Argentina Moves to Designate Hizbullah a Terrorist Group

Argentina has moved closer to designating Hizbullah a terrorist group by creating “a public registry of persons and entities connected to acts of terrorism and its financing.” While Buenos Aires did not reveal which individuals or organizations would be included, the country’s security minister indicated that Iran’s Lebanon-based proxy would be blacklisted. The decision came just days ahead of Thursday’s 25^th anniversary of a bombing attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. The blast, which has been blamed on both Hizbullah and Iran, came two years after the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in the Argentinian capital, which western authorities also blamed on the mullahs and their Lebanese underlings. Meanwhile, Israel is reportedly upgrading security at some two dozen strategic sites throughout the country, outfitting them with anti-missile defense systems in order to provide added protection in the event of a war with Hizbullah. Israeli military brass recently warned that 2.5 million civilians remain insufficiently protected from Hizbullah’s arsenal of rockets, to which Jerusalem responded by allocating tens of millions of dollars to reinforce residential buildings.