BUENOS AIRES — Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994.
The transcripts, released by an Argentine judge Tuesday night, are part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Nisman was found dead in his apartment Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress.
But the intercepted telephone conversations, if proved accurate, would describe an elaborate effort to reward Argentina for shipping food to Iran — and for seeking to derail the investigation into a terrorist attack in the Argentine capital that killed 85 people.
The deal never materialized, the complaint says, in part because Argentine officials failed to persuade Interpol to lift the arrest warrants against Iranian officials wanted in Argentina in connection with the attack.
The phone conversations are believed to have been intercepted by Argentine intelligence officials. The transcripts show a concerted effort by representatives of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government to shift suspicions away from Iran in order to gain access to Iranian markets and to ease Argentina’s energy troubles.
The contacts came at a time when Iran was seeking to raise its profile in Latin America. In recent years, Iran has forged close political and economic ties with leftist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia, while also turning to large commodities producers like Brazil for food imports and as a counterweight to its isolation by the West.
The complaint asserts that the negotiators included Argentine intelligence operatives and Mohsen Rabbani, a former Iranian cultural attaché in Argentina charged with helping to coordinate the bombing.
In one transcript from 2013, an Argentine union leader and influential supporter of Kirchner said he was acting on the orders of the “boss woman,” adding that the government was open to sending a team from the national oil company to advance the negotiations.
“He’s very interested in exchanging what they have for grains and beef,” said the union leader, Luis D’Elia, referring to a powerful Argentine minister with whom he had just met.
Another intercept shows negotiators talking about ways to place blame for the bombing on right-wing groups and activists.
Yet another includes a discussion about swapping not just Argentine grains, but weapons as well, for Iranian oil.
“The publication of Nisman’s complaint is a first step that can contribute to the transparency of an investigation plagued by mystery and frozen for 20 years in a tomb of impunity,” Fernándo González, an editor at the newspaper El Cronista, wrote Wednesday, arguing that it would pave the way for new investigators.
Nisman asserted for years that Iran had helped plan and finance the bombing, and that its Lebanese ally, the militant group Hezbollah, had carried it out. His body was found at his apartment Sunday with a gunshot wound to his head in a murky episode that officials have called a suicide but an investigation is underway.