Monte Melkonian

Who was Monte Melkonian?

Monte Melkonian was an American-born Armenian commander during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Melkonian had no prior service record in any country's army before being placed in command of an estimated 4,000 men in the war. He had largely built his military experience beginning from the late 1970s and 1980s, when he fought in Lebanon with ASALA. Melkonian fought against various factions in the Lebanese Civil War and against the Israel Defense Forces in the 1982 Lebanon War.

An Armenian-American, Melkonian left the United States and arrived in Iran in 1978 during the beginning of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, taking part in demonstrations against the Shah. Following the collapse of the Shah's monarchy in 1979, he traveled to Lebanon during the height of the civil war and served in an Armenia militia group in the Beirut suburb of Bourj Hammoud. In ASALA, he took part in the assassinations of several Turkish diplomats in Europe during the early to mid-1980s and was later arrested and sent to prison in France. In 1989, he was released and in the following year, acquired a visa to travel to Armenia.