Fact-based drama ‘Ghosts of Beirut’ about ‘worst terrorist in the world’

TV

By Michael Starr

May 23, 2023 | 6:47pm

Lebanese terrorist Imad Mughniyeh killed thousands of people with car bombs — including 220 Marines stationed in Beirut in 1983 — before he himself was blown to bits in Syria 25 years later.

The story of Mughniyeh an Islamic Jihadist dubbed “The Man of Smoke,” is dramatized, for the first time and in detail, in “Ghosts of Beirut,” a four-part Showtime series mixing real, documentary-style on-camera interviews with scripted drama that goes inside the joint CIA/Mossad operation to track down and assassinate Mughniyeh … or so the story goes, since US and Israeli officials have never officially confirmed their agencies’ roles in sending him to kingdom come.

“Ghosts” was created by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, who also developed the hit Netflix series “Fauda,” in which Raz stars as Israeli Defense Force team member Doron Kavillio. (Raz himself was a commando in an IDF counter-terrorism unit.)

Raz and Issacharoff also co-wrote “Ghosts of Beirut,” filmed in Morocco, with Joëlle Tauma and Greg Barker (who directed all four episodes).

“We can assume [the Mughniyeh assassination] was a joint operation,” Raz, 51, told The Post. “I read some books and articles about the involvement of the CIA and Mossad. But nobody will ever say it officially. We cannot confirm anything but … we talked to a lot of people from both [the CIA and Mossad] and they are very reliable.

“We did all kinds of research in the US, in Lebanon and in Israel,” he said. “We talked with people who were part of the operation to … understand how he did all these terrorist attacks, what was his motivation, how it effected the CIA, Mossad, the Israeli Army which was in Lebanon in the ’80s.

“We went digging down in archives to understand what really was there.”

“Ghost of Beirut” unfolds with a parallel storyline — intercut with talking-head interviews — focusing on Mughniyeh — who, when the series opens, is a 21-year-old garage mechanic in Beirut (played by Amir Khoury). He’s known for his hatred of the US and of Israel — both countries have troops stationed in Beirut — and is approached by shadowy Iranian officials who proceed to fund his mass killings, which eventually spread to other countries (including Argentina and Kuwait).

“Imad was the worst terrorist in the world. He was wanted for so many years and was in charge of killing so many Americans and Israelis and Lebanese,” Raz said. “He was the guy who invented suicide bombing in the Middle East and you can see [in ‘Ghosts’] how he’s doing it.”

For years, the CIA and Mossad are at a loss to even put a face to Imad, the only photo of him being one taken years before when he was a teenager. One of his first car bombs kills Robert Ames (Dermot Mulroney), the CIA chief of station in Beirut; later, Imad orders the death of Ames’ successor, William Buckley (Garrett Dillahunt) — kidnapped and tortured for over a year before his body was dumped onto a bridge roadway.

Eventually, the CIA and Mossad, who have a tense history, grudgingly join forces to catch and kill Imadi. The hunt is spearheaded by Lebanese-American CIA agent Lena Asayran (Dina Shahibi) and Mossad operative Teddy (Iddo Goldberg, “Snowpiercer”).

Raz and Issacharoff, as they did in “Fauda,” show different sides of the “Ghosts of Beirut” conflict — including the personal evolution of Imad, who marries his childhood sweetheart and has children with her until she tires of his way of life and he falls in love with a Syrian businesswoman while on a business trip to Damascus (to meet with his Iranian contacts) — exposing his whereabouts in the process.

Hisham Suleiman plays the the older version of Imad, who never wavers in his fanaticism — and, before he’s killed in “Ghosts of Beirut,” is planning to unleash chemical warfare on his enemies with Iran’s blessing.

“In order to see how [Imad] was so successful in manipulating people to do these [car bombings] … he was supposed to be very charming and you cannot do these things if you are not good with people,” Raz said.

“At the end of the day he was married, he had kids, and he died because he fell in love with another woman — so it’s not about ‘humanizing’ him, it’s about telling the real story and how we assumed it happened.

“Nobody knew exactly where he was, what he was doing, where he was hiding, so we had to fill in that puzzle from our imagination,” he said. “You know, there’s a saying, ‘The better the villain the better the movie, and this guy, like in ‘Fauda’ … you want to understand why he’s doing these crazy and awful things and in order to understand that you have to show the whole picture, and this is what we’re trying to do.

“I think, in modern TV, the bad guys are not just flat characters … which is why you have to understand these monsters are doing these awful things but still loving their kids.”

Raz said he hopes that “Ghosts of Beirut” tells the real story of Imad as closely as possible.

“It’s very important for people … to know the history,” he said. “Everybody knows the name of Osama bin Laden — and I think they should know the name of Imad Mughinyeh as well.”