The Buenos Aires Bombings
20th March 2026
Iran has never confined its interference in other countries to the Middle East, nor have its activities been restricted to attacks on Israel. Long before the horrors of 7 October 2023, Argentina had already become a target of the Islamic Republic.
On 17 March 1992, a suicide bomber drove a Ford F-100 pickup truck packed with explosives into the Israeli embassy in the Retiro neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. The blast destroyed the embassy building and surrounding structures, including a Catholic church and a school, killing 29 people and injuring more than 200. The victims included both Israeli embassy staff and Argentine citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
Responsibility for the attack was immediately claimed by a group known as Islamic Jihad Organisation, a Lebanese Shia militia widely believed to have links to Hezbollah and the Iranian state. Their stated motive was revenge for the assassination of Abbas al-Musawi, Secretary General of Hezbollah, which Israel had carried out a month earlier, on 16 February. (Musawi was replaced by Hassan Nasrallah, who was also assassinated by the Jewish state, on 27 September 2024).