Aftermath of AMIA terror attack. Photo: WIkipedia

JNS.org – Iran president-elect Hassan Rohani has been linked to a secretive government council responsible for a global assassination campaign against Iran’s enemies in the 1990s that included the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that 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 Beaconreported that Rohani sat on the Special Affairs Council, which was tasked with recommending individuals for assassination in consultation with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to the report, Rohani was a special representative for the Supreme Leader in the mid-1990s, around the time of the Buenos Aires bombing.

It is unlikely that Rohani had any say in the operations approval process of the council due to his subordinate position behind Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s president at the time.

“Rohani’s power at that time comes directly from one individual, and that’s Rafsanjani,” Reuel Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Free Beacon.

But despite his possible circumstantial role in the secretive committee, Gerecht added 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 firebrand Iranian President 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.