Issue: 06/24/03
Hard new information on the involvement of the Iraniangovernment in terrorism, coupled with mounting concern that Iran ismuch closer to developing nuclear weapons than previously thought,has brought the White House to a policy Rubicon, administrationofficials and think-tank analysts tell Insight. President George W.Bush recognizes that he must craft a tougher approach toward a regimehe identified 18 months ago as a member of the Axis of Evil, WhiteHouse officials say. And yet the president's top advisers continue tobe split between two conflicting and mutually exclusiveapproaches.
"As of now, there is no Iran policy," American EnterpriseInstitute scholar Richard Perle tells Insight. Until recently Perlewas chairman of the Defense Policy Board, and he remains close toDefense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "It is well known within theadministration that Iran is the single most active source ofterrorism and is the biggest financier of terrorism. And yet, noclear strategy has been developed to deal with Iran," Perle says.
Several interagency meetings scheduled to determine a new U.S.policy toward Iran have been canceled in recent weeks as the debateintensified within the administration. Deputy Secretary of StateRichard Armitage even has called the Islamic Republic of Iran "ademocracy," and the State Department continues to counsel a carefuldialogue with the Tehran regime. The Pentagon and the White House,however, believe instead that the United States should devise ways ofdestabilizing and ultimately assisting the overthrow of the regime infavor of a secular and (hopefully) pro-Western government. They arguethat anything less would "undermine" the president's war onterror.
New details of the involvement of the Iranian government in amurderous suicide bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association(AIMA) community center during July 1994 in Buenos Aires, justreleased by an Argentine judge, could help tip the balance in favorof the Pentagon and those White House officials who favor regimechange in Iran.
The nine-year investigation by Judge Juan Jose Galeano led inMarch to international arrest warrants being issued for four Iraniangovernment officials, as well as for notorious Lebanese terroristImad Mugniyeh. After alerting Interpol, which issued "red notices" onthe five men, the judge formally requested that the Iraniangovernment arrest them and make them available for trial. "TheIranian government has told us angrily that they will not comply andthat the judge is stupid," sources close to Galeano tell Insight fromBuenos Aires.
In addition to Mugniyeh, who works for Iran's Ministry ofInformation and Security (MOIS) and lives in Iran with an Iranianwife, those indicted are Mohsen Rabbani, a cultural attaché atthe Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires, diplomat Barat Ali Balesh-Abadiand Ali Akbar Parvaresh, a former education minister identified inthe indictment as "one of the founding members of the Pasdaran[Revolutionary Guards] and one of the ideologues of theMinistry of Information."
The fifth man facing arrest is Ali Fallahian, the former MOISminister. "In asking for Fallahian," sources close to Galeano tellInsight, "we were showing that the whole Iranian government wasbehind the attack. Fallahian was just the point man for the Iraniangovernment."
A previously classified report from the Argentinian intelligenceservice SIDE, quoted throughout the 400-page indictment, which thismagazine obtained from sources in Buenos Aires, names more than twodozen participants in the actual attack who were recruited byMugniyeh and Rabbani from Hezbollah operatives and from among theIranian community in Argentina. The indictment also notes theunusually high number of visits to Buenos Aires by Iranian governmentofficials coming from Germany, Iran, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil in themonth before the attack. All were traveling on recently issueddiplomatic passports and had no legitimate reason for coming toArgentina.
MOIS used two local companies - G.T.C. and Imanco SA, a rugimporter - as cover for intelligence activities related to theattack, according to the indictment. Imanco investor Mohammad HosseinKhosravi maintained an import business in New Jersey, according todocuments cited in the indictment. The Iranian intelligence servicealso placed operations officers undercover with the Islamic RepublicNews Agency and with commercial delegations of the Ministry ofReconstruction (also called the "Reconstruction Jihad"), an officialimporting organization that was "part of the security forces," theindictment states.
The state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL)was used to transport the explosives for the attack from Colombia,where they had been purchased from drug traffickers, according to theindictment. "The Iran Shipping Lines had a double purpose,"prosecutor Alberto Nissman tells Insight. "In addition to normalshipping activities, it assisted MOIS in logistics in the U.S. andEurope, and handled logistics of Hezbollah in South America."
Galeano likened the preparations for the AIMA bombing with otherknown cases of Iranian-government terrorist attacks, in particularthe murder of Shahpour Bakhtiar outside Paris in August 1991 and theassassination of Kurdish dissidents in the Mykonos restaurant inBerlin in 1992. In all three cases, the Iranians used officialgovernment organizations, diplomatic passports and multipleundercover teams to prepare the target and carry out the actualterrorist attack.
Abraham Kaul is the president of AIMA, whose offices weredecimated by the 1994 attack that killed 85 Jews and wounded some 200others. Kaul is worried that the new Argentine government ofPresident Nestor Kirchner will undermine the trial expected to takeplace this October. "Argentina must follow through on thisindictment," Kaul says. "Either this government supports terrorism orit is against it. That's what their actions in this trial willshow."
A former Iranian intelligence officer, Abdolghassem Mesbahi,alleged in May 2000 that Iranian officials had paid $10 million intoa Banque Degroof Luxembourg account in Geneva, Switzerland,controlled by then-president of Argentina Carlos Menem, in exchangefor his efforts to impede the investigation. Menem has denied theallegations. In February 2002, the Swiss government announced it wasinvestigating the existence of Menem bank accounts in Switzerland. Itlater announced having frozen $10 million of Menem's funds, includingmoney in accounts at the Banque Degroof.
The AIMA bombing was the second attack in Argentina against anIsraeli or Jewish target. On March 17, 1992, a similar attack leveledthe Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29. "Why did two suchattacks occur during Menem's presidency?" Kaul wonders.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Abraham D. Sofaer believes thebombings came in retaliation for Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon."The Iranians struck back against Jews in Argentina because theycouldn't hit Israel directly," Sofaer tells Insight. "They saw theseattacks as a kind of quid pro quo." Sofaer served as legal adviser tothe State Department from 1985 to 1990.
On Feb. 16, 1992 - just one month before the attack on the IsraeliEmbassy in Buenos Aires - two Israeli helicopters had destroyed theconvoy of Hezbollah leader Abbas Mussowi in southern Lebanon. Twoyears later, on May 21, 1994, Israeli commandos captured topHezbollah leader Mustafa Dirani and brought him to Israel fordetention. Dirani was believed by Israel to have kidnapped on Iran'sbehalf an Israeli airman, Ron Arad, shot down over southern Lebanonin 1986. Iranian intelligence hit the AIMA Jewish Community Centertwo months after Dirani was captured. "That Iran allowed itself to beused as an instrument of Hezbollah revenge is very significant and,together with the evidence that Iran was behind the Khobar Towersbombing of a U.S. Army barracks, very troubling," Sofaer says.
After a German federal prosecutor demanded the arrest of Fallahianfollowing the Mykonos trial in 1997, the European Union as a groupwithdrew its ambassadors from Tehran in protest. Fallahian wasreplaced with another mullah at the intelligence ministry, butcontinues as an adviser for intelligence affairs to Supreme LeaderAli Khameini.
So far, however, the Bush administration has not considered takingthe AIMA case to the United Nations to demand international sanctionson Iran.
Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer forInsight and recently was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution inStanford, Calif.