Iranian American Forum, 30 May 2013

AP reports that Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who investigated the 1994 AMIA bombing accused Iran of “infiltrating” South America and setting up intelligence networks to carry out more terrorist attacks in the region. “These are sleeper cells. They have activities you wouldn’t imagine. Sometimes they die having never received the order to attack,” Nisman said as he presented a 500-page indictment.

He said Iran has sought “to infiltrate the countries of Latin America and install secret intelligence stations with the goal of committing, fomenting and fostering acts of international terrorism in concert with its goals of exporting the revolution.”

Nisman said that he has compiled a huge file of evidence including reports from the region, Europe and the United States, and that Iran’s involvement goes way beyond the 1994 bombing. He described a decades-long effort by Iran to lay the groundwork for future terrorist attacks, either using Iranian agents “or through their terrorist ally Hezbollah.”

Nisman’s warning is a new rebuttal to Iranian regime’s apologists and lobbyists who don’t miss any occasion to acquit the Iranian regime from terrorism. A clear example is pro-Tehran advocate Gary Sick. Following the enactment of a law to monitor Iran’s influence in Latin America in January this year, Sick declared that “there is some parallels with the 1950s, when many American politicians saw a communist under every bed, now they see an Iranian under every bed.”

For the kind of Sick, even if Iran is caught red handed, the Mullahs have sufficient reason to do so. When the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador was uncovered, Sick declared: “I find this very hard to believe. In fact, this plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures. To be sure, Iran has plenty of reasons to be angry at both the United States and Saudi Arabia. They attribute the recent wave of assassinations of physics professors and students, as well as the intrusion of the Stuxnet worm, to the U.S. and Israel. And the king of Saudi Arabia is reliably reported to have called for the U.S. to bomb Iran.“