The Facts About Argentina’s Relationship with Iran
Post date : 01.16.2015 3:13 pm
The Nisman Indictments Are a Validation of Years’ Long Concern about the Kirchner Government’s Close Ties to Iran
The Kirchner administration is reeling from detailed, formal accusations by Argentine prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her Foreign Minister, Héctor Timerman, engaged in a “criminal plan” to cover up an investigation into Iran’s involvement in Argentina’s most horrific terrorist attack in history, the July 18, 1994 car-bombing of a Jewish community center (the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association, or AMIA) located in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed.
The news reverberated around the world, provoking much outrage, if not too much surprise; the Argentine/Iran alliance has been a source of frequently expressed concern in Washington and elsewhere these last few years. To many observers, this blog included, the news seemed further validation that Kirchner’s “corrupt populist administration…is on the road back to ruin.”
As terrorist efforts unfolding in France, Belgium and elsewhere were shaking the world, Argentina’s leadership was thrust into the limelight as negotiating with Iran in a secret deal that has left unresolved the terrorist attack on Argentina in 1994.
Nisman’s meticulously documented assertions were referenced within a 300-page summary of a just-concluded two-year investigation that he presented to a Buenos Aires court Wednesday, along with a plea for Judge Ariel Lijo to interrogate Kirchner and Timerman – himself a member of Argentina’s Jewish community – “for being authors and accomplices of an aggravated cover-up and obstruction of justice regarding the Iranians accused of the AMIA terrorist attack.”
Distilling both crime and motive to one impactful sentence, Nisman declared,“The president and her foreign minister took the criminal decision to fabricate Iran’s innocence to sate Argentina’s commercial, political and geopolitical interests”.
Developments are being exhaustively reported by international and U.S. media, as well as La Nacion, Ambito Financiero, Clarin, Buenos Aires Herald, theTimes of Israel, MercoPress, and El Cronista.
Although the full Nisman narrative has not yet been released – much of it is still classified as “secret,” according to Clarin – it will be buttressed by“scalding documentation,” detailing an investigation that “lasted two years and included following of spies of the Intelligence Secretariat (SI) compromised in this plot,” as well as wiretaps of the main suspects setting up “a criminal plan to take Iran out of the [AMIA] attack.”
The AMIA terrorist car-bombing was never solved, and Mr. Nisman’s investigation “reached a dead end some years ago after Iran refused to hand over a number of officials, including the former Iranian cultural attaché in Argentina, Mohsen Rabbani, who is suspected of masterminding the deadly 1994 attack.”
Nisman has tried for years to get Rabbani and other AMIA terror suspects extradited to face trial in Argentina.
In 2013, Argentina signed a “controversial agreement with Iran to set up a joint commission to investigate the blast.” This agreement, Nisman alleges, was “a direct result of the ‘oil for grains’ secret deal” that Kirchner sought.
The Guardian summarizes, “in that memorandum, Iran agreed to set up a truth commission on the bombing in return for Argentina closing down the judicial investigation and cancelling the Interpol warrants while the commission worked.”
“The agreement, which was roundly condemned by Jewish community leaders, was approved by Argentina’s Congress but foundered after Iran failed to confirm it, apparently because the Interpol warrants were not lifted in time. It was finally declared unconstitutional by the federal appeals court.”
From its proposed inception, the joint “Truth Commission” has been a source ofwell-documented, well-argued outrage for providing diplomatic legitimacy to the terror-financing Iran. As the Wall Street Journal aptly declared at the time, “to many Argentines, that seemed like letting the fox decide the fate of the chickens.”
Among the many Nisman bombshells is the charge that Kirchner conspired in a “sophisticated criminal plan” to “negotiate directly with Rabbani,” and that Rabbani, as Clarin reports, “was the chief negotiator of the pact and ‘backroom deals’ such as dropping the red alerts from Interpol against Iranians, which Timerman was supposed to make happen.”
Nisman claimed further, “before the signing of the memorandum with Iran we found evidence that people from the [Argentine] intelligence services were passing information from the AMIA case to Iran.”
Additional serious charges include:
– “Mrs. Kirchner had ordered Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and others to negotiate immunity for Iranian suspects in hopes this would reestablish trade ties and allow Argentina to import Iranian oil to ease a domestic energy crisis. The alleged plan didn’t come to fruition, however.”
– Timerman orchestrated “secret deals with Tehran” to establish false trails and “alter the investigation to exonerate the Iranians from any responsibility.”
- “‘The impunity of the Iranians was ordered by the president and instrumented by Timerman,’ Nisman said, with the goal of scoring closer geopolitical ties with Iran, trading oil and even selling weapons.”
– “The president conducted secret negotiations with Iran through non-diplomatic channels in 2013, and offered to cover up the involvement of Iranian officials in return for oil to ease Argentina’s chronic energy deficit. Under the deal, the oil would be exchanged for Argentinian grain.”
– “A deal in which Argentina, under the orders of Mrs. Kirchner, promised to absolve former Iranian officials accused of masterminding the attack…in exchange…Iran would send oil to Argentina to ease its crippling energy deficit.”
In an interview with La Nacion Thursday, Prosecutor Nisman made clear that,“Cristina Kirchner decided absolutely everything. She is the one who gives the order to Foreign Minister Hector Timerman to wipe Iran clean of this problem. She is the one who established the existence of a parallel diplomacy to handle these things, besides orchestrating the false track.”
Equally alarming, Clarin reports that President Kirchner has been aware of prosecutor Nisman’s investigation for at least the past month…and has done her level best to obstruct its progress, and thwart its main investigator, boldly attempting to “preventively decapitate the leadership of the SIDE, including the head of counterintelligence and then-Nisman advisor, Antonio Stiuso.”
The Guardian reports Nisman quoting prime terror suspect, Rabbani, in an intercepted 2013 telephone conversation with an Iranian confidante of Kirchner allies in Buenos Aires, “Iran was Argentina’s main buyer and now it’s buying almost nothing…That could change. Here [in Iran] there are some sectors of the government who’ve told me they are willing to sell oil to Argentina…and also to buy weapons.”
An Argentine federal judge will now decide whether to hear the complaint and whether anyone should be summoned for questioning. Given that this news was received like a “neutron bomb in the heart of power,” like “a blow with the highest political impact,” it’s certain to be an ongoing story that will be much examined.
Although she made a public appearance Thursday, President Kirchner did not speak to reporters, and has not yet commented on the allegations. Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, particular focus of the allegations, read a statement dismissing Nisman as “despicable,” and his allegations a “media show,” while declaring that President Kirchner had made great strides “in the search and punishment of the perpetrators of the brutal attack.”
Despite these vigorous denials from the Kirchner government, Prosecutor Nisman offers compelling evidence that President Kirchner, working through an ad hoc team combining officials including Minister Hector Timerman with unofficial intermediaries, attempted to make a Faustian pact to exchange impunity for Iranian operatives involved in the horrific AMIA bombing, one of the world’s worst terrorist incidents, in exchange for access to oil and markets for Argentina’s agricultural products, and perhaps also weapons. If the allegations are true, there might finally be some consequences leveled on this government, whose lawless behavior toward courts and judges is also reflected in its decision to align with outlaw states like Iran and Russia
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen