How they must laugh at Obama and Kerry in Tehran. “New Iranian Foreign Policy Head “˜Approved” 1994 Terror Bombing,” by Adam Kredo for the Washington Free Beacon, January 3:
An Iranian politician known for his role in planning and approving the deadly 1994 terrorist bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina has officially been appointed to helm Iran’s top foreign policy shop, a posting formerly held by current President Hassan Rouhani.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a longtime regime insider who serves as a senior foreign policy adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was recently selected to head Iran’s Center for Strategic Research (CSR), a think tank closely tied to the country”s Expediency Council, a powerful governing body that reports directly to Khamenei.
Argentinian authorities have singled out Velayati for helping plan and approve the 1994 Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) bombing, an Iranian-orchestrated assault that killed 85 people and remains the deadliest terror attack in Argentina’s history.
Velayati’s rise to the upper echelon of Iran’s foreign-policy-making machine has led some observers to criticize Rouhani for elevating extreme hardliners despite promises to act as a moderate reformer.
Velayati’s ties to the AMIA bombing were outlined in a 2006 investigation by Argentinian General Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who has been barred by his government from discussing his findings with the U.S. Congress.
Velayati was a member of the secretive Iranian committee that gathered in 1993 to design the attack on the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, according to Nisman’s indictment, which relied on testimony from a former Iranian intelligence official.
“With regard to the committee’s role in the decision to carry out the AMIA attack, [the intelligence official] stated that this decision was made under the direction of Ali Khamenei, and that the other members of the committee were [then-Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, Mir Hejazi, Rouhani, Velayati and Fallahijan,” the indictment said.
An Argentine judge issued an international arrest warrant for Velayati in 2006 for his role in planning the terror attack….