The damage caused by the bombing was far more harmful to the United States than initially appeared. Meeting in one of the upper floors of the Beirut embassy at the time of the explosion was the entire CIA's Middle East operatives. Most of them perished in the explosion, creating a huge void in U.S. intelligence gathering in the Middle East for years to come.

It could of course have been a coincidence; perhaps the terrorists who blew up the embassy had simply got lucky. Except that most people in the intelligence business don't believe in coincidences.

Therefore, one would assume that Imad Mughnieh, the Hezbollah operative believed to have been the mastermind of the attack, must have known of the CIA meeting and carefully chosen the day and time to strike.

Follow the bouncing ball…. With U.S. intelligence operations in the Middle East crippled after losing the majority of its Middle East assets, it was no coincidence that six months after the attack on the embassy, the same group struck at the U.S. Marine compound near Beirut airport.

That attack, and the one on a French military base forced Washington and Paris to alter their policies and withdraw U.S. and French forces from Lebanon, leaving the playing field entirely open to the expansion of Iranian influence.

Looking at that day 25 years ago, in retrospect, it becomes clear that the Islamists in Iran had a clear-cut plan on how to proceed in the Middle East: blind the military by taking out the intelligence assets and then strike the military hard enough to force the politicians to change their policy and withdraw from the region.

And they have been following that plan, step by step, ever since.

On the other hand, the United States has been reacting to Iran's policies rather than preempting them. Rather than giving full concentration to the war being fought in the shadows that began 25 years ago in Beirut, the United States has diverted from the main battle, allowing itself to be drawn into Iraq, where it should never have gone.