Wednesday marked the anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, orchestrated by Iran with help from Hizballah. While the investigation into the bombing’s perpetrators has not yet concluded, having been hindered both by incompetence and by the Argentine government’s deliberate attempts to obstruct it, some progress has finally been made. Carolina Krauskopf writes:

After almost a decade [had elapsed since the bombing], the special prosecutors Marcelo Burgos (who later left his office) and Alberto Nisman began their investigation. Nisman concluded that Iranian and Hizballah officials planned the attack, and that the former Iranian president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, along with other high-ranking Iranian government officials, gave the final approval at a meeting in Mashhad, Iran in August of 1993. Nisman’s investigations prompted Interpol to issue red notices (similar to international arrest warrants) to several key Iranian officials, but Iran ignored them.

When Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner became the Argentine president [in 2003], the AMIA investigation took a bizarre turn, and by 2013, Buenos Aires and Tehran had signed a memorandum of understanding and created a so-called joint “truth commission” to investigate the 1994 bombing together. Having the chief suspects in the terror attack investigating themselves was absurd, and the memorandum of understanding was dropped when Mauricio Macri became president in 2015.

Nisman charged that Kirchner and Hector Timerman, then the foreign minister, played a critical role in covering up Tehran’s role in the AMIA bombing. In January 2015, Nisman was found dead the day before he was due to testify before the Argentinian congress about his findings. While a federal court subsequently concluded that he was murdered, much about the case remains a mystery. . . .

[A]s the investigation stalled, Hizballah and Iran continued to build a more robust intelligence and operations network in the region. Following the attack in 1994, the U.S. State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism highlighted that Iranian embassy staffs in Latin America had increased. This led to the belief that many of these diplomats had terror links or were intelligence agents. Throughout his career, Nisman warned of Iran’s and Hizballah’s expansive operations in the region and in 2013, Nisman’s 500-page report warned of clandestine intelligence stations in Latin America.

Both Kirchner and Timerman now await trial for their involvement in the cover-up.

Before exploding electronics in Lebanon seized the attention of the Israeli public, debate there had focused on the Philadelphi Corridor—the strip of land between Gaza and Egypt—and whether the IDF can afford to withdraw from it. Egypt has opposed Israeli control of the corridor, which is crucial to Hamas’s supply lines, and Egyptian objections likely prevented Israel from seizing it earlier in the war. Yet, argues Mariam Wahba, Egypt in the long run only stands to lose by letting Hamas use the corridor, and has proved incapable of effectively sealing it off:

Ultimately, this moment presents an opportunity for the United States to hold Egypt’s feet to the fire.

To press Cairo, the United States should consider conditioning future aid on Cairo’s willingness to cooperate. This should include a demand for greater transparency and independent oversight to verify Egyptian claims about the tunnels. Congress ought to hold hearings to understand better Egypt’s role and its compliance as a U.S. ally. Despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s nine trips to the Middle East since the start of the war, there has been little clarity on how Egypt intends to fulfill its role as a mediator.

By refusing to acknowledge Israel’s legitimate security concerns, Egypt is undermining its own interests, prolonging the war in Gaza, and further destabilizing its relationship with Jerusalem. It is time for Egyptian leaders either to admit their inability to secure the border and seek help from Israel and America, or to risk being perceived as enablers of Hamas and its terrorist campaign.