Iran president-elect Hassan Rohani has been linked to a secretive government council responsible for a global assassination campaign in the 1990s that included the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85 people, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Citing a 2008 report by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), a U.S. non-profit group that documents patterns of human rights abuse in Iran, the Free Beacon reported that Rohani sat on the Special Affairs Council, which was tasked with recommending individuals for assassination in consultation with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Reuel Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Free Beacon that there is nothing in Rohani’s background “that would suggest to you he has any moral qualms about bombing the enemies of the [Islamic] Republic.”
Rohani, who won nearly 51 percent of the vote in Iran’s presidential election last week and will replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been welcomed by many in the West for his calls to restart negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. But others are more skeptical of Rohani’s openness in light of his deep ties to Iran’s revolutionary government.