In 1997, an Argentinian lawyer named Alberto Nisman was asked to take the leading role in prosecuting fifteen policemen who stood accused of carrying out the deadly bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires three years prior. Nisman soon realized that the officers were being framed, and began investigating the case anew—an investigation which led him to uncover Iran’s responsibility for the bombing, and a conspiracy by the Argentine government to obscure it. While his death in 2015—just before he was supposed to testify about his findings to the Argentinian legislature—was initially ruled a suicide, it soon became clear that he was murdered. Gustavo D. Perednik explains Tehran’s role in the cover-up, and in Nisman’s death:

The plot to cover up Iran’s responsibility for the AMIA bombing began on Saturday, January 13, 2007, when the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas. The two leaders claimed to be the vanguard of an anti-imperialistic war against the United States and regarded each other as close allies. . . . Chávez not only became the junior partner in an alliance with the Iranians but also drew other countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, and Nicaragua into the Iranian orbit. . . .

Apparently, during [a] secret meeting with Chávez, Ahmadinejad expressed his concern with the imminent Interpol convention in France, where Nisman, the Argentinian representative, planned to restate his demand that Interpol monitor the Iranians [suspected of having helped plan and carry out the AMIA bombing]. Ahmadinejad probably offered Chávez a substantial sum of money, as Venezuela purchased (with Iranian money) six-billion dollars of the Argentinian debt by the end of 2008. . . .

In October of 2010, . . . [Chávez] finally persuaded [Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner] to accept the benefits for both of their countries of making an agreement with Iran. Three months later, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman signed a secret agreement [with Iran] in Aleppo. Further impetus for this subterfuge derived from the Obama administration’s [insistence] that Iran was no longer an enemy and from the [promise] that the Iranian government would pour endless resources into Argentina.

Kirchner and Timerman were not averse to contacting Mohsen Rabbani, the mastermind of the AMIA terror attack. Moreover, they assured Iran that the withdrawal of Interpol red alerts against Iranian terrorists would follow the signing of an open agreement. The plan was to set up a fictitious “Commission of Truth” with judges from both Iran and Argentina. . . . The commission was given the task of shedding light upon the terror attack and its motives, despite the fact that the secret treaty of 2011 had designated a different role for the “Commission of Truth”: . . . to bury the case by spreading false information and fomenting confusion. . . . The legal brief [prepared by] Alberto Nisman on January 14, 2015 provides extensively the details of this project and discloses the real purpose of the commission.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.