An Iranian official was fired over his 'lavish' Argentina trip. Argentines are angry, too

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Furious that an Iranian official had entered Argentina as an ordinary citizen on a tourist visa, Argentine lawmakers this week attacked the nation's spy agency. They asked the government to investigate the Iranian deputy's vacation in Argentina, a country where several other Iranian politicians still stand accused of carrying out deadly bombings in Buenos Aires in the 1990s. Tehran denies the accusations.

“The intelligence agency allowed a vice president of Iran to enter our country, it's terrible,” Florencia Carignano, a lawmaker from hardline opposition Peronist bloc, Unión por la Patria, told fellow legislators Tuesday on the foreign relations committee. “I am seriously worried.” She paused for a beat, then exclaimed, “Iran!”

The heated discussion in Argentina’s Congress ignited a controversy that continued to flash on news tickers Wednesday, marking the the latest fallout from the luxury vacation that Shahram Dabiri and his wife took earlier this year. Dabiri had served as vice president of parliamentary affairs in Iran before being fired last week over the trip in Argentina, which Iran's president criticized as “lavish” and “indefensible."

Although Dabiri reportedly paid for the trip with his own money, several Instagram photos that showed him and his wife boarding an expensive cruise from southern Argentina to Antarctica and posing in what appears to be an opulent cathedral angered Iranians struggling to scrape by in the sanctions-hit economy.

Argentines were also angered by Dabiri's trip, for a different reason. The South American country remains deeply traumatized by the bombing attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 respectively, which killed over 100 people.

Despite probes marred by corruption and delays over the past three decades, Argentine prosecutors have long maintained that Iranian operatives and senior officials played key roles in the attacks. Argentina believes that Iran is shielding in the high echelons of its political establishment various people accused of having authorized the attack, including former Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi.

Any incident involving Iranians in Argentina can quickly snowball into a crisis. Last year, for instance, Argentina grounded a Venezuelan-owned cargo jet and detained its Iranian crew members for an investigation into possible terrorism ties before releasing them for lack of evidence.

Carignano, the leftist lawmaker on the parliamentary foreign affairs committee who previously served as an immigration minister, announced that she'd learned that Dabiri had not properly declared himself as a government official in his visa application. She said that he had secured a tourist visa, identifying himself only as a doctor.

There was no immediate response from Argentina's foreign ministry. The Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The website of Iran's Tabriz University of Medical Sciences names Dabiri as a physician and professor of nuclear medicine.

Several other lawmakers Tuesday backed Carignano’s order for a government inquiry into Dabiri’s vacation, demanding answers to how he'd managed to travel on a tourist visa and why the country's intelligence agency had not alerted immigration authorities.

“What happened? That’s what we want to know," Carignano wrote on social media Wednesday.