AMIA & the NIE

By Aaron Mannes

The NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program has sparked an ongoing controversy about the nature of the Iranian regime and its intentions. While the Iranian regime appears to have halted their nuclear weaponization program in 2003, they continue to research ballistic missiles and, most importantly, acquire fissile material (which is the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon.) Putting aside the inherent uncertainty of any intelligence estimate, it is quite feasible that scaling back the weaponization program was a tactical move because the regime was having technical difficulties, the centrifuges used to enrich uranium are sophisticated and fragile - running thousands of them for long periods is no small technical challenge. These technical challenges are not insurmountable so the real question remains, “What is the nature of the Iranian regime?”

Iran’s sponsorship and execution of the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, should be a reminder that this is a regime that uses terrorism as tool of diplomacy.

AMIA, the communal offices of the Argentine Jewish community, was struck by a massive suicide truck bomb on July 18, 1994 - 85 were killed and over 200 injured. Iran and Hezbollah were suspected from the beginning. The Argentine investigation has had several false starts and has been mired in corruption, but in recent years has gotten on track. Last month Interpol voted overwhelmingly to issue a red letter calling for the arrest of five Iranians (along with Hezbollah’s external operations chief Imad Mughniyah) on the basis of the Argentine investigation. The publicly available report on the AMIA bombing offers tremendous insight into the Iranian regime’s modus operandi and worldview.

Below are two network graphs (for more on the graphs and my research at the University of Maryland see the end of the post). The first graph illustrates the web of interconnecting people and events that carried out the bombing. The second graph is the network linked to Mohsen Rabbani, the cultural affairs attaché at the Iranian Embassy who was the operations coordinator for the attack.

Graph of Events Linked to the AMIA Bombing

Network Graph of Mohsen Rabbani - Operations Chief for the AMIA Bombing

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