That announcement, along with the further achievements of Nisman's team that were to unfold over the next couple of years, marked a high point for the AMIA investigation. The investigation had only recently been reconstituted by the late President Néstor Kirchner following the ignominious collapse of the corruption-ridden probe launched by his predecessor Carlos Menem. Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corra issued arrest warrants for the eight, and the following year, Interpol, the international law-enforcement agency, published "red notices" – an alert sent to all Interpol member states with details of wanted fugitives – for five of them, along with an additional one for Imad Mughniyeh, the chief of staff of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.

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As Argentina mourned the 25th anniversary of the AMIA atrocity last week, joined by Jewish organizations and democratic governments around the world, the prevailing question in the air was, "Where are they now?

Two of the eight men named by the Argentine prosecutors in 2006 have since died. The former Iranian President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, alleged to have called the meeting where the AMIA bombing was first conceived, left us in 2017, having amassed a personal fortune of $1 billion, and described admiringly in his BBC obituary as a "pragmatic conservative" who "sought to encourage a rapprochement with the West and re-establish Iran as a regional power." Imad Mughniyeh of Hezbollah died rather as he lived – in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus that brought to an end a terrorist career that included not just the AMIA bombing and the earlier bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, but also the 1983 suicide attacks on the US embassy and US Marine barracks in Beirut that took 350 lives.

Meanwhile, another of the Iranian leaders wanted by Argentina, Ali Akbar Velayati, now serves as a senior adviser on foreign policy to the Tehran regime's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Strikingly, it was Velayati who attended Mughniyeh's funeral in 2008 as Khamenei's personal representative.) As for the five remaining Interpol red-notice subjects, they are not only alive and well, but have globe-trotted extensively in the meantime, visiting NATO member Turkey as well as Qatar, Pakistan, Oman, Brazil and 15 other countries, the great majority of whom have full diplomatic relations with the United States, the European Union and Argentina itself.

The bottom line, then, remains the same as it was on July 19, 1994 – one day after the AMIA bombing – when the center of Buenos Aires was strewn with rubble and smoke, and emergency services were pulling lifeless bodies from the wreckage.

No one, not a single person, has been tried and convicted for their role in Latin America's worst terrorist atrocity, in which 85 people died and more than 300 were wounded.

To add insult to that profound injury, the one individual whose integrity and dedication were never in doubt – federal prosecutor Nisman – was assassinated in 2015, a few hours before he was due to an unveil a complaint against former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her key aides for reaching an underhand agreement with Iran that would have exonerated the AMIA executioners. Like Velayati, Kirchner – who deliberately misrepresented Nisman's death as a suicide, and who may have even been involved in his murder – has remained in politics, protected from the clutches of the law by her parliamentary immunity as a senator, and presently running for election as Argentina's vice president on a ticket led by her former chief of staff, Alberto Fernández.

This is the scandalous background against which Argentina marked this most significant of all the AMIA anniversaries thus far. Politically, the most important consequence was the declaration of the Argentine government blacklisting Hezbollah – a "terrorist organization" that "continues to represent a current and active threat to national security and the integrity of the financial, economic order of the Argentine Republic."

This decision is the centerpiece of a broader effort by Mauricio Macri, Argentina's president, to lead a regional campaign against Hezbollah's financial heft and political clout throughout Latin America. The Western hemisphere has been a vital source of funds for Hezbollah – much of it from the trafficking of cocaine in concert with senior officers in the Venezuelan military – as well as fake documents and other prizes essential to the functioning of a terrorist organization. As a result, Hezbollah has a head start of at least a decade over Macri's counterterrorism initiative, but nevertheless, there is a renewed optimism that Argentina and its neighbors will begin implementing the legal tools to squeeze Hezbollah from their continent.

Equally, though, this latest burst of Argentine energy against Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors could come to an abrupt halt if Macri loses his re-election bid in October, three months from now.

Having presided over four years of bitter austerity policies, and with inflation currently climbing at 51% annually, Macri's popularity at home has collapsed. A government with Cristina Kirchner at its center is not an inevitability, but polling over the last few months shows that Macri will have his work cut out for him if he is to win a second term in office.

Should Argentina decide to subject itself to Kirchner's leadership again, it is very unlikely that she will turn the country's economy around. But what is certain is that Argentina will be saddled with a leadership that Western countries can never trust, in the most basic sense of that word, with counterterrorism strategy. If the core lesson of the AMIA bombing is to be finally applied, in the form of a concerted campaign to drive Iran and its proxies out of Latin America, then Macri needs to win in October.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The announcement coincided with a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as Argentina marks the 25th anniversary of the deadly bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people died. Argentina blames Iran and Hezbollah for the attack.

Argentina also blames Hezbollah for an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that killed 29 people.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Argentinian President Mauricio Macri for the designation from Jerusalem.

"It is time the entire enlightened world understand the grave danger Iran and Hezbollah pose. It is time the entire world stand up against it," Netanyahu said

The Argentine government's Financial Information Unit, ordered the freezing of assets of members of Hezbollah and the organization a day after the country created a new list for people and entities linked to terrorism. The designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group was the first by any Latin American country.

"At present, Hezbollah continues to represent a current threat to security and the integrity of the economic and financial order of the Argentine Republic," the unit said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah on the move.

Last year, Argentina froze the assets of 14 members of the Barakat Clan, an extended family that officials say has close ties to Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, Argentina's Justice Minister Germán Garavano said adding Hezbollah to terror list was necessary to ensure such terrorist attacks do not happen again. In an exclusive interview with i24NEWS, a global news channel based in Israel, Garavano said: "This measure essentially has a preventive role to create deterrence and to create tools that did not exist in our country at the time, and most of all to detect what could be called preliminary movements or small actions such as the collecting of funds for activities in other countries or money that circulates around our country."

US and Argentine officials say Hezbollah operates in what is known as the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, where an illicit economy funds its operations elsewhere.

Argentina's decision to freeze Hezbollah assets and join the United States in designating it a terrorist group is a significant win for President Donald Trump's administration as it seeks to increase pressure on Tehran and its proxies.

The financial impact on Hezbollah will likely be insignificant because it has other sources of funding, said Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"What the administration is hoping is that even taking little bites out of the apple right now may end up being significant in the long run if they can continue to freeze assets of organizations like Hezbollah in a range of different countries," Jones said.

Other US allies that designate Hezbollah or its military wing a terrorist organization include Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and Israel.

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The designation coincides with a visit to Argentina by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo next week to commemorate the AMIA Jewish community center bombing, which took place on July 18, 1994.

That attack, which has long been attributed to Iran-backed Hezbollah, claimed the lives of 85 people.

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