Two Iranian nationals were arrested at a hotel in Buenos Aires, Tuesday, after they were found to have traveled on stolen Israeli passports. A gag order has been imposed on the incident, which government authorities are referring to as a "national security event."
International police organization Interpol confirmed that the Iranians had been found with stolen Israeli passports, which had been altered to suit the Iranian agents. According to sources with knowledge of the investigation, local security forces have not ruled out the possibility the Iranians had either planned to carry out a terrorist attack or were used as lookouts for such an attack.
Argentine media identified the Iranians, who posed as Netanel and Rivka Toledano, as Sajjad Samiel Naserani, 27, who claims to be a photographer and Mashoreh Sabzali, 30, an architect and engineer. The two arrived in the country from Spain.
Sources in Argentina's Defense Ministry said this was a very sensitive case, in particular because the country was set to mark 25 years to the deadly terror attack perpetrated by Iranian agents on the Israeli Embassy there in 1992 that killed 29 people and wounded 242.
The two were arrested in a police raid on the hotel where the agents were staying after authorities in the country found them to be forged. While the passports were initially believed to have been stolen, due to their numbers corresponding to passports that were reported as lost or stolen, the Hebrew spelling mistakes on the passports led to the conclusion they had been falsified.
