For over three decades, at every moment of geopolitical tension involving Iran, some analysts of Latin American security have raised the question of whether the region will feel the fallout in the form of terrorist attacks. Those warnings were already brought to mind after Israel launched its air attacks against Iran 10 days ago. They have taken on added urgency now that the U.S. joined that campaign in what the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump claims—and hopes—will be a one-off bombardment of Iran’s harder-to-reach nuclear facilities this weekend.
Iran’s connections to two deadly bombings targeting the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in the 1990s demonstrated an ability to strike globally with its proxies. If those capabilities still exist, now would seem to be the kind of moment for Iranian proxies to lash out. On one hand, Latin American authorities should be prepared for whatever threats they can identify. On the other hand, if no attacks occur, this may be the moment to rethink the plausibility of the Iranian threat in the Western Hemisphere altogether.
In 1992, a suicide bomber drove a pickup truck full of explosives into the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and wounding over 200. Two years later, attackers drove a van full of explosives into the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina, or AMIA, killing 85 and injuring over 300. An Iranian-linked group called the Islamic Jihad Organization took credit for the first attack, and investigators have long believed that Hezbollah conducted the 1994 attack at the direction of the Iranian government. One day after the AMIA bombing in 1994, a plane crash in Panama killed 21 people in what authorities believe—but have never proven—was likely a third bombing attack linked to Iran.