Hezbollah's 1992 Attack in Argentina Is a Warning for Modern-Day Europe
Twenty-one years ago, a van blew up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aries, and
few saw it coming. Here's how the EU can prevent similar tragedies.
Matthew Levitt Mar 19 2013, 1:15 PM ET
Around 2:45 p.m. on March 17, 1992, a Ford F-100 panel van drove down Arroyo
Street in tranquil neighborhood of Buenos Aries. It approached the front of
the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires--then drove up onto the sidewalk and
blew up. The explosion wreaked havoc up and down the street, destroying the
front of the building, causing the entire consulate building and part of the
attached embassy building to collapse. The 220 pounds of high explosives and
shrapnel, concentrated in the back right section of the vehicle, left
twenty-three people dead and another 242 injured. Most of the people killed
and injured were in the embassy but some were pedestrians, including a
priest from the Roman Catholic Church across the street and children at a
nearby school.
Hezbollah's most recent international terrorist plots targeted Bulgaria and
Cyprus, EU member states on the continent's eastern periphery, prompting
debate over designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group at the EU. For those
European leaders who remain undecided, this week provides a timely reminder
of what happens when the international community fails to respond to
Hezbollah terrorism.
The 21st anniversary of the bombing provides a timely reminder of what
happens when the international community fails to respond to Hezbollah's
terrorism.
This week marks the 21st anniversary of the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing.
Failure to respond to that attack emboldened Hezbollah, which incurred no
cost for the attack. Two years later Hezbollah struck again, this time
escalating from a diplomatic to civilian target and blowing up the AMIA
Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
Yaacov Perry, former director of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet),
visited Argentina just a week before the embassy bombing for liaison
meetings with his intelligence counterparts. At a polo match and luncheon,
the intelligence chiefs discussed "the menace posed by terrorists," though
neither had any idea how close the menace was or how soon it would be
realized. Within days, Israeli counterterrorism teams would be back in
Buenos Aires investigating the embassy bombing alongside Argentinean and
American law enforcement and intelligence experts. An American International
Response Team, including U.S. explosives experts, deployed to the site of
the bombing and determined the type of explosive used by examining the
charred remnants of the car bomb. Within hours of the bombing, investigators
found the front section of the vehicle's engine block in a garden below the
staircase of an apartment building down the street.
In time, investigators would determine that the Ford van had been parked at
a parking lot located just a couple of blocks from the Israeli embassy for
the hour and a half immediately preceding the bombing--to be precise, from
1:18 p.m. to 2:42 p.m., according to the stamp on the ticket. Three minutes
after the van's departure, the vehicle bomb exploded outside the embassy.
In its claim of responsibility, delivered to a Western news agency in
Beirut, Hezbollah's Islamic Jihad Organization declared "with all pride that
the operation of the martyr infant Hussein is one of our continuing strikes
against the criminal Israeli enemy in an open-ended war, which will not
cease until Israel is wiped out of existence." Hussein was the five-year-old
son of Hezbollah leader Abbas Moussawi, both of whom were killed in an
Israeli air strike on his car on February 16, 1992. Speaking at Moussawi's
funeral, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah warned that
"Israel will not escape vengeance. We have received the message that there
is no need to respond in an emotional fashion." Fadlallah assured his
listeners in another statement that "there would be much more violence and
much more blood would flow."
The CIA noted in a July 1992 intelligence report that Hezbollah held the
United States and Israel equally responsible for Moussawi's death and
threatened to target American interests in retaliation. According to the
CIA, this was no empty threat: "Hezbollah elements began planning a
retaliatory operation against U.S. interests in Lebanon shortly after
Moussawi's death." Hezbollah, the CIA reminded policymakers in a July 1992
report, had executed two successful attacks targeting U.S. interests in
Lebanon the previous year--firing missiles at the U.S. embassy on October
29, 1991, and destroying the administration building at the American
University of Beirut in a car bombing on November 8, 1991.
These plans never did materialize, perhaps because Hezbollah was supremely
focused on an attack it was planning well beyond Lebanon's borders. Just
eight days after the assassination, the vehicle used in the embassy bombing
was purchased in Buenos Aires by an individual with a Portuguese accent who
signed documents with a last name different from the one on his
identification. Three weeks later, the embassy was in ruins. The speed at
which the operation was executed is easier to understand, however, in light
of evidence that Iran decided to carry out an operation in Argentina well
before Moussawi was killed. Mohsen Rabbani--an Iranian operative based in
Buenos Aires who would play a key role in the bombing--spent ten months in
Iran from January to December 1991. According to Argentine prosecutor
Alberto Nisman, Hezbollah used the Moussawi assassination to justify the
embassy bombing to its supporters, but the attack was carried out at the
behest of Tehran in response to Argentina's suspension of nuclear
cooperation with Iran.
Now, as then, the strategic relationship between Hezbollah and Iran is
resulting in a campaign of terrorism across the globe. Hezbollah seeks to
murder Israeli tourists, often targeting them in places frequented by
American and other tourists, while Iran has set its sights on Western
diplomats, including American, British, Israeli, Saudi and other officials.
Thankfully, the only successful attack to date was in Bulgaria, where a
Hezbollah bus bombing killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian. Two weeks
earlier, a Swedish Hezbollah operative was arrested in Cyprus, where he was
surveilling Israeli tourists boarding buses at the airport.
Hezbollah is watching Europe closely, much as it watched Argentina 21 years
ago this week. Argentina failed to respond to Hezbollah's challenge then,
and suffered the repercussions two years later. Europe has an opportunity
now to avoid that same mistake and should designate Hezbollah--in whole or
in part--a terrorist group for executing terrorist plots in Europe. History
suggests that failure to do so could result in still more attacks by an
emboldened Hezbollah.
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