In a new provocation to the Argentine justice system and the international community, the Islamic Republic of Iran appointed General Ahmad Vahidi, a high-ranking regime official with an international arrest warrant for his alleged involvement in the attack on the AMIA headquarters, as interim commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In 1994, this attack left 85 dead and more than 300 injured in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires.
The appointment comes after the recent death of General Hossein Salami, who was killed in an attack attributed to Israel against Iranian military and nuclear facilities. Alongside him, Mohammad Bagheri, who until then was chief of the General Staff of Iran's Armed Forces, also died. He has now been replaced by Habibollah Sayyari as acting commander.
Vahidi, whose full name is Ahmad Shah Cheraghi, is not a minor figure. He was Iran's Minister of the Interior and one of the top leaders of the Quds Force, the expeditionary branch of the Revolutionary Guard, directly linked to terrorist operations abroad. The Argentine judiciary, through the investigation led by Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, identifies him as one of the participants in the meeting where the decision was made to carry out the attack against AMIA.
