The conspiracy theory involving Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK) and Iran evaporated as prosecutors dropped the case, and admitted in court documents that there was no crime on which to base an investigation.

Judges in two courts had already thrown out the case.  But the second dismissal was appealed to a higher court.  Now, prosecutor Javier de Luca told the higher court that he would not pursue the investigation because there was no evidence of a crime. 

“In our legal system we don’t have the power to investigate people’s conduct for no reason,” he wrote in a 27-page document.  “Rather only their criminal conduct.”

In January, de Luca’s predecessor Alberto Nisman was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in his apartment.  At first, police said it looked like a suicide.  But it happened just before he was to go public with his charges that President Fernandez and her Foreign Minister Hector Timerman tried to cover-up Iran’s involvement in the 1994 terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were killed.  In return, Iran would sell cheap oil to Argentina.

The problem was, no one ever stopped suspecting Iran was involved, and no oil was shipped to Argentina.  Even Interpol denied Nisman’s allegations that CFK somehow tried to remove the names of six Iranians from the international crime fighting agency’s Red List.

But that didn’t matter to CFK’s enemies, who then tried to link Nisman’s death to the government.  Several street protests divided the nation and even CFK herself suggested – without evidence – that Nisman had been played by rogue former intelligence agents trying to taint her government.  Eventually, CFK announced plans to reorganize the country’s intelligence agency.