The Media Line: Argentina Targets IRGC’s Quds Force With Terror Designation and Sanctions 

Argentina Targets IRGC’s Quds Force With Terror Designation and Sanctions 

By The Media Line Staff 

Argentine President Javier Milei has moved to designate the IRGC Quds Force—Iran’s overseas operations arm—as a terrorist organization, tying the step to Argentina’s unresolved trauma from the 1990s Buenos Aires bombings and drawing praise from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. 

In a decree and accompanying statement, Milei’s office described the Quds Force as a unit that specializes in “training for carrying out terrorist attacks in other countries,” and said Argentina was “a victim of its operations in the 1990s” through the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish community center. The AMIA bombing remains Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds. 

The Argentine statement said the designation places the Quds Force and associated actors under financial sanctions and operational restrictions aimed at limiting their ability to operate and preventing Argentina’s financial system from being used to support them. It also referenced Ahmad Vahidi, identified as a former Quds Force commander implicated in the AMIA case and subject to an INTERPOL red notice, adding that Iran has continued to promote him despite international demands for cooperation. 

Sa’ar welcomed Milei’s move as a “significant step that strengthens the international front against Iranian terrorism and honors the memory of the victims of the attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA,” urging other governments to “call these terrorist organizations by their names.” 

The designation comes as Argentina has sought to re-energize accountability for the AMIA attack after decades of stalled proceedings, including renewed legal and diplomatic efforts to pursue suspects and press Iran for cooperation. 

The Quds Force is the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and has been accused by multiple countries of coordinating attacks and proxy forces across the Middle East and beyond. Several Western and regional governments have already blacklisted the Revolutionary Guard or parts of it, and Argentina’s move places it more firmly within that camp.