The State Department will reexamine its own assessment of Iran’s support of terrorist activities in Latin America, the Daily Beast reports.
The announcement comes following a report by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was assigned to the 1994 AMIA bombing case. Nisman contends Hezbollah carried out the bombing with Iranian government support.
In January, Argentina and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a "truth commission" to investigate the AMIA bombing, a move seen by the U.S. government and lawmakers as unlikely to get to the bottom of the attack that killed 85 and injured over 300.
Sens. Kirstin Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) wrote in a July 19 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that the commission would "only serve to whitewash Tehran’s crimes." The senators also criticized the Argentinian government’s decision not to allow Nisman to come to Washington to testify before a congressional committee.
The State Department issued its own report on Iranian activity in the Western Hemisphere in May, a report that was mandated by Congress but was panned as poorly written and seeming to downplay the Iranian role in the region by lawmakers and experts.
The State Department wrote in an Aug. 1 letter to Sen. Kirk that it is now reexamining its "highly-criticized" report.