On July 18, 1994, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a car bomb destroyed the headquarters of the umbrella organization of Argentinian Jewry – Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina), killing eighty-five and wounding almost three hundred.
On October 25, 2006, after a multi-year investigation, the Argentinian special prosecutor, the late Alberto Nisman, handed down an indictment charging two agencies of the Iranian government with planning and funding the terrorist attack - The Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and The Committee for Special Operations (CFSO). He further charged that the Iranian surrogate in Lebanon, Hezbollah, executed the operation.
Six high-ranking Iranian government officials were formally indicted in absentia. Interpol, the official international agency that coordinates the police activities of more than one hundred member nations, issued “Red Cards” for their arrest.
Although not formally indicted, Iran’s current president, Hassan Rouhani, was named as a member of both committees. According to the indictment, he was the personal representative of Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei, on the SNSC, where he served from 1989-2005. In Western legal parlance, he would probably be referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator, due to the fact that he had prior knowledge of the crime.
Rouhani’s membership on both committees is noted on pages 164 and 177 of the indictment. Although Prosecutor Nisman told the Times of Israel in June of 2013, that Rouhani was not present at the specific meeting when the final decision to proceed with the bombing was green-lighted, there can be little doubt that as a long standing member of both committees he, at the very least, had foreknowledge of the attack. Obviously, an operation of this complexity took months, if not years, of planning.
Some further background information about the "moderate," president-elect of Iran is in order. In an ABC news interview in 2002, Rouhani was asked his opinion of Palestinian suicide bombings. His response was: "Palestinians can use any means to kick out the occupier." After referring to Israel as a "terrorist nation," he was asked but refused to condemn the infamous 2002 Passover Seder bombing in Jerusalem which killed thirty and injured 140.
In 1999, as pro-democracy Iranian students rose up in protest against the regime, Rouhani urged a crackdown, When the Supreme Guide gave the order, Rouhani said, "At dusk yesterday we received a decisive revolutionary order to crush mercilessly and monumentally any move of these opportunist elements wherever it may occur. From today our people shall witness how in the arena our law enforcement force . . . shall deal with these opportunists and riotous elements, if they simply dare to show their faces" (Wall Street Journal 6/16/13).
In the same article, Reza Mohajerinejad, a founder of the National Union of Iranian Students and Graduates in the 1990s, recalled the events immediately after Mr. Rowhani's statement: “Security forces poured into the dorm rooms and murdered students right in front of our eyes."Hassan Rouhani was Iran's chief negotiator in the nuclear talks with Britain, France and Germany (known as the EU3) from October 2003 to August 2005.
Rouhani, however, is far savvier in the field of public relations than the crude Ahmadinejad. He does not swing from the rafters denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map each and every week.
But make no mistake, he is a hardened, true believer in the ultimate worldwide Shia caliphate. And as we've just witnessed from his own “moderate” words, he will continue both the nuclear weapons program and the financial and military support of the Assad regime in Syria.