Toby Dershowitz is Senior Vice President for Government Relations at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, DC. Follow her on Twitter @tobydersh.
July 18, 2022 | Newsweek
Iran Is Testing Us. So Far, We Are Failing
July 18, 2022 | Newsweek
Iran Is Testing Us. So Far, We Are Failing
In February, a jet carrying Iran’s minister of the interior, Ahmad Vahidi, landed at Pakistan’s Nur Khan air base and he was not arrested.
He should have been.
Vahidi, and four other senior Iranians, are wanted by INTERPOL for “aggravated murder and damages,” for their role in the July 18, 1994, bombing of the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA in Spanish) center in Buenos Aires.
On that day, a Renault van laden with 600 pounds of ammonium nitrate rammed into the AMIA building, killing 85 Jews and non-Jews. Vahidi was then head of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Quds Force is labeled a terror organization by the United States and is considered responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans in Iraq since the second Gulf war. Vahidi is sanctioned by the U.S. government for proliferating weapons of mass destruction. INTERPOL has issued a red notice (provisional arrest warrant) for his detention because of the 1994 bombing.
My research shows these five Iranians have flown to at least 20 countries without being apprehended since the red notices were issued in 2007.
The AMIA bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, was not just a single crime on a single day.
Argentina’s AMIA prosecutor, Alberto Nisman — who was assassinated during Cristina Kirchner’s presidency likely for his investigation into the AMIA bombing — described in granular detail how Iran used embassies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Germany in the planning of the 1994 attack. Iranian ambassadors from several of these countries, including Iran’s ambassador in Buenos Aires, all flew out of their respective posts just days before the bombing.
Today, another crisis is brewing in Argentina, pointing to Iran’s malign activities in the region. It has seized the attention of Argentine lawmakers who are determined to prevent another Iran-backed attack on their soil.
A Boeing 747 cargo aircraft was grounded at Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza airport on June 8. The suspicions are that the Venezuelan plane, recently owned by Iran’s U.S.-sanctioned Mahan Air and sold to Emtrasur airlines, is not what it seems to be. The plane’s crew included 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians. At the helm of this suspiciously large crew — normally no more than five people are required on such a mission — is the IRGC’s Gholamreza Ghasemi, a board member, shareholder, and manager of Fars Air Qeshm, an Iranian airline sanctioned by the U.S. The reason for the sanctions? The airline ferried Iranian weapons and personnel to Syria to help crush the uprising against the Bashar al-Assad‘s regime.
Lawmakers are now demanding of their intelligence services to know why an Iranian official would be piloting a routine cargo flight to Argentina.
Moreover, Argentine opposition leaders have demanded a transparent investigation into what’s happening and filed a series of legal complaints. Among the questions they want answered is whether the co-pilot is a collaborator with Iranian intelligence and the principal link between Venezuela and nefarious activities in Argentina. They questioned whether he had worked closely with now deceased Quds Force head Qassem Soleimani. They are insisting on knowing whether the intel agencies were aware of — and disregarded — early warnings about the plane from foreign intelligence counterparts.