The death—most likely murder—of Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires’s AMIA Jewish center, takes its place within a long history of anti-Semitism and political corruption in Argentina. Ben Cohen writes:

It’s important to bear three indisputable truths in mind: First, no one has ever been convicted for the [1992] Israeli embassy bombing. Second, no one has ever been convicted for the AMIA bombing. Third, the most tangible outcome of this entire process has been the suspicious death of the one man who dedicated himself to unraveling these grotesque mysteries: Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor; Alberto Nisman, the Jew. . . . .

From the moment Nisman’s body was discovered, the inquiry into his death faithfully reflected the judicial sham that had plagued the actual AMIA investigation. At first, the authorities insinuated that Nisman had shot himself in the temple. A few days later, it was noted that the fatal bullet had entered above and behind his ear—a strange method, indeed, to end one’s own life with a gun. . . .

These basic errors—whether caused by incompetence, design, or a mixture of the two—were compounded by [President Cristina] Kirchner’s own statements. Increasingly sounding like an angst-ridden protagonist in a telenovela, the president initially declared that Nisman had probably committed suicide. She also breathlessly accused Nisman of working at the behest of foreign powers, stating that during a trip he made to Europe a few weeks before he died, he’d received precise instructions on how to proceed with the accusations against her. Then, with a remarkable lack of self-awareness, Kirchner changed her mind; Nisman’s death, she now said, was probably a murder. . . .

“Which Nisman do I go with?” Kirchner herself asked in early March, implying that because the special prosecutor had once praised her remarks about AMIA before the United Nations, there was no basis for his later accusations against her. For good measure, Kirchner then offered up the outlines of a conspiracy theory: why, she asked, “does the state of Israel demand [justice] for AMIA, and not for the blowing up of their own embassy?” She offered no further explanation; in the Kirchnerite universe, it is enough to encourage speculation about Israel’s agenda and allow people to draw their own malign conclusions.

Tehran’s ongoing cooperation with Moscow has recently garnered public attention because of the Kremlin’s use of Iranian arms against Ukraine, but it extends much further, including to the Islamic Republic’s Lebanese proxy, Hizballah. Aurora Ortega and Matthew Levitt explain:

Over the last few years, Russia has quietly extended its reach into Lebanon, seeking to cultivate cultural, economic, and military ties in Beirut as part of a strategy to expand Russian influence in the Middle East, while sidelining the U.S. and elevating Moscow’s role as a peacemaker.

Russia’s alliance with Hizballah was born out of the conflict in Syria, where Russian and Hizballah forces fought side-by-side in an alliance with the Assad regime. For years, this alliance appeared strictly limited to military activity in Syria, but in 2018, Hizballah and Russia began to engage in unprecedented joint sanctions-evasion activities. . . . In November 2018, the U.S. Department of the Treasury exposed a convoluted trade-based oil-smuggling sanctions-evasion scheme directed by Hizballah and [Iran].

The enhanced level of collaboration between Russia and Hizballah is not limited to sanctions evasion. In March 2021, Hizballah sent a delegation to Moscow, on its second-ever “diplomatic” visit to the country. Unlike its first visit a decade prior, which was enveloped in secrecy with no media exposure, this visit was well publicized. During their three days in Moscow, Hizballah representatives met with various Russian officials, including the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. . . . Just three months after this visit to Moscow, Hizballah received the Russian ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Rudakov in Beirut to discuss further collaboration on joint projects.