MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY: IRAN IN AMERICA’S BACKYARD ****
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578513610868984032.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
A terrorist attack that is thwarted is quickly overtaken in the news by other events, and that’s why the botched attempt to blow up John F. Kennedy airport in 2007 is barely remembered today. But a 500-page report filed by a diligent prosecutor in Buenos Aires on Wednesday may change that by providing solid evidence that the JFK plot was part of a far more extensive pattern of Iranian terrorism being sown all over the Western Hemisphere under the cover of embassies, cultural centers and religious institutions.
Alberto Nisman was appointed by former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner to investigate the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. In 2006 he indicted seven Iranians in the case—including a former president; a former minister of information and security; a former foreign relations minister; and a former commander of the Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Interpol issued “red notices” but none of the accused has been arrested.
Another suspect in the case is Mohsen Rabbani, the former Iranian cultural attaché in Buenos Aires. A summary of the longer report released by the prosecutor’s office on Wednesday says Rabbini was a key player in an Iranian effort to “export revolution” to the region through “the dual use of diplomatic offices, cultural or charity associations and even mosques, as it was forewarned by the United Nations itself in General Assembly Resolution [number] 51/210 (1996).” The theaters of operation where he established an “Iranian presence” include Chile, Uruguay and Colombia, according to the summary.
Connecting the dots, Mr. Nisman found that one of the Iranian agents in the plan to incinerate JFK—Guyanese citizen Abdul Kadir—had a “close relationship and hierarchical subordination” to Rabbini. But Kadir’s activities were supported from other countries as well. He “was very important to the plot, not only because he was a successful leader, but also due to his deeply rooted connections with Iran and its embassy in Venezuela.” And he was active in countries throughout the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago; Dominica; Barbados; Antigua and Barbuda; Surinam; and Grenada. “His activity as an Iranian leader allowed him to establish and strengthen relations with other regional Islamic leaders and by 1998 he was the representative of the Secretariat of the Caribbean Islamic Movement.”
It is unlikely that either Kadir or Rabbani would have gotten as far as they did without the use of a seemingly benign activity to shield them. “The dual use of institutions controlled by the Iranian Regime, the cultural, religious and propagation activities conducted by its agents abroad and the radical indoctrination of its supporters” become operational with “the construction of intelligence stations,” the summary explains. These have “the capability to provide logistic, economic and operative support to terrorist attacks decided by the Islamic regime.”
The Argentine prosecutor alleges that the evidence he has collected “prove[s] the steps taken” in order “to infiltrate, for decades, large regions of Latin America,” and to “execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah.” Mr. Nisman has already gone a long way toward proving that in Argentina.
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