IRAN AND ARGENTINA

WHY ARGENTINA IS REACHING OUT TO IRAN 

By Emily Schmall

TRADE CONSIDERATIONS UNDERLIE THE DEAL

ARGENTINA announced it would work with IRAN to resolve a deadly 1994 anti-Semitic attack in Buenos Aires.

After years of impasse, ARGENTINA and IRAN this week announced an agreement to work together on solving one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks anywhere since World War II. The deal emerged in the midst of deepening trade ties and has generated skepticism from the US and ISRAEL. 

In 1994, a suicide bomber drove a van full of explosives into the ARGENTINA Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building, killing 85, wounding about 300, and tearing at the heart of Buenos Aries’ Jewish population, the 3^rd largest in the world. An ARGENTINE special prosecutor in 2006 accused Hezbollah, the LEBANESE group with strong ties to IRAN and SYRIA, of executing the attacks with financing from IRANIAN government officials.

Food for thought by Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring: It should be noted that former ARGENTINE president Carlos Menem is of SYRIAN origin who converted from Islam to Catholicism in order to become president of ARGENTINA. His family comes from Yabrud, a small town located about 80 km north of Damascus, close to the border of LEBANON. Aside from ARGENTINE S  3^rd largest worldwide Jewish community there is also an estimate of 1million Muslims,  mainly of  SYRIAN LEBANESE descent, residing in Argentina and although being a Roman Catholic dominated country, the capital of Buenos Aires has no landmark cathedral as is the case in other catholic countries but instead the largest mosque in Latin AMERICA, the king Fahd mosque and Islamic center, (inaugurated by Menem) located in the heart of Buenos Aires. 

 1994-AMIA bombing Buenos Aires

ARGENTINA and IRAN announced an agreement to create a joint commission of international legal experts to investigate the 1994 attack. As part of the agreement, prosecutors will be allowed for the first time to interrogate suspects – in Tehran.

FLAGGING ECONOMIES THE REASON FOR REACH OUT? 

The announcement, signed by Foreign Minister Minister Héctor Timerman and his IRANIAN counterpart, Ali Albar Salehi, on the sidelines of an AFRICAN Union meeting in ETHIOPIA, symbolizes ARGENTINA’S warming ties with IRAN as both countries seek non-traditional trading partners to shore up their flagging economies.

Banned from international credit markets because of outstanding debts with the Paris Club and World Bank, ARGENTINA has brokered bilateral agreements with autocratic regimes like IRAN. Pinioned by international sanctions, IRAN has also had to look for new partners, finding in South America a sympathetic group of populist governments, according to Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist and professor at Virginia Tech  university.

“It has to establish friendly relations with countries so that it can trust that its assets won’t be seized,” says Professor Salehi-Isfahani.

Additionally, IRAN is attempting to keep its food prices down amid currency devaluation aggravated by sanctions on its oil, says Salehi-Isfahani.

“ARGENTINA has quickly become one of IRAN’S principle food importers so this is becoming a relationship IRAN needs to nurture,” he says.

ARGENTINA EXPORTS LARGE VOLUMES OF AGRICULTURAL GOODS, HELPING IRAN AVOID FOOD SHORTAGES THAT WOULD LIKELY TRIGGER SOCIAL UNREST

ARGENTINA has cut IRANIAN crude imports to comply with existing sanctions, but continues to export large volumes of agricultural goods, helping IRAN avoid food shortages that would likely trigger social unrest, Salehi-Isfahani says. 

Trade between IRAN and ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, ECUADOR, BOLIVIAN, and VENEZUELA rose to $3.6 billion in 2011, according to the Inter – American Development Bank.

See also related article: http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/11/irans-untouchable-energy-exports.html

 “We see ARGENTINA’S rapprochement with IRAN as dangerous for the entire region because IRAN is a sponsor of international terrorism with a regime that doesn’t respect human rights. ARGENTINA has nothing in common with IRAN and should have nothing to do with it,” says Sergio Widder, the representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, in Buenos Aires.

The US State Department says it is monitoring IRAN’S engagement with the Western Hemisphere closely.

IRAN is among several oil-rich countries with a consumer class, including ANGOLA and AZERBAIJAN, that ARGENTINA has sought as trading partners to help plug its widening energy deficit and to buy its agricultural and domestic products.

See: ARGENTINA AND ANGOLA http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/05/argentina-and-africa.html

 

Though still accounting for a small portion of ARGENTINA’S overall trade, the partnerships could become more valuable thanks to recent joint chambers of commerce that opened last year in Buenos Aires.

LEGITIMATE FEAR THAT IRAN COULD GAIN ACCESS TO ARGENTINA’S ATOMIC ENERGY PROGRAM?

ISRAEL and the US have expressed wariness about ARGENTINA’S increasingly normalized relations with IRAN.

ISRAEL, which for years has attempted to isolate IRAN through international sanctions in a bid for the country to drop its nuclear program, condemned the joint “truth commission” announced earlier this week to investigate the AMIA case. ISRAEL'S foreign ministry said in a press release that it received news of the agreement "with astonishment...and deep disappointment."

ISRAEL’S deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, told the ISRAELI newspaper Haaretz that holding a joint investigation with Iran was “like inviting the murderer to participate in the murder investigation.”

The US Embassy in Buenos Aires also expressed doubt about the ARGENTINE-IRANIAN accord. “We are skeptical that a just solution can be found in the arrangement announced,” says a press officer.

Fears are periodically raised in the ARGENTINE press about the possibility of IRAN gaining access to ARGENTINA’S atomic energy program, though the US State Department dismissed the possibility in a press conference late last year, calling ARGENTINA a firm ally in the international campaign to keep IRAN from developing nuclear technology.

SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE WITH STRONGMEN 

ARGENTINA is leading LATIN AMERICA in forging new trade partnerships with fast-growing, oil-rich, autocratic regimes in AFRICA and the MIDDLE EAST. In 2012, huge delegations of diplomats and business people traveled to ANGOLA, ruled by the strongman Jose Eduardo dos Santos and AZERBAIJAN, whose president, has been criticized for a rise in religious persecution of non-Muslims.

Comment by Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring: When it comes to securing energy resources no country seems to have scruples from whom and where to get its oil. SAUDI ARABIA can hardly be considered a democratic country and yet the USA imports vast amount oil from SAUDI ARABIA as well as VENEZUELA. ISRAEL has strong ties with AZERBAIJAN etc. 

See also: http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/12/usa-china-and-africa.html and 
http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.com.ar/2012/10/israel-azerbaijan-and-kazakhstan_6.html

 

The agreement with IRAN represents a turnabout for ARGENTINA. President Kirchner had previously appealed to the UNITED NATIONS to pressure the Iranians to comply with its earlier investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing. However, at last year’s General Assembly meeting, Kirchner announced ARGENTINA would be seeking to resolve the case jointly with IRAN, initiating several rounds of secret negotiations that riled ARGENTINA’S Jewish community.

To date IRAN has ignored international arrest warrants for nine people ARGENTINA suspects in the attacks, including a former IRANIAN president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani  , and IRAN’S current defense minister, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi.

Whether ARGENTINA can win IRAN’S cooperation through trade where international sanctions have failed remains to be seen.