ByIDAN KWELLER

The US State Department has declared Lebanon's consul-general in Detroit, Ibrahim Sharara, persona non grata over social media posts attributed to him that praised Hezbollah's 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American service members.

Sharara has been ordered to leave the United States and is expected to return to Lebanon on Sunday.

The controversy emerged earlier this week after the conservative news outlet Washington Free Beacon published a social media post from 2021 in which Sharara allegedly praised the attack, stating that “the heroic resistance ended the American military occupation of Lebanon in a single blow.”

However, a source close to Sharara told Lebanese broadcaster LBCI that the post had been published from an old social media account that was hacked several years ago.

A combo shows smoke rising from the US marines headquaters in the southern suburb of Beirut on October 23, 1983, after a car bomb explosion killed 299 American soldiers and a picture of the same place which today hosts the DHL postal service headquarters on October 10, 2013.
A combo shows smoke rising from the US marines headquaters in the southern suburb of Beirut on October 23, 1983, after a car bomb explosion killed 299 American soldiers and a picture of the same place which today hosts the DHL postal service headquarters on October 10, 2013. (credit: JOSEPH EID,DOD/AFP via Getty Images)

Sharara photographed alongside Michigan Senate-elect Abdul El-Sayed

The source also addressed a photograph showing Sharara alongside Abdul El-Sayed, who was elected to the US Senate from Michigan this week.

According to the source, the two happened to be seated next to each other at an annual dinner hosted by an Arab American organization and have no personal or political ties.

Lebanese media reported that the Lebanese Embassy in Washington had received formal notification of the Trump administration's decision.