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.
In 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.
The State Department’s decision followed a report published on November 2nd by the Washington Free Beacon that cited Charara’s comments about the attack.
The news site also noted Charara’s condemnation of the US occupation of Syria, stating that, “From the Marine barracks in Beirut to the Al-Tanf base … we will reject the occupier and defeat him.”
The report highlighted Charara’s praise for the 2021 escape of six Palestinian prisoners from Israel’s Gilboa Prison and noted that his cover profile on X features an image of a burning Israeli flag and a quotation from Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani.
Kanafani was one of the most influential Palestinian writers of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He was assassinated by Israeli intelligence in Beirut in 1972 at age 36.
The controversy surrounding Charara emerged after he attended an Arab American political action committee event in Dearborn, Michigan, ahead of last week’s mid-term elections. The event was also attended by Democratic Senate candidate Abdulrahman El-Sayed, who became the first Muslim ever elected to the US Senate.
In September 2025, late senator Lindsey Graham abruptly ended a meeting with Lebanese Army Commander Rodolphe Haykal during his visit to Washington for security cooperation talks with senior US officials. Graham said that he quickly ended the meeting after Haykal declined to call Hezbollah a “terrorist organization.”
Graham, who passed away in July, was known as a staunch supporter of Israel and a backer of its wars of aggression in the region. Hezbollah is currently resisting Israel, which waged war on Lebanon for 66 days in the fall of 2024, and for another 111 days starting in March of 2026, killing thousands of Lebanese.
Israeli forces continue to occupy some 7 percent of the country’s territory. Last year, US envoy Tom Barrack said in an interview that Washington will support the Lebanese Army to initiate a civil war and to fight against Hezbollah.
The Lebanese army is ”a good organization; it’s well-meaning, but it’s not well-equipped,” Barrack told The National in an interview. “Because who are they going to fight? We’re gonna arm them so they can fight Israel? I don’t think so. So, you’re arming them so they can fight their own people. Hezbollah.”
