After publicly speculating about what drives a man to kill himself, Argentina鈥檚 President Cristina Kirchner now says that , the special prosecutor into the of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds, didn鈥檛 commit suicide after all.
鈥淚n Argentina, as in all places, not everything is what it appears to be, and vice versa,鈥� Kirchner in a statement posted on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. According to Kirchner, the 51-year-old Nisman, who was found Sunday evening in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head, was killed to make her look bad. The way she sees it, his investigation into the AMIA case wrongly implicated her in a cover-up to protect the Islamic Republic of Iran, and his murder just as wrongly implicates her as part of a larger conspiracy to silence him.
Maybe Kirchner did have something to do with Nisman鈥檚 murder, maybe it was a faction in the Argentine intelligence community that his investigation also pointed at. But there鈥檚 another player here that shouldn鈥檛 be overlooked鈥擨ran.
Nisman鈥檚 investigation that Tehran was responsible for both the 1994 bombing and the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people and wounded 242. Analysts, journalists, and Western intelligence services have long believed that Iran was behind the two bombings. However, what distinguished Nisman鈥檚 investigation was the motive he attributed to the Iranians鈥攖o punish Buenos Aires for first stalling and then bilateral agreements on nuclear technology.
Nisman鈥檚 interpretation went against the standard understanding of the two attacks. Most observers argued that the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy came in retaliation for Israel鈥檚 assassination of Hezbollah鈥檚 then-General Secretary the 1994 AMIA bombing was simply a follow-on of the 1992 attack.
However, as Nisman explained to me several years ago in Washington, D.C., the Iranian networks were not set up for rapid response. According to Nisman, the March 17 attack on the embassy had been planned well before the February 16 assassination of Mussawi鈥攅ven the car used in the bombing had been prepared earlier in the winter.
Further, it鈥檚 worth remembering that the Iranians are not in the habit of using their painstakingly established networks to retaliate when their Arab assets, like Hezbollah, are exterminated. If the Arabs want to take revenge themselves, to get Israel back, for instance, for killing Imad Mughniyeh, mastermind of the Argentinian operations, in Damascus 2007, that鈥檚 fine, so long as they do it on their own time. Iranian terrorist operations are waged only for the purpose of advancing Tehran鈥檚 strategic interests.
Argentina鈥檚 then-President Carlos Menem wanted better relations with the West, particularly his large neighbor to the north. According to Nisman, it鈥檚 when Menem succumbed to the Clinton White House鈥檚 pressure that Tehran opted to pressure Buenos Aires in its own fashion鈥攚ith spectacular acts of terror.
Why, I asked Nisman, did the Iranians target Jews, first the Israeli embassy and then AMIA, when they were sending a message to the Argentine government? Nisman, a non-observant Jew, said the Jews were a convenient target. Why not attack a successful small community and send the warning that next time it might be a community Argentines really care about?
When the Kirchner government two years ago that it was establishing an independent 鈥渢ruth commission鈥� to investigate the attacks with the prime suspect鈥擨ran鈥攖he country鈥檚 Jewish community was up in arms, as was Israel. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon it to 鈥渋nviting the murderer to participate in the murder investigation.鈥�
It seems that the point of the truth commission was to further muddy the waters, and eventually help clear Iran of any responsibility for the attacks. Nisman found that high-level Argentine officials, including Kirchner, participated in the whitewash. In return for exculpating Iran鈥檚 Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President , and others, including 鈥渃ultural鈥� attache Mohsen Rabbani, believed to be responsible for planning the worst terrorist attacks in Argentina鈥檚 history, Argentine agricultural products would have access to Iranian markets, and Tehran would send cheap oil to Argentina.
Cristina Kirchner and many officials in her government clearly had an interest in silencing Nisman. But there are others who have a very powerful motive. If, in Nisman鈥檚 understanding, the purpose of the 1992 and 1994 attacks was to punish Argentina for reconsidering its bilateral relationship with Iran on its nuclear file, then killing the special prosecutor into the two bombings simply underscores that Tehran considers its nuclear program as a vital interest.
With the world鈥檚 attention turned to Geneva, where Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif are negotiating a permanent agreement over Iran鈥檚 nuclear program, Tehran shifted the focus to a bathroom in an apartment in Buenos Aires, where a man of courage and integrity was murdered earlier this week. Whether or not it was Iran that killed Alberto Nisman Monday, his life work was to prove that it pulled the trigger in 1992 and 1994. His assassination reminds us of what the Iranians are capable of doing.