The State Department declared the consul general of Lebanon in Detroit persona non grata and gave him 48 hours to leave the United States after it was revealed that he praised Hezbollah’s attack on U.S. soldiers in a 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut.
Lebanon’s embassy in Washington told reporters that the State Department notified it of its decision. Ibrahim Charara, the consul general, left the country on November 8.
A State Department spokesperson issued a statement saying “Anyone in the United States who celebrates or justifies terrorist attacks has no place in our country.”
The spokesperson added: “Terrorists murdered Americans and our colleagues in the bombings of the U.S. Embassy compounds in Beirut in 1983 and 1984. We will never forget them.”
Ibrahim Charara, Lebanon's consul general in Detroit, has been declared persona non grata and ordered to leave the U.S. immediately. In 2021 social media posts, Charara called the 1983 Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut "heroic resistance." The attack killed… pic.twitter.com/U3V9ZxMN0n
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) November 9, 2026
This situation started when The Washington Free Beacon published a report exposing Charara’s 2021 social media posts. The consul general was posted in Egypt at the time. In one post, he wrote, “On this day, the heroic resistance to the American military occupation of Beirut ended with a single strike that documents the defeat of neocolonialism on our land.”
🔴 A State Department spokesperson to This Is Beirut on Lebanese Consul General Ibrahim Charara being designated persona non grata.
— This Is Beirut (@ThisIsBeirut_) November 8, 2026
- “A visa is a privilege not a right,” the spokesperson told This Is Beirut on background. “Anyone in the United States who celebrates or justifies…
A second post praised an Iran and Hezbollah drone attack on U.S. troops at Al-Tanf, Syria. “From the Marines barracks in Beirut to the Al Tanf base, we will reject the occupier and defeat him,” he wrote.
The story surfaced after Charara attended a late-October banquet of the Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPC) in Dearborn, Michigan, even held to support Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered Ibrahim Charara, Lebanon’s consul general in Detroit, to leave the country after resurfaced social media posts allegedly praising Hezbollah’s 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing, which killed 241 American soldiers. pic.twitter.com/R9ifWbJ7sZ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 9, 2026
A source close to Charara told reporters the posts came from an old account that was hacked years ago. He supposedly lost access to the profile, his email, and his phone.
On October 23, 1983, a suicide truck bomb destroyed the barracks housing the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines at Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. servicemen. This included 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers.
Minutes later, terrorists detonated a second bomb, killing 58 French paratroopers. The Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility and U.S. intelligence attributes the attack to Hezbollah operatives backed by Iran.