Emboldened by the success of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the anti-Baathist Shi'a Islamist group al-Dawa, with financial and military assistance from the Islamic Republic of Iran, began to employ violence in its struggle against the Iraqi government.
[2][1] The remaining al-Dawa leadership fled to Iran and the group became an "effective proxy" for the Iranian government against Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, which broke out in September 1980.
[3] On December 15, 1981, a car filled with approximately 100 kilograms of explosives was driven into Iraq's embassy building in Beirut by a suicide bomber.
The ensuing explosion devastated the embassy, killed 61 people, including the Iraq ambassador, Abdul Razzak Lafta, and injured more than 100 others.
[1][4] Balqis al-Rawi, the Iraqi wife of Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, who worked for the embassy's cultural section, was also killed in the attack.