[Changleen]

Ohh lucky us!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1490124.ece

Elite Iranian general defects with Hezbollah’s arms secrets

An Iranian general who went missing on a visit to Turkey last month appears to have defected to America, taking with him a treasure trove of his country’s most closely guarded secrets.

Ali Resa Asgari, 63, a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, vanished on February 7 after arriving in Istanbul on a flight from Syria. He had reservations at the Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel but never checked in.

Iran has notified Interpol and raised fears that General Asgari might have been kidnapped. Yesterday, however, several sources confirmed reports in America that General Asgari had fled to the West, becoming the first senior Iran official to defect since the revolution 27 years ago.

Danny Yatom, the former head of Mossad and a member of the Knesset, said that the general could provide Western intelligence with a unique insight into Iran’s foreign operations in Lebanon and beyond.

“From the very start I thought this was a defection,” Mr Yatom told The Times. “All the signals showed that it was well planned and executed. He left Iran with his family, so that no one would be able to put pressure on them. I assume the defection was to the US.”

Mr Yatom described the missing general as very important and said that he would be able to shed light on one of the murkiest chapters in recent Middle East history. From the early 1980s Iran funded, trained and armed members of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, which began as a small Shia Muslim militia but is today the most powerful paramilitary force in the Levant.

The Iranians are accused of using Hezbollah to launch suicide bomb attacks against American, French and Israeli targets, to kidnap Westerners and to build a state within a state in southern Lebanon. They are also suspected of carrying out operations in Europe and even Argentina.

“He is a significant figure,” said one Western source, who follows Iran closely. “It has so far been very difficult to get reliable information on how Iran ran its operations in Lebanon. This could be a big break.”

Last summer Israel fought a bloody, 33-day war with Hezbollah after the group seized two Israeli soldiers, whose fate is unknown. At the time, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, boasted: “Israel doesn’t know our capabilities on every level. The Zionist enemy has not succeeded in infiltrating our group.” General Asgari could lift that veil of secrecy.

“It means for the first time, Hezbollah’s adversaries may have accurate estimates of stockpiles, weapons types, even perhaps placement and tactics,” said Nicholas Noe, the author of a forthcoming book on Hezbollah. “This is crucial because the limits and placement of Hezbollah’s weaponry has been a major problem.”

After Lebanon, General Asgari returned to Iran as a high-ranking official dealing with the arms trade and weapons industry, including the development of the Shaab-3 ballistic missile. He stepped down as Deputy Defence Minister in 2005. Iranian officials have played down General Asgari’s importance, saying he has been “out of the loop for four or five years. But his defection could cause a serious blow to Iran.

For some reason I cannot find this story in the US press.

 

[ohio]

For some reason I cannot find this story in the US press.

That is a strange one. We're hurting for some good news and always happy to find more evidence that Iran is EEEEvil... don't know why this wouldn't be front page.

Good news though. As long as we dangle it out of Shrub's reach. Swear to god that guy is like the **** equivalent of Midas.

 

[DRB]

This was in the news here last week (see the date of the Post article)

Thought no one knows where he might have gotten to... his family still appears to be in Tehran.

http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=960682

A senior US intelligence official said there was "no basis" for the assertion that the General was either co-operating with, or providing information to, the US intelligence community.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030702241.html

A former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guard has left his country and is cooperating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization, according to a senior U.S. official.

So who knows where he might be, how he got there and what he might be doing.

 

[sanjuro]

Freedom Lover!

 

[DRB]

and the family thinks he was kidnapped

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070312-0404-iran-missing-.html

'Personally I am sure that Iran's main enemies America and Israel have kidnapped my father,' Asgari's daughter Elham told state radio after lodging a complaint at the Turkish embassy in Tehran over Asgari's disappearance.

or maybe the Israelis did it

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21355919-2703,00.html

THE defection of a former high-ranking Iranian security official to the West may have been orchestrated by Israel, according to an American official.
The allegation was reported in The Washington Post, which also quoted an Iranian official as saying that Israel may have offered money to retired General Ali Rez Asgari, who was Iranian deputy defence minister until two years ago, for defecting.

 

[Changleen]

DRB, if you read the Euro and ME press, they seem to think it was a planned defection, and he took his family with him.

The theory that Asgari defected was backed by Menashe Amir, an Israeli analyst of Iranian affairs, who said that Asgari's family had been with him.

“According to part of the information, his wife and children managed to leave Iran before his disappearance,” Mr Amir told Israel’s Army Radio, without elaborating on his sources. “It’s very possible that he decided to defect.”

Who knows what the truth is. It's interesting to see all the different versions going round.