Argentina has designated Hamas an “international terrorist organization” following the Palestinian group's Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis.

“The Hamas group has been declared by the Argentine state as an international terrorist organisation,” President Javier Milei said on Friday night, citing “an extensive record of terrorist attacks.” The Argentinian government “has an unwavering commitment to recognise terrorists for what they are,” read the statement, adding that “it’s the first time that there is a political will to do so.

“Argentina must once again align itself with Western civilisation,” said Milei’s office.

The statement also mentioned Hamas’s "link" to Iran, which masterminded the deadly attacks on the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital in 1992 and then the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre there two years later.

In February, Milei made a wartime visit to Israel, signalling a major shift in Argentina’s foreign policy toward the United States and Israel after decades of backing Arab countries.

An unabashedly public philo-semite who studies with a rabbi, Milei has repeatedly pledged to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In a further sign of friendship, Milei appointed his rabbi, Axel Wahnish, as Argentina’s ambassador to Israel.

An iconoclast and political outsider, Milei was elected in November amid a burgeoning economic crisis and skyrocketing inflation that has long beleaguered the large South American country. A week after his election victory, he visited the United States for government meetings, stopping at the grave in New York of Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, his third such visit last year.

His staunch support for Israel both ditches decades of unequivocal backing for Arab countries in the predominantly Catholic Latin American nation under both left- and right-wing governments and contrasts with neighboring Brazil, whose leftist leader, President Lula da Silva, has been highly critical of Israel’s war against Hamas.