Serving the Interests of Jewry: Behind Argentina’s Latest Move Against Iran

Argentine President Javier Milei formally designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization on March 31, 2026, placing Buenos Aires squarely alongside Washington and Tel Aviv in their escalating confrontation with Iran. The decision drew praise from Israeli officials and condemnation from Iran, which dismissed the move as a capitulation to American and Zionist pressure.

Yet Milei’s action should not be understood as a dramatic departure from recent Argentine foreign policy. It represents instead the logical culmination of a strongly pro-Israel trajectory that began under his predecessor Mauricio Macri — who designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 2019 and deepened security cooperation with Tel Aviv — and has now reached its most exaggerated expression under Milei.

Understanding this trajectory requires excavating the complicated history connecting Argentina, Israel, and Iran across nearly eight decades of diplomatic maneuvering, terrorist violence, and contested narratives.

Early Relations

Argentina recognized the State of Israel in 1949, establishing formal diplomatic ties that would persist through decades of political upheaval in both countries. Argentina hosted Latin America’s largest Jewish community, concentrated heavily in Buenos Aires, which gave the relationship a domestic dimension absent in other South American nations.

But Argentina also served as a refuge for Nazi officials fleeing European justice after World War II. SS officer Adolf Eichmann lived in Buenos Aires under an assumed identity until Mossad agents abducted him in May 1960 and transported him to Israel for trial and eventual execution. The operation, conducted without Argentine knowledge or permission, provoked a diplomatic crisis. Buenos Aires filed a complaint with the United Nations Security Council, which passed a resolution declaring that Israel had violated Argentine sovereignty.

This pattern of Israeli unilateralism and Argentine protest would repeat throughout the following decades, establishing a template for relations defined simultaneously by cooperation and tension.

The Dirty War Years

Argentina’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 produced its own tense dynamics. The junta waged a punitive campaign against leftists, dissidents, and perceived subversives, kidnapping, torturing, and killing an estimated 30,000 people. Jews were overrepresented among the victims. According to human rights organizations, Jews comprised between 5 and 12 percent of the detained and disappeared despite constituting less than one percent of the national population, suggesting that the junta disproportionately targeted the Jewish community.

Israeli relations with the junta nonetheless remained functional throughout this period. Cold War imperatives placed anti-communism above human rights considerations. As revealed by declassified British Foreign Office documents, Israel continued arms sales and military cooperation with the Argentine government even as reports of atrocities mounted, with Israeli military exports to the junta estimated at between $700 million and $1 billion. Democracy returned under President Raúl Alfonsín in 1983, who prosecuted members of the junta for their crimes while maintaining stable relations with Israel.

The Menemato

Carlos Menem subsequently assumed the presidency in 1989 and immediately reoriented Argentine foreign policy toward the Western camp. A Peronist of Syrian extraction who had converted from Islam to Catholicism, Menem sent warships to join the American-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, making Argentina the only Latin American country to contribute forces to the coalition. He cultivated close ties with Washington and, through that relationship, with Jerusalem. It was during this period of Western alignment that Argentina experienced the two deadliest terrorist attacks in its history.

On March 17, 1992, a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and wounding 242. Two years later, on July 18, 1994, another truck bomb destroyed the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building, killing 85 and injuring hundreds more. The AMIA attack remains the deadliest terrorist incident in Argentine history.

Argentine investigators, collaborating closely with Israeli intelligence, eventually concluded that Iran and Hezbollah orchestrated both attacks. The official narrative, affirmed by Argentina’s Court of Cassation in a landmark 2024 ruling, held that Tehran ordered the bombings in retaliation for Argentina canceling three contracts that would have provided Iran with nuclear technology — pressure meant to coerce Buenos Aires into reversing course. Interpol issued red notices for six Iranian officials at Argentina’s request, among them Ahmad Vahidi, who commanded the Quds Force at the time of the 1994 attack and has since risen to lead the IRGC itself.

However, investigative journalists like Gareth Porter have challenged the evidentiary foundation for these accusations. Porter has pointed to the procedural chaos that plagued the investigation from its inception, including missing evidence, recanted testimony, and abandoned leads. He has argued that the case against Iran rests heavily on testimony from defectors with questionable credibility and intelligence assessments that have never been independently verified. Porter has noted that the original investigation initially focused on a “local connection” involving corrupt Argentine police officials before abruptly pivoting to the Iranian theory under pressure from Israeli and American intelligence services.

In 2004, an Argentine federal court declared the original investigation null and void, finding that police and intelligence officials had deliberately sabotaged the probe by paying a key witness $400,000 to fabricate testimony implicating Buenos Aires police officers. Judge Galeano was subsequently impeached and later jailed for his role in the cover-up. The truth of what happened in 1992 and 1994 remains contested to this day.

The Kirchner Interlude

By the time that damning judicial ruling arrived, Argentina had already entered a new political era. Néstor Kirchner took office in 2003 and, together with his wife and successor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, governed Argentina for 12 years. The Kirchner administrations pursued a markedly different approach to the AMIA case and relations with Iran.

On January 27, 2013, Cristina Kirchner signed a memorandum of understanding with Tehran establishing a joint “truth commission” to investigate the bombing. Critics — including the Argentine Jewish community organization DAIA and special prosecutor Alberto Nisman — denounced the agreement as a betrayal of the victims and an attempt to shield Iranian suspects from accountability. Kirchner and her supporters argued it represented the only realistic path toward answers given Iran’s categorical refusal to extradite its citizens. The memorandum never entered into force: Argentina’s Congress approved it, but Iran’s parliament did not ratify it, and Argentine courts subsequently declared it unconstitutional.

The controversy reached its explosive climax in January 2015 when Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who had spent a decade constructing the case against Iran, was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. He died the day before he was scheduled to present evidence to Congress allegedly demonstrating that Kirchner had conspired to cover up Iranian involvement in exchange for favorable oil agreements.

Nisman’s death was initially classified as suicide. It was subsequently reclassified as murder. No one has been convicted. The case remains Argentina’s most infamous unsolved crime.

Macri and the Pro-Israel Pivot

The scandal cast a long shadow over the final months of Kirchner’s presidency. Mauricio Macri defeated the Kirchnerist candidate Daniel Scioli in 2015 and immediately reversed course on Iran policy. Within days of taking office in December 2015, Macri’s Justice Ministry withdrew the Kirchner government’s appeal of a court ruling that had declared the Iran memorandum unconstitutional, effectively killing the pact and restoring Argentina’s unilateral pursuit of the AMIA case. On July 18, 2019 — the exact 25th anniversary of the AMIA bombing — Argentina’s Financial Information Unit formally designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization and froze its assets, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to do so without distinguishing between a “military wing” and a “political wing.” The unit stated that “Hezbollah continues to represent a current and active threat to national security and the integrity of the financial, economic order of the Argentine Republic.”

Milei as Macri on Steroids

This pivot established the foundation upon which Milei would build. Javier Milei campaigned as a libertarian radical promising to slash the state, dollarize the economy, and align Argentina unambiguously with the United States and Israel. He has described himself as philosophically Jewish and has expressed interest in converting to Judaism. He has pledged to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a symbolic gesture that would place Argentina among a tiny handful of nations recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the contested city.

The IRGC designation represents the most dramatic manifestation yet of Milei’s orientation. By formally labeling the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, Argentina joins a bloc that includes the United States, Canada, Australia, the European Union, and several other governments. The designation carries practical consequences for any IRGC-linked individuals or assets operating in Argentina and signals Buenos Aires’s eagerness to participate actively in the American and Israeli pressure campaign against Tehran.

Far from being a sudden policy pivot, this designation marks the ultimate intensification of a pro-Zionist trajectory that has characterized Argentine foreign affairs for decades. In his eagerness to sanction the IRGC, Milei is signaling clearly to world Jewry that he is their most steadfast and loyal servant in the Latin American theater.