After more than three decades since the deadly attacks in Buenos Aires targeting the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center, an Argentine court on Thursday blamed Iran, declaring it a "terrorist state," according to local media reports. The ruling stated that Iran ordered the attack on the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the attack in 1994 on the "Argentine Israeli Mutual Association" (AMIA) Jewish center. The court also accused Iran-backed Hezbollah, describing the AMIA attack—which is the deadliest in Argentina's history—as a "crime against humanity," according to documents released by the court.
Carlos Maheikis, one of the three judges who issued the ruling, told Radio Con Vos, "Hezbollah carried out an operation in response to a political, ideological, and revolutionary plan authorized by a government, by a state," referring to Iran.
The 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy resulted in 29 fatalities, and two years later, the AMIA center was targeted in a truck bombing that killed 85 people and injured 300. No group claimed responsibility for the 1994 attack, but Argentina and Israel have long maintained that the Lebanese Hezbollah executed it at Iran's request. Prosecutors accused senior Iranian officials of ordering the attack, while Tehran denied any involvement.
Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America, consisting of about 300,000 individuals, and the country is also home to immigrant communities from the Middle East, particularly from Syria and Lebanon. The judges considered the AMIA attack a crime against humanity and blamed then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, along with other Iranian officials and members of Hezbollah.
