Old hands in politics advise: “Never believe anything until it is officially denied” but Argentina’s controversial agreement with Iran might well be the reverse — the doubts really blossom now that it has been officially confirmed by Tehran. If indeed it has been — approval by a lame duck president minus parliamentary sanction and announced by a sub-ambassadorial diplomat only makes this dubious pact murkier than ever (nor is its constitutional status beyond dispute here as infringing equality before the law, despite ratification by Congress). Whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s heir honours the deal is thrown into extreme uncertainty by the simple fact that the sextet of Iranian officials up before a “truth commission” into the 1994 AMIA terrorist atrocity under the agreement grouped (until the ayatollahs intervened yesterday) four presidential hopefuls in next month’s elections (and these do not include current Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi, the top potential suspect for now, thus leaving only one of relatively marginal importance). An agreement without parliamentary approval might thus well prove a dead letter after the future Iranian president’s August inauguration, although we cannot even be sure of that — only one of the four hopefuls can take power by definition and the other three might find diminished impunity among the costs of defeat (especially if Tehran’s new rulers are seeking scapegoats to ease the crushing global sanctions incurred by Ahmadinejad’s extremism).
Most of the above is basically Iran’s problem but it begs the question of what on earth induced the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration to team up with a virtual rogue state, thus deepening its own growing isolation in the world — and in such a tearing hurry because an agreement inked on January 27 (International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as it happens) was rushed through Congress before February was out, whereas Tehran tarried nearly four months for a sketchy executive approval which could have been issued on the day. If the aim was to bring a smile to the face of staunch Iran ally Hugo Chávez, the extreme haste was justified because the Bolivarian leader died the next week but otherwise it defies explanation. And incomprehensible not only according to the criteria of statesmanship and world diplomacy but also domestic politics in the narrowest and most electioneering sense, jeopardizing the important Jewish vote in an electoral year.
The methodology of both Kirchner presidencies might lie in lining up enemies à la Carl Schmitt but with friends like Iran, who needs them?