh and other domestic actors to press for accountability for the attack. The attempt backfired. Although Khatami was reportedly happy with the American initiative, especially because it was accompanied by an oral message of strong personal support from Clinton delivered by the Omani envoy, the Iranian president’s colleagues in the leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, reacted vehemently to the text of the letter. Two months later, the Iranians responded with a written denunciation of the allegation of culpability and a refusal to consider boosting bilateral ties under such circumstances. Beyond the Clinton administration’s miscalculation of Iranian politics, the episode showed that the bombing would continue to cast a long shadow over U. S. Iran relations in years to come.