1.

The present and previous presidents of Argentina have both stood up at the UN General Assembly and politely requested that the government of Iran extradite the AMIA massacre suspects it is sheltering.

2.

Consider Luis D’Elía. He is what we here call a piquetero. He and the organization he leads have unflinchingly backed the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner just as they did that of her husband Néstor Kirchner. Whenever things have looked grim for the present government or its predecessor D’Elía and his followers have been quick to take to the streets and make sure that critical public spaces are denied to those who find some aspect of government policy uncongenial.

3.

Just this morning D’Elía arrived back in Buenos Aires from his latest trip to Tehran. While there he had a “brief encounter” with Mohsen Rabbani, one of the principal AMIA suspects, a man whose considerable assets in this country have been frozen during the course of the investigation into the terrorist attack. He  describes Rabbani as “a much-loved person in Floresta [a Buenos Aires city district]”, and as having been indicted by “a maliciously Zionist  prosecutor”. There is no mention in any of the reports about D’Elía’s visit to Iran that I have seen of him having urged Rabbani or any of the other fugitives to hand themselves over to Argentina’s legal authorities.

4.

Imagine that you are a senior figure in the government of Iran and that one of your responsibilities is managing relations with Argentina. You know that Argentina is seeking the extradition of several of your compatriots suspected of involvement in the mass murder of Argentine citizens  and that one of those compatriots is currently your country’s defense minister. You are also aware of the annual statements requesting their extradition made by the President of Argentina and her predecessor.

Of course you know who D’Elía is too,  of the closeness of his relationship with this government and the previous one and the fact that neither his just-concluded visit to Iran, nor the previous one, have damaged that relationship in any way. You read his statements to the press and note the similarity in the way he talks about Jews and the way your government does. You also note that Argentine maintains normal diplomatic relations with Iran at commercial attaché level.

How seriously are you taking Argentina’s attempts to detain the AMIA suspects?