Hezbollah and Iran Blamed in Bombing

WSJ — Bulgaria's government is expected to release an investigative report this week blaming the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its ally Iran for a terrorist bombing last summer that killed five Israeli tourists, said U.S. and Middle East officials briefed on the findings.

After the bombing, Israel charged that Hezbollah, on orders from Tehran, carried out the July 18 assault on Israeli vacationers as they boarded buses outside an airport in the Black Sea resort city of Burgas. A Bulgarian bus driver was also killed in the attack, the deadliest on Israelis abroad since 2004.

But the report by Bulgaria's government, which is seen as an independent actor on Mideast affairs, could lend weight to an Israeli push to get the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, said European officials.

The U.S. and European governments also are expected to cite the study in their efforts to tighten economic sanctions against Iran, both because of its nuclear program and Tehran's alleged support of international terrorist groups.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov is scheduled to brief senior members of the Bulgarian government on the investigation's findings on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the ministry said. She declined to comment on the contents of the report.

A U.S. official said the White House will issue a statement following Bulgaria's release of the report.

The U.S. and Israel have accused Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of ordering a string of overseas terrorist attacks aimed at American and Israeli targets over the past two years, including in India, Thailand and Georgia.

Iran and Hezbollah have denied involvement in any of the international attacks. Tehran also has accused Israel of assassinating leading Iranian nuclear scientists, something the Jewish state has never confirmed nor denied.

Evidence of a Hezbollah-directed strike on EU territory could shift the perception of the Lebanese-Shiite group in Europe, which has resisted following Washington's decision to label it a terrorist organization.

If the Bulgarian report reaches a clear conclusion, a senior European diplomat said on Monday, "We will have to look very seriously at the options we have."

British and Dutch officials pressed last year for concerted EU action against Hezbollah, but other nations including France have resisted efforts to blacklist the group. At the time of last year's discussions, senior EU officials said they feared a move against Hezbollah could unsettle Lebanon's fragile peace, already under strain from the violence and civil war in Syria.

Members of Hezbollah are part of the Lebanese government that took power in 2011 after overthrowing the pro-Western prime minister, Saad al-Hariri. Hezbollah's designation as a terrorist group would result in increased EU sanctions on the organization.

In the months since the assault on the Israeli tourists, Bulgarian authorities have said little publicly about their investigation. The U.S., while saying it suspected Hezbollah's involvement, also adopted a wait-and-see approach.

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has described the plotters as "exceptionally experienced." Officials have declined to discuss the attackers' origins or suspected affiliations, but said they entered Bulgaria from another EU country.

At first, Bulgarian police thought the assault was the work of a suicide bomber whose body was recovered at the scene. Now it appears that man, whose image was captured by security cameras in the airport terminal, may have died accidentally when the attack plan went awry.

That bomber, whose face was obscured by long hair, sunglasses and a cap, was dressed as a tourist in plaid shorts and a T-shirt and mingled with the Israeli visitors who had just arrived on a flight from Tel Aviv before the explosion.

The attack came amid a spate of plots and botched assaults linked to Hezbollah and Iran.

A U.S. court indicted an Iranian-American in late 2011 for allegedly attempting to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. at a Washington, D.C., cafe. The indictment alleged that senior IRGC officials oversaw the plot.

Last summer, police in Cyprus arrested a man in his 20s reported by state media to be of Lebanese descent and traveling on a Swedish passport. The man is currently on trial on terrorism-related charges. He has said he is not guilty.

In January 2012, Thai authorities arrested a man of Lebanese descent traveling on a Swedish passport who they allege had amassed a cache of bomb-making materials. Thai police said they suspect the man has ties to Hezbollah.

A month later, three Iranians were detained by Thai and Malaysian police after an apparently botched bomb plot in Bangkok. In that case, one of the alleged bombers blew off his legs. Thai police said the suspects were planning to assassinate Israeli officials.
—Laurence Norman in Brussels contributed to this article.

Write to Jay Solomon at [email protected] and Gordon Fairclough at [email protected]