The recent murder of Alberto Nisman, who was investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, has brought renewed attention to Iran’s activities in South America. As Toby Dershowitz writes, those activities are hardly a matter of the past alone:

On January 8, an explosive device was found adjacent to the new embassy of Israel [in Montevideo, Uruguay]. And, some six weeks earlier, a suspicious suitcase was found near the former Israeli embassy there. The Uruguayan foreign ministry reportedly summoned Tehran’s ambassador, asking him why an Iranian diplomat, reported to be Ahmed Sabatgold, was seen parked in the vicinity of the suspicious suitcase. . . .

Sabatgold reportedly was a well-known Holocaust denier and often spoke out against Jews, according to Uruguayan media reports. They say Sabatgold had been instructing a group of Muslim converts who operated within the framework of the radical Unidad Popular party. . . .

Clearly, Nisman’s investigation was far from over. It continued to shed light on Iran’s long reach into Latin America. Recent plots in Montevideo indicate that Iran’s activities in the hemisphere appear to continue unabated to this day.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.