Журнальный клуб Интелрос » PRISM » Vol. 5, No 4. 2015
Since at least the early 1980s, Iran has operated an intelligence network in Latin America – Hezbollah soon followed suit. Iran and Hezbollah leveraged support from these networks to carry out the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Despite the public exposure of Iranian and Hezbollah operatives in this deadly attack, both continue to develop intelligence and logistical support networks in the region without restraint. While the initial investigation into the AMIA bombing suffered from corruption and mismanagement, it was rejuvenated with the appointment of special prosecutors Marcelo Burgos and Alberto Nisman, who reinvestigated the case from the very beginning (Burgos would later leave this office, but Nisman would stay on until his untimely death in January 2015). In addition to identifying key new suspects and gathering evidence that firmly placed Iran and Hezbollah behind the bombing, the office of the special prosecutor uncovered evidence of Iranian efforts to “export the revolution” across South America. Tensions over the AMIA bombing and the indictment of senior Iranian officials for their roles in the attack resulted in poor diplomatic relations between Argentina and Iran for many years. Then, in 2007, Argentine representatives suddenly ceased their years-long policy of walking out of UN meetings whenever an Iranian official spoke. Despite the standing Argentinean indictments of Iranian officials, Argentina and Iran agreed in 2011 to form a “truth commission” to jointly investigate the 1994 bombing. The merits of this “partnership” were questionable from the outset, but were cast into severe doubt with Nisman’s mysterious death in 2015. Nisman filed charges that the Argentinean administration, specifically President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, planned a cover-up of Iran and Hezbollah’s role in the AMIA bombing in exchange for a political deal between the government of Iran and Argentina.