Reporter: Late Prosecutor Tied Iranian Leader to '94 Bombing

Before he was shot to death under mysterious circumstances last week, Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman told a reporter that he had evidence linking Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people and wounded close to 300 more, The Miami Herald reported.

Argentine investigators initially said that Nisman, who suffered a gunshot wound to the head, appeared to have committed suicide. Later, however, they said they had not ruled out homicide.

Immediately before he died, Nisman received major headlines by accusing Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of trying to cover up Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

Nisman was found dead in his apartment just hours before he had been scheduled to testify before the Argentine Congress about Kirchner's alleged role in blocking investigations into Iran's involvement in the bombing.

In June 2013, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Rouhani (frequently portrayed in the media as a "moderate" or reformer) had been part of a secret Iranian government committee that approved the AMIA bombing.

Nisman had publicly denied the Free Beacon story, saying there was "no evidence" that Rouhani played a role in authorizing the bombing.

But in private conversations, Nisman was saying something else entirely, the Free Beacon noted on Monday.

Nisman told Miami Herald reporter Andres Oppenheimer that Rouhani was on the committee that signed off on the bombing of the Jewish center. "According to my notes from those conversations and a detailed email that Nisman sent me on July 1, 2013, Nisman said that Rouhani was a top member of a special committee within Iran’s VEVAK intelligence agency, known as Vijeh, which in 1994 was overseeing secret operations abroad, including the AMIA bombing," Oppenheimer wrote last week.

But Nisman would not allow Oppenheimer to quote him publicly to that effect.

Oppenheimer expressed doubt that Nisman committed suicide, writing that he had been in contact with Nisman as recently as one day before his death, and that he sounded very self-confident and had had consented to an interview after he testified before Argentine lawmakers.

"At a time when the United States and other countries are negotiating a nuclear deal with the allegedly moderate Rouhani," Oppenheimer concluded, "it’s a good time to remember" what Nisman believed about the regime's role in the AMIA bombing.

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