On the Fifth Anniversary of the Beirut Port Explosion: Hezbollah’s Crime That Will Never Be Erased from Lebanon’s Memory By Elias Bejjani/August 04/2025
On the fifth anniversary of the Beirut Port explosion, we solemnly remember August 04/2020—a day of national horror and disgrace, one of the darkest in the history of Lebanon and modern international crime. That day, Beirut was shattered by a massive explosion at its port—an act of terrorism that stands as the largest non-nuclear explosion in human history. It killed more than 200 innocent people, wounded over 6,000, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and reduced vast sections of the capital to rubble and ash.
This atrocity was no accident. It was the direct result of a vast criminal operation involving Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy militia that occupies Lebanon, and the Assad regime in Syria. The 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored recklessly for years in Hangar 12 at the port were not forgotten or abandoned—they were deliberately stockpiled and protected for use in manufacturing barrel bombs for the Syrian regime and for terrorist operations across Europe. This is not speculation. European security agencies in Cyprus, Germany, and elsewhere have confirmed Hezbollah’s possession and planned use of ammonium nitrate for terror plots.
The trail of blood does not end in Beirut. The same material was used to slaughter thousands of civilians in Syria, and its presence in Lebanon’s capital was not only a criminal act of negligence—it was a calculated threat against both Lebanese sovereignty and international peace.
Since the moment of the blast, Hezbollah has worked relentlessly to bury the truth. As the main party responsible for storing, securing, and benefiting from these explosives, Hezbollah launched a vicious campaign to obstruct the judicial investigation. It threatened and intimidated the judiciary, openly blackmailed investigators, and assassinated key witnesses and officers. Among those silenced were the port officials Joseph Skaf and Mounir Abu Rjeili, the banker Wissam Al-Tarraf, and photographer Joe Bejjani, who was shot dead in his own home in Kahaleh. Their blood cries out for justice.
In a flagrant act of mafia-style intimidation, Hezbollah’s security chief Wafic Safa threatened Judge Tarek Bitar—the last credible investigative judge on the case—forcing the suspension of the probe and shielding from justice the ministers, MPs, and security chiefs implicated in the crime. All of this occurred in full view of a cowardly Lebanese state, whose political class, judiciary, army, and security services have bowed in fear or complicity to Hezbollah’s criminal authority.
For five years, not one perpetrator has been tried. Not one has been jailed. Not one has been hanged. The Lebanese judiciary has become a tool of political paralysis and moral bankruptcy, unable—or unwilling—to deliver justice to the victims and their families. The Lebanese authorities, through their silence and inaction, have become accomplices in the cover-up of this mass murder.
Today, August 4, the families of the victims will gather once again in the streets of Beirut—not to commemorate, but to demand. They demand justice, truth, and accountability. They demand that the criminals be named, tried, and punished. Their tears, their pain, their courage must not go unanswered.
Let it be clear: the Beirut Port explosion was not a tragic accident. It was a premeditated terrorist act—a massacre of innocent civilians facilitated by the cowardice of the Lebanese authorities and executed under the command of Hezbollah, the Iranian regime’s militant arm in Lebanon.
There can be no future for Lebanon without justice. No reform, no sovereignty, no peace—unless those who murdered the people of Beirut are held to account in full, with no deals, no amnesties, and no delay.
Lebanon will rise only when the truth prevails, when justice is served, and when the criminals are finally put behind bars—or better yet, brought to the gallows.
