Argentina: Iran Ordered Bombings

Someone better provide tight security for the Argentine prosecutors who dared utter what everyone has known for some time now. Iran was behind a pair of terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires that killed more than 100 people.

Iran orchestrated two bombings in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s, killing more than 100 people, primarily because it was furious over Argentina's cessation of nuclear cooperation with the Islamic Republic, a top Argentinean prosecutor said Tuesday, offering chilling confirmation of the ruthlessness with which Iran has pursued its quest for nuclear capability.

Dr. Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who has secured Interpol backing for the arrests of several leaders in Teheran, including former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, for ordering the July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community offices in Buenos Aires, also urged the international community to pressure Iran into giving up the wanted men for trial.

Nisman said the AMIA blast, in which 85 people were killed, and the bombing of the Israeli Embassy two years earlier, in which 29 people were killed, had been "ordered, planned and financed" by Iran's top leadership. Teheran, he said, was incensed that Argentina, under former president Carlos Menem, had suspended and ultimately stopped what had been close cooperation with the Iranian nuclear program, including the training of nuclear technicians and the transfer of nuclear technology. At first Teheran tried to cajole Argentina into reconsidering, he said. Then it issued threats. And finally, it employed terrorism.

Nisman, on a brief working visit to Israel, said he had received a telephoned death threat at his home and been warned off the case by Iran but would not desist.

It's also curious to see how these terrorist attacks are related to Iran's nuclear intentions although the targets of the attacks were Jewish facilities including the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center.