While the White House is purportedly making deals with Iran,
Now the Jerusalem Post reports that European diplomats say the deal between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is for Tehran to keep about 6,500 centrifuges in return for “guaranteeing regional stability” — using Iranian influence to keep Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in check. International sanctions that Obama claims have forced Iran to the negotiating table would be lifted.
Suddenly, the lead investigator of a terrorist attack involving Iran (possibly was the foremost expert on Iranian operations in Latin America) turns up dead . . . the day before he was scheduled to testify to his country’s Congress on his allegations that the country’s president had colluded with Iran to interfere with the investigation.
Prior to his death he had told a reporter
that he had evidence tying Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported that Rouhani was part of the secretive Iranian government committee that approved the AMIA bombing, according to witness testimony included in a 500-page indictment written by the late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was appointed to investigate the attack.
Simon Romero’s report made it to the front page of the NYT:
Draft of Arrest Request for Argentine President Found at Dead Prosecutor’s Home
Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a request for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into his death said Tuesday.
The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also sought the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing.
Romero explains why Nisman didn’t go through with the arrest request,
Normally, a prosecutor in Argentina seeks an arrest out of concern that the people charged with crimes will try to corrupt the investigation or flee the country, according to Susana Ciruzzi, a professor of criminal law at the University of Buenos Aires who knew Mr. Nisman.
But in this case, some legal experts suspect that Mr. Nisman decided against requesting the arrest of Mrs. Kirchner because such a move would have been viewed as a political attack on the president in a case that has already polarized the nation.
Moreover, Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have immunity as members of the executive branch. They could have been arrested only if a judge handling the case were to authorize a political trial similar to an impeachment process and ask Congress to lift their immunity, Ms. Ciruzzi said.
The draft was dated June 2014,
The date is important because, after Nisman’s death, Fernández de Kirchner claimed that the Special Prosecutor had decided to request her arrest only recently, while he was on a visit to Europe. The president implied strongly that unnamed foreign powers were manipulating Nisman, who spent more than a decade in charge of the investigation into the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
Also in the draft, Nisman alleged that
Venezuela’s then-ambassador to Argentina, Roger Capella, had in 2006 contributed to the cover-up of the 1994 AMIA terrorist attack.
According to Nisman’s evidence, the Venezuelan diplomat helped foment protests against the arrest of Iranian suspects ordered by the Argentinean judiciary.
“The demonstration against the Argentinean court’s ruling was carried out by the Iranian embassy, headed by Luis D’Elía — supported by Iran’s middleman in Argentina, Jorge Alejandro “Yussuf” Khalil — and promoted by then-Venezuelan ambassador to Buenos Aires, Roger Capella,” Nisman wrote.
Fernandez’s chief of staff, Jorge Capitanich, tore up Clarin’s report showing the drafts in his press conference,
the prosecutor in charge of the investigation into how he died, has radically revised her assessment of how he died, claiming that the deadly bullet entered not through his temple, as originally stated, but two centimeters – around three-quarters of an inch – behind his ear.
If Fein’s latest conclusion is borne out by the facts, it will further weaker the assertion that Nisman’s death was a suicide, since the the bullet’s point of entry strongly suggests that the trigger was pulled by someone else.
Yesterday she announced that she would be taking a vacation between February 18 and March 5.
Over in the Middle East, Iran and Hizbullah Mourn Mughniyeh and Plan Revenge Worldwide (h/t The Tower; emphasis added),
Nasrallah, for his part, in his speech on January 30, the day of remembrance for the fallen in the Kuneitra operation, asserted that all of the existing rules of the game with Israel before the Kuneitra operation were no longer in existence. In mentioning the assassination of the second leader of Hizbullah, Abbas Musawi, he alluded to the price Israel paid with the 1992 bombing attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina carried out with Iranian assistance, implying that this would be a model for the response.
But none of this matters to the White House, where
Ideals, persuasion, feelings, and intent are now the stuff of foreign policy, not archaic and polarizing rules of deterrence, balance of power, military readiness, and alliances.
The deals with Iran roll right along.
Related:
Argentina: Intolerancia: El gobierno desafía una vez más la libertad de prensa de manera violenta
Did the Argentine Government Kill Alberto Nisman?
