Argentina: President Cristina Kirchner Talks To Iran – OpEd

By Adrian Salbuchi

Making a U-turn, Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner has announced she is now willing to talk to Iran, a country she accuses of master-minding the worst ever terror bombing on Argentine soil 18 years ago.

­Immediately, Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman met with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi with the explicit goal of “reaching the truth”.

Dangerous Truths…

Zionists outcries over Argentina’s decision were immediately voiced. From Assistant US Secretary of State Roberta Jackson who warned that “relations with Iran are never benign”; to the presidents of the local DAIA (Argentine Delegation of Israeli Associations) Aldo Donzis, and AMIA (Argentine Israeli Mutual Association) Guillermo Bolger, who said Iran’s proposal to talk “are disrespectful and offend Argentina’s judiciary system”, as “Iran cannot be trusted”, and the Israeli government which condemned the meeting of foreign ministers even before it took place.

The truth is that eighteen years after a powerful bomb destroyed AMIA headquarters on July 18, 1994 killing 86 and injuring over 200, the case remains unsolved and the guilty were never brought to justice.

The Attack

From the very day of the attack, the “AMIA Case” has suffered flagrant interference from the US and Israeli governments. Then Argentine President Carlos Menem – who once boasted that Argentina and the US enjoy “carnal relations” – gave US and Israeli intelligence agencies FBI and Mossad unrestricted access and overriding involvement in the investigations into this attack.

In fact, it was an Israeli military intelligence officer who discovered in the rubble at AMIA’s ground zero a small piece of metal belonging to the engine of a van which “luckily” (for the Israelis) carried the manufacturer’s serial number and could thus be traced back to an alleged “car-bomb”, even though no other pieces of that vehicle were ever found, nor were there credible witnesses who can say they ever saw the van.

As the years went by, the AMIA Case went through seven federal courts in Argentina and became drenched in lies, corruption and cover-ups. After erratically starting off in different directions, today Argentina’s Kirchner government formally accused the Islamic Republic of Iran of masterminding the attack.

Naturally, the US and Israel have great interest in making such accusations prosper as that would add further “evidence” of Iran being a rogue state ripe for unilateral Western military attack. Especially, at a time when US and Israeli credibility in the growing Iran nuclear program crisis reaches new lows, “proof of Iranian guilt” in the AMIA bombing would be a God-send.

So, basically, we have two plausible scenarios even though one of them is systematically ignored by the mainstream media:

Scenario 1 – An alleged “Iranian Link”

The AMIA Case is plagued by judicial and diplomatic corruption. An example refers to the impeachment of federal judge Jorge Galeano who authorized paying a $400,000 bribe to Carlos Telleldín, a jailed stolen car dealer, so that he would provide false evidence supporting an “Iranian and Syrian Link” to this attack.

The bribe was funded by local banker Rubén Beraja, at the time president of DAIA and owner of the local Banco Mayo bank which would later collapse, landing Mr Beraja in jail for several years. In the nineties, however, Mr Beraja was a prestigious figure in International Zionist circles, being invited by former FED Governor Paul Volcker to join his “Commission of Notable Persons” investigating old dormant Jewish accounts in Switzerland, which led to Swiss banks having to cough up 1.25 billion dollars to global Zionist organizations.

Another milestone took place on September 21, 2006 when President Néstor Kirchner together with his Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana and first lady and then Senator Cristina Kirchner, held a closed-door meeting in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with eight key international Zionist organizations, notably, the American Jewish Congress, World Jewish Congress, B’Nai B’Rith lodge, Anti-Defamation League and others.

No one knows exactly what was discussed but less than a month later, President Kirchner dispatched special public prosecutor Alberto Nisman to meet with CIA and Mossad contacts in Washington.

Upon his return to Argentina, Mr. Nisman – a militant Zionist – formally accused former Iranian President Ali Rafsanjani and seven of his cabinet members that included Ahmad Vahidi who would later become President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defense minister of planning and financing the AMIA bombing through Hezbollah proxies.

This news hit Argentine newspaper headlines big time, inspiring Rabbi Israel Singer, political director for the World Jewish Congress to “congratulate the Argentine Government” for making official its “accusation against Iran”, since that “confirmed the commitment made by president Kirchner during that meeting”.

Argentina’s accusations, solely based on “intelligence” provided by the CIA and Mossad and their “car-bomb” theory, was promptly rejected by Iran.

Political and diplomatic pressure on Argentina’s judiciary was so strong that since the alleged car-bomb wreck was never found, the Court went so far as to say that “the explosion was so powerful that the car-bomb dug deep under the entrance to the AMIA”. Juan Gabriel Labaké, Argentine defense attorney for the only local person formally accused in this case, requested the Court order the ground under the AMIA entrance be dug up so the alleged car bomb wreck could be recovered. Alas!! The Court repeatedly refused to allow this…

So, if the Iranians and Syrians did not conspire with Hezbollah and Hamas to carry out this attack, who really did then?

Scenario 2 – Zionist In-fighting: An Israeli Link?

The AMIA case takes on a whole new dimension when approached within the timeline of what was happening inside Israel in the early nineties.

In 1991, the Madrid Palestinian-Israeli Peace Conference was formed which began moving forward fast after General Isaac Rabin won the June 1992 elections, making him Israeli Prime Minister.

Rabin’s peace strategy required Israel to stop and dismantle illegal settlements by the ultra-right wing armed settlers movement, who claim that giving up even an inch of “sacred Israeli land” is outright treachery.

Nevertheless, Rabin steamed on with the peace process and in September 1993 famously shook hands with Yasser Arafat in the White House Rose Garden with Bill Clinton’s blessing. Shortly after that, Rabin reached initial agreements with Syria over the Golan Heights and with Jordan. At the beginning of July 1994, Rabin allowed Arafat back into Palestine after a 27 year exile.

The ultra-right Zionist Settlers Movement went berserk; literally, because a few months earlier, in February 1994, one Baruch Goldstein – a New York Zionist militant belonging to the fundamentalist Kach group – stormed into a Hebron Mosque, opening fire on praying Muslims, killing 40. No one ever explained how Goldstein got through very strong Israeli security carrying a machine-gun…

Goldstein in turn was killed in the attack, but his tomb later became a place of pilgrimage for the Zionist Settlers Movement.

It is within this timeline that, on July 18 1994, the AMIA bombing took place; at a very critical point in the internal fighting between rival Israeli and Zionist groups.

At the time, AMIA leaders in Buenos Aires supported Rabin’s peace process, which is why many in Argentina believe that the bombing could very well have been a “warning shot” from extreme right-wing Zionists aimed at Rabin, to force him to abandon his “peace for territory” policy with the Palestinians

But Rabin “did not get the message”. And so we reach the terrible climax of this sad story when on November 4, 1995 – little more than a year after the AMIA bombing in Argentina – Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Rabin was gunned down “JFK-style” on the streets of Tel-Aviv; not by a Muslim Fundamentalist, nor by a Palestinian terrorist, nor by a Neo-Nazi fanatic, but by one Ygal Amir: a young ultra-right wing Israeli student, member of the Zionist Settler’s movement and linked to Shin-Beth, Israel’s internal security service that was being revamped by Mr Rabin at the time.

With Isaac Rabin assassinated and out of the way, Shimon Peres stayed on as lame-duck Prime Minister for seven months until elections in 1996 brought Benjamín Netanyahu and the Likud Party to power, and Labor was mostly swept out of Israeli politics. Then came Ehud Barack, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and again today Netanyahu, showing that militant Zionism is fully at the helm in Israel.

Today, as the US, Israel and the UK constantly threaten Iran with unilateral military attack, it appears President Cristina Kirchner – whether inspired by prudence or outright panic – has decided to “sit down and talk with Iran”.

One wonders what will they be talking about? Little, no doubt: Argentina’s irrational and arbitrary accusations are shamefully unsustainable.

What will the local and international Zionist organizations that wield so much power over Argentina, the US and elsewhere do about this?

What will “The Embassies” in Buenos Aires (from the US and Israel, of course) do to bully Argentina?

These are just some of the questions the AMIA case poses on the increasingly complex global grand chessboard in which Argentina has repeatedly and consistently mismanaged the AMIA case since 1994, all of which does not spell a bright future for Argentina.

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­Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.ar

­The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.