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 He has now been replaced by Habibollah Sayyari as acting commander.
República Islámica de Irán.
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.
Since 2007, Interpol has maintained a red notice for him at Argentina's request. In 2017, the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) confirmed that Vahidi and Mohsen Rezai were part of the group that "considered the proposal to attack our country".
Ahmad Vahidi.
The new commander has not only evaded justice for almost two decades, but he has also traveled with impunity. In 2011, he visited Bolivia, where he was received with honors by the government of Evo Morales, who maintained close military ties with Tehran. Only after the media scandal in both countries did the then government of Cristina Kirchner issue a mild complaint. Instead of being detained due to the active red notice, Vahidi was quickly evacuated from Bolivia to avoid diplomatic conflicts.
The general's profile returned to the spotlight last April, when the prosecutor of the AMIA Unit, Sebastián Basso, requested that the Argentine judiciary issue an international arrest warrant for Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as part of a request for a trial in absentia against ten Iranian officials accused of planning and carrying out the 1994 attack.
According to the official statement from the Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF), the accused —including Vahidi— are Alí Fallahijan, Alí Akbar Velayati, Mohsen Rezai, Hadi Soleimanpour, Mohsen Rabbani, Ahmad Reza Asghari, Salman Raouf Salman, Abdallah Salman, and Hussein Mounir Mouzannar. All of them have been declared fugitives, are aware of the proceedings against them, and have never replied to the requests of the Argentine judiciary.
