November 27-2015
Argentina elected the leader of the opposition party to power Sunday and he immediately announced he wants to scrap a deal with Iran.
In his first news conference after being elected in a runoff, Mauricio Macri proposed Monday morning to cancel the agreement signed with Iran to jointly investigate the 1994 attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 86 people.
“We will propose to the Congress to cancel the pact with Iran as we promised in the campaign,” Macri said.
Macri will take office December 10, replacing Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who had signed the agreement with Iran and long defended it against much criticism in Argentina, where it was widely ridiculed as giving the accused the right to run the police investigation into the accused’s conduct.
Macri won the runoff with 51.4 percent of the vote, defeating Daniel Scioli, a close ally of President Kirchner, who had been widely seen as the likely victor until just recent days, when polling turned against him.
Earlier this year, prosecutor Alberto Nisman accused Kirchner of signing the agreement with Iran with the goal of covering up Iran’s involvement in the bombing in return for commercial deals that would boost Argentina’s exports.
Kirchner denied the allegation, but Nisman’s mysterious death a few days later cast a shadow over the final months of her presidency.
