Argentina objects to Iran's terrorist defense minister

AFP:

Argentina expressed outrage Friday over Iran's nomination of a man wanted in connection to a 1994 Buenos Aires bombing that killed 85 people, as the next defense minister.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tapping Ahmad Vahidi for the post is "an affront to Argentine justice and the victims of the terrorist attack" on the Jewish community center, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

News of the nomination was received "with grave concern and deserves the most energetic condemnation of the Argentine government," it said.

In 2007, Interpol issued what it calls a Red Notice on Vahidi, a former head of Al Quds, an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Interpol under the notice distributed Argentina's arrest warrant for Vahidi to member countries.

The July 9, 1994 bombing leveled the seven-floor Argentine Jewish Mutual Association building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and wounding 300. No single individual has ever been convicted for the bombing.

It was the worst terrorist attack in Argentina, which has the largest Jewish community in the Americas outside the United States, and the second large-scale anti-Jewish strike in Buenos Aires that decade.

In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was leveled in a bombing that killed 22 people and wounded 200.

In Washington, US officials reacted with concern.

"If this report is true and if this man is confirmed as a cabinet minister and is wanted by Interpol for his involvement in a terrorist act, of course this would be disturbing," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

...

What this appointment does is tie the terrorist heart of the evil regime in Tehran to one of its mass murder operations. It demonstrates that this evil regime is still at war with civiliazation. It should be a message to Obama that dialog with these people will not restrain theri terrorist ambitions.