Published: 26 July 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Tehran trained terrorists but its agents weren’t directly involved; Hezbollah hid explosives in chocolate, shampoo bottles on flights from Europe
Israel’s Mossad spy agency believes a pair of deadly attacks in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s were authored and executed by the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group, and Iran did not have an operational, “on the ground” role, as originally thought, according to a report Friday.
A Mossad dossier on the attacks, detailed in a New York Times report, claims to shed new light on how they were carried out, apparently without direct help from Iran or locals, while highlighting intelligence failures that allowed the same group to attack more than once and evade justice.
Twenty-nine people were killed when a bomb ripped through the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992. Two years later, a suicide bomber — subsequently identified as Hezbollah operative Ibrahim Hussein Berro — detonated an explosive-packed van, destroying the AMIA Jewish community center and killing 85 people. Iran and Hezbollah have long been suspected, though nobody has ever been brought to justice, and Iran has denied claims that its diplomats in Buenos Aires aided the operations.
The report found that while Iran approved, and provided funding, equipment and training for the deadly attacks, it was not directly involved.
“While Mossad stresses that Israeli intelligence still believes that Iran, a supporter of Hezbollah, approved and funded the attacks and supplied training and equipment, the findings counter longstanding assertions by Israel, Argentina and the United States that Tehran had an operational role on the ground,” the Times report said.
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Mossad finds Iran didn’t play ‘on the ground’ role in Hezbollah’s Argentina bombings (Times of Israel)
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Photo: The Argentine Israelite Mutual Association after the attack in 1994( La Nación Archive)
