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Iranian Al Quds general, alleged mastermind behind 1994 Buenos Aires terror attack, dies suddenly

Mohammad Hejazi had risen to deputy chief of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A brigadier general who was allegedly one of a coterie of top Iranian officials who planned the 1994 terror attack on the AMIA Jewish center in Argentina has died of a heart condition, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced Sunday.

Mohammad Hejazi, 65, had been the deputy chief of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) since January 2020. He was promoted when his boss, Ismail Qaani, became the leader of the overseas arm of the IRGC after the Americans assassinated its then-commander, Qassem Soleimani, a few weeks earlier.

There are currently conflicting reports as to the exact cause of death, with at least one media site saying he died “of chemical effects of war,” without elaborating.

The IRGC mourned him in their press release for “his great and lasting role in attracting, organizing, and sending Islamic fighters to the battlefields of right against wrong and against [Iraqi strongman] Saddam [Hussein]’s Ba’athist army and arrogant mercenaries in the world.”

He was in charge of the IRGC in Lebanon for “some time” as well, the IRGC said.

Israel said in 2019 that Hejazi was the one who headed the effort to manufacture precision-guided missiles for Iranian proxy Hezbollah, the terrorist organization that threatens Israel’s northern border.

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According to the Voice of America, Hejazi “frequently shuttled between Iraq, Lebanon and Syria” in his role managing the regional operations of the Iranian force. The United States, Israel and Sunni Arab allies have slammed the Quds Force for years for its lead in destabilizing all three countries.

Hejazi is suspected by Western intelligence sources of having been one of the key planners of the attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, early on in his IRGC career.

A suicide bomber, allegedly a Hezbollah terrorist, drove a van loaded with some 600 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil into the building. Eighty-five people died and hundreds were wounded in the massive explosion that totally collapsed the structure.

Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman published a 300-page complaint in 2015 accusing then-president Christina Fernandez de Kirchner and other political figures of covering up the Iranian government’s role in the bombing. Nisman was murdered hours before he was to testify in the Argentine Congress against Kirchner.

The former president still has not gone on trial. The chief judge in the investigation died after surgery for a brain tumor last February, right before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

The terror attack was the deadliest ever carried out in all of Latin America.