Forged Lebanese Passports for Iranian Officers

The story begins on the fourth floor of the Ramada Plaza Hotel, in the Raouche area of Beirut. A precise strike on March 4, carried out by Israel, targeted five Iranian officers belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Four were killed, and a fifth was wounded, along with nine Lebanese civilians.

And the story does not end with the explosion.

According to judicial sources who reviewed the case file and revealed its details to Alhurra, once security agencies arrived at the site of the strike, it became clear that the Iranian officers had entered the hotel using genuine Lebanese passports issued under false names. The same information we obtained reveals that additional passports and reservations at the Mövenpick Hotel belonging to another group from the Revolutionary Guard were found inside the room.

What subsequent investigations uncovered indicates that the operation was not merely a security targeting, but a window into a complex forgery system operating within official institutions. So how did Iranians enter Lebanon using Lebanese passports? That is the question that drove our investigation.

Security sources confirmed to Alhurra that a company called “Power” handled the booking of accommodations for them.

Through our research into commercial registry data, it became clear that “Power” is a limited partnership company—a type no longer used in Lebanon—which raises suspicions, especially since the company was established in 2012 and its declared activity is car trading. However, the information we obtained shows that it does not carry out any actual activity. Its headquarters are in Zahle in eastern Lebanon, and it consists of a single partner identified as “B. Sh.”

This contradiction between the nature of the company and its role in booking accommodations for individuals with forged identities led us to hypothesize that it was used as a front to bypass security screening mechanisms.

According to what we documented, hotels in Lebanon rely on an electronic system linked to the Lebanese General Security Directorate, through which guest data is sent immediately upon check-in, and the Directorate conducts security checks. These data are also sent, according to our sources, to the Lebanese Army Intelligence Directorate, especially in light of the recent war.

In the same context, MP Ghadeh Ayoub filed a report with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and provided us with a copy, in which she reported “the issuance of Lebanese passports under aliases or in violation of proper procedures.”

In her remarks to Alhurra, Ayoub confirmed that she has “indications and evidence” that these passports were used by members of the Revolutionary Guard and leaders in Hezbollah to facilitate their movement. She noted that she has supplied the judiciary with all the reports she was able to gather and is continuing to follow up on the case “to prevent damage to Lebanon’s reputation and to stop what she described as deep-state networks.”

The issue of passport forgery in Lebanon is not new; rather, it comes within a series of cases revealed in recent years after more than one network involved in such operations within the General Security Directorate was dismantled. The most recent of these cases occurred last October, when a forgery operation involving around ten Lebanese passports—both old and biometric—was uncovered. It was attributed to a network that included members of General Security. These passports were granted to individuals wanted by the judiciary and were formally issued from the Baalbek regional center.

An official source from General Security, speaking to Alhurra on condition of anonymity, confirmed that passport forgery operations linked to Iranians took place during the passport crisis between 2022 and 2023. According to these sources, the manipulation did not focus on the passports themselves but rather on the foundational documents of the process—namely identity cards, official records, civil registry extracts, and applications issued through local mukhtars. These documents constituted the gateway through which applications entered the official administrative system of General Security.

Information we obtained from other security sources reveals that the seized passports carry sequential numbers, indicating that they were issued from a single center at the same time. According to a source within General Security, this “precisely identifies the employee and the center responsible.”

The sources add that this pattern of forgery is likely to have been carried out within one of the regional centers, allowing it to pass through to the main Beirut center via routine channels and hindering its detection during initial verification stages.

At this point, the same source raises a more pressing question: how were individuals who do not speak Arabic and do not possess clearly Lebanese features able to pass before the head of the center without raising any suspicion, even though his primary task is to verify the applicant’s identity and information through a series of detailed questions regarding residence, reason for requesting the passport, and travel destination? The source also questions why the center head has not yet been summoned or investigated by the Public Prosecutor, despite his central role in verifying the validity of applications.

According to informed sources, the data reveal the existence of a hidden network operating through overlapping roles between official entities and individuals suspected of links to Hezbollah, within institutions connected to mukhtars and regional General Security centers in areas under full Hezbollah influence. A source from within General Security confirmed that heads of these centers possess extensive personal knowledge of residents in their areas—similar to mukhtars—which reinforces suspicions of undeclared coordination between these parties, exploited to facilitate forgery operations within a single cohesive network.

Another security source confirmed that this method of forgery began after the war in Syria, as the movement of Iranians into Lebanon via land crossings became more complicated. According to the source, data belonging to Hezbollah members whose deaths were not officially declared—especially those killed in Syria—were used to issue new passports in their identities. Since some of them had not previously obtained passports, this made forgery easier.

The source added that the presence of individuals linked to Hezbollah within certain regional General Security centers, in sensitive positions, contributed to passing these operations, because issuing a biometric passport requires the physical presence of the individual and the taking of fingerprints.

Data analysis, along with information from a former General Security official, shows that the crisis between 2022 and 2024 created fertile ground for such practices. During that period, approximately 300,000 old passports (2003 edition) remained stored at the Central Bank of Lebanon, despite the requirement that they be destroyed since 2016. These non-biometric passports are easier to forge, according to sources, and were indeed used in 2023 following the passport issuance crisis and were accepted for international travel, without clarification as to why they were not destroyed.

On another front, sources within the Lebanese General Security Directorate denied to Alhurra the hypothesis that biometric passports were stolen from stock and forged, stressing that the process of producing, transporting, and storing passports is subject to a series of precise procedures that make any such breach nearly impossible.

According to these sources, the passport process begins at the company “Inkript,” which is responsible for manufacturing biometric passports in Lebanon. Passports are printed and prepared according to high security standards and then shipped to the Central Bank of Lebanon, where they are stored in designated, temperature-controlled facilities until officially requested by General Security.

When needed, the passports are transferred from the central bank in the Hamra area to the General Security headquarters in the Mathaf area in tightly sealed boxes, under strict security escort. The sources explained that the delivery process is only completed within the Directorate, where the boxes are opened in the presence of approximately forty employees from different administrative levels. The passports are counted and officially recorded in internal reports, creating a multi-level monitoring chain that prevents tampering or loss.

Within this process, General Security sources add that no passport can be removed or altered outside official frameworks without leaving a clear trace in the records. This leads, according to these sources, to the conclusion that the flaw lies in the stage of entering data and documents, not in the stage of passport production or storage.

These sources also confirmed that passports are printed with a pre-existing digital signature of the Director General of General Security, not a handwritten signature as is sometimes rumored.

We contacted the Lebanese General Security Directorate for comment on these allegations. One administrative official, who preferred not to disclose his identity, described what is being circulated as “exaggerated.” He acknowledged that cases of passport forgery have occurred, suggesting the involvement of a number of mukhtars who received financial payments in exchange for facilitating these operations, while emphasizing that the Directorate is seriously following up on the matter.

The source stressed the difficulty of breaching the system in place within the Directorate, noting that stocks of 2003-issued passports have been depleted, and revealed that new measures are being implemented, including replacing current biometric passports with more modern versions made of polycarbonate, aimed at enhancing security standards and reducing forgery.

In an institution that includes hundreds of employees, informed sources believe that identifying responsibilities is not impossible; rather, it is technically feasible by tracking signature chains and issuance numbers. However, this remains dependent on a clear and explicit decision to pursue accountability. These sources note that passport forgery operations were not limited to granting them to Iranians, but also, according to security data, extended to senior figures in the former Syrian regime, who are said to have obtained Lebanese passports through the same mechanism after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, to facilitate their departure via Lebanese territory.

In light of these facts, the question is no longer limited to how the forgery occurred, but another, more pressing question emerges: why has accountability not yet begun? Because continued silence here means only one thing—that the crime is ongoing, and stopping it begins with holding accountable those who allowed it, regardless of their positions.

The article is a translation of the original Arabic.