Uruguay expels senior Iran diplomat involved in explosion near Israeli embassy

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Expulsion highlights Iran’s terror role in South America

Uruguay has expelled a senior diplomat of Iran’s embassy in Montevideo two weeks ago, following suspicions that he was involved in placing an explosive device near the Israeli embassy in early January, Israeli daily Haaretz reported quoting senior sources in Jerusalem. 

The explosion near the Israeli Embassy in Montevideo in January was apparently caused by a crude device in a shopping bag and failed to fully detonate. 

It was placed in the vicinity of Montevideo’s World Trade Centre office complex where the Israeli Embassy is located. Although nobody was injured in the attack on 8 January, it was regarded by the Uruguayan authorities as an attack aimed at the Israeli mission, or perhaps to test its response. Uruguay updated Israel on the incident but chose to keep a low profile concerning the affair.

The report highlights Iran’s role in terror in South America. 

Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires flat last month on the eve of publishing a report on the failure of authorities to properly investigate the bombing of the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people. Nisman accused Argentina’s President Kirchner and the country’s foreign minister of “erasing” Iranian involvement in the terror attack for trade, commercial and political reasons.

Iran is also thought to work closely with Hezbollah aiding its attempts to attack Israeli targets and citizens abroad. In October, a suspected Hezbollah operative was arrested by Peru’s Counter-Terrorism Unit in the capital Lima, on suspicion of planning a terror attack against Israeli targets. 

Israeli embassies have been on high alert especially since the killing of Hezbollah’s Jihad Mughniyeh and an Iranian general two weeks ago. An Israeli air strike in Syria is attributed as the cause of the deaths.

Meanwhile, a Bulgarian investigation found Hezbollah responsible for a bus bomb in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas which killed five Israeli tourists in July 2012. In March 2013, a Cypriot court convicted a Hezbollah operative with dual Swedish-Lebanese nationality of helping plan an attack on Israeli tourists on the island.