1996 Khobar Towers bombing

On June 25, 1996, a truck bomb, larger than any yet encountered, exploded next to the Khobar Towers, a U.S. Air Force Barracks in Dhahrain, Saudi Arabia. It killed 19 and wounded 372 persons. The area had been on alert since a November 1995 car bombing of the Office of the Program Manager, Saudi Arabia National Guard (OPM SANG) in Riyadh, killing 7. Khobar Towers, one kilometer from the King Abdul Aziz Air Base, which the U.S. used to conduct Operation Southern Watch, the no-fly operation over southern Iraq.

Primarily responsibility was assigned to the Saudi branch of Hizbollah, 13 Saudi and one Lebanese member of which were indicted by a U.S. grand jury in 2001. The case has never gone to criminal trial, and the defendants are believed to be in Iraq. According to the 9/11 Commission, while Iranian clearly was involved, there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown. U.S. intelligence monitored a call from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Osama bin Laden, two days afterward, praising him for the bombing. In reporting U.S. government freezing of al-Qaeda related funds, one specific individual, Mamoun Darkazanli, also known as Abu Ilyaf, based in Hamburg and associated with the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell, was suspected of funding the attack on a Saudi training facility before the Khobar Towers attack, using his business, Mamoun Darkazanli Import-Export Company.

In a civil lawsuit, Iran was found responsible in a U.S. court and ordered to repay the families, but it has not done so.

Force protection
The U.S. concluded that a number of lessons had been learned, at great cost, for both local warning and for physical protection against attacks.