Assassinated Hizbullah terror mastermind hailed in Iran as the Che Guevara of the Middle East.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Iran's postal service issued a stamp Monday in commemoration of a top Hizbullah commander wanted by the US who was killed in a car bombing in Syria last month, the official news agency IRNA reported.
The stamp, which features a smiling picture of Imad Mughniyeh wearing a military uniform, was unveiled at a ceremony attended by the Iranian minister of post and communication, Mohammad Soleimani, and Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, former chief of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards, according to the report.
The image used for the stamp appeared frequently at many ceremonies the Iranian government held for Mughniyeh after his death. Iranian media called the senior Lebanese terrorist the Che Guevara of the Middle East.
Hizbullah and Iran, its main backer, blamed Mughniyeh's assassination on Israel, which denied any role.
Mughniyeh was one of the world's most feared terror masterminds, accused of killing hundreds of Americans in suicide bombings in Lebanon the 1980s. He was also blamed for taking Westerners hostage and the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a US Navy diver was killed.
In the 1990s, he went into hiding, and Western and Israeli intelligence accuse him of planning suicide bombings against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed over 100 people. Over the past 15 years, he is believed to have moved in secret between Lebanon, Iran and Syria.