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The Long Arm of Iran

[Wall Street Journal] Dan Senor - On March 17, 1992, a suicide bomber crashed an explosive-filled truck into a building filled with Israelis in Buenos Aires - 29 innocents were killed and hundreds more were injured. On July 18, 1994, the target was the Jewish community center in the center of the city - 85 were killed. One of the key officials assigned to the investigation was Miguel Angel Toma (later appointed by then President Eduardo Duhalde as secretary of intelligence from 2002-03). He concluded not only that Hizbullah carried out the attacks in Argentina, but that at least one of them was planned in Iran at the highest levels of the Iranian government, aided by a sophisticated sleeper-cell network in Latin America. Toma says he's certain of the date, location and participants in the decision by the Iranian government to execute the second Buenos Aires attack. He pinpoints it to a meeting in the Iranian city of Mashhad on Aug. 14, 1993, presided over by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then and now the Supreme Leader of Iran; and the Iranian president at the time, Ali-Akbar Rafsanjani. Argentina has issued warrants for nine Hizbullah operatives and Iranian leaders, including Rafsanjani. Nobody has been arrested. Indeed, Rafasanjani continues to be described in the Western media as a leading Iranian "moderate." The writer is a former foreign-policy adviser to the Bush administration.
2007-10-01 01:00:00
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