An image of the US Embassy's planned main campus access pavilion and the chancery. (Credit: US Embassy in Lebanon website)
A tweet from the US Embassy in Lebanon on Friday sparked renewed discussion about the ongoing construction of the massive new US Embassy compound in Awkar, in the northern suburbs of Beirut.
Upon completion, the US Embassy in Lebanon will likely be the second-largest US Embassy in the world after the US Embassy in Baghdad.
Things are progressing at our new compound! pic.twitter.com/Eb7ogVCAHX
— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) May 5, 2023
Construction on the sprawling, 93,000-square-meter compound has been ongoing since April 2017. Photos of the construction site posted by the embassy on Friday proved divisive in Lebanon. Many online posters criticized the compound’s size and speculated on the reasons for it, while others commented that the heavily fortified compound resembles a military base.
California State University Professor and Al-Akhbar columnist Asad Abukhalil called the facility “a military-intelligence fortress,” on Twitter, adding “Imagine world reactions if this were the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon.”
“While millions of Americans are struggling with homelessness and poverty, their government is spending millions on a massive embassy resort (CIA command post) in tiny Lebanon,” said online commentator Hadi Nasrallah. “Is Lebanon now the 51st state of America or what?”
Some users were more tongue-in-cheek. “Maybe you’ll have enough room to work on all those pending visa applications,” wrote Abed Ayoub, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
The US Embassy declined to respond to questions from L’Orient Today about the factors involved in the embassy’s large size. A project summary on the embassy’s website says the site will include “Chancery, representational and staff housing, facilities for the community and associated support facilities.”
Like the current embassy, the new compound will likely include intense security measures.
Following the 1983 suicide bombing of the US Embassy in Ain al-Mreisseh and the 1984 suicide bombing of its successor in Awkar, the US undertook a review of its embassy security policies worldwide, culminating in the 1985 Inman Report that called for “stringent new security standards,” according to American architectural historian Jane Loeffler.
The result was a move towards walled compounds in suburban locations, she wrote in 2005. Those same considerations appear to be at play in the new compound.
Building reflecting changing priorities?
Many online reactions focused on what the project indicates about US involvement in Lebanon, and whether it disproves a hypothesis that the US is increasingly focused on Russia and China rather than the Middle East.
But some observers pointed out that such construction projects do not necessarily reflect current priorities so much as past ones.
Nicholas Noe, a Lebanon-based advocacy consultant for Refugees International and director of The Exchange Foundation wrote on Twitter: “This billion$+ sprawling new U.S. Embassy is & has always been significantly mis-matched to Lebanon. It was conceived more than a dozen yrs ago when US wrongly thought it’s domestic allies were headed towards hegemony. Those allies & US policy failed but construction$ still flows”
Plans for the embassy compound were announced in May 2015 — a different time in the region. Daesh (the Islamic State group) was at its largest territorial extent — a development that concerned both Washington and Tehran — and a preliminary agreement on the Iranian nuclear deal had just been announced.
Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine and the US rivalry with China was not as intense as it has become since.
The current second-largest US Embassy is a 90,469-square-meter property in Yerevan, Armenia. The new US Embassy in Lebanon will have a footprint roughly four times the size of the current third-largest US Embassy, in Beijing.
The list of supersized US embassies and consulates also reportedly includes Iraqi Kurdistan, Haiti, London, and Afghanistan.