WASHINGTON – 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.
Ali Rez Asgari disappeared last month during a visit to Turkey. Iranian officials suggested Wednesday that he may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States. The U.S. official said Asgari is cooperating of his own free will. He did not divulge Asgari’s whereabouts or specify who is questioning him but made clear that the information Asgari is offering is fully available to U.S. intelligence.
Asgari served in the Iranian government until early 2005 under then-President Mohammad Khatami. His background suggests that he would have deep knowledge of Iran’s national security infrastructure, conventional weapons arsenal and ties to Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
Iranian officials said he was not involved in the country’s nuclear program, and the senior U.S. official said Asgari is not being questioned about it. Former officers with Israel’s Mossad spy agency said Wednesday that Asgari had been instrumental in the founding of Hezbollah in the 1980s, around the time of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, quoted the country’s top police chief, Brig. Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, as saying that Asgari was probably kidnapped by agents working for Western intelligence agencies. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Asgari was in the United States.
Another U.S. official denied that report and suggested that Asgari’s disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis.
An Iranian official who agreed to discuss Asgari said that Iranian intelligence is unsure of Asgari’s whereabouts but that he may have been offered money, probably by Israel, to leave the country. The Iranian official said Asgari was thought to be in Europe. “He has been out of the loop for four or five years now,” the official said.
Former Mossad director Danny Yatom, who is now a member of Israel’s parliament, said he believes Asgari defected to the West. “He is very high caliber,” Yatom said. “He held a very, very senior position for many long years in Lebanon. He was in effect commander of the Revolutionary Guards” there.
Ram Igra, a former Mossad officer, said Asgari spent much of the 1980s and 1990s overseeing Iran’s efforts to support, finance, arm and train Hezbollah. The Shiite Lebanese group is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization.
“He lived in Lebanon and, in effect, was the man who built, promoted and founded Hezbollah in those years,” Igra told Israeli state radio. “If he has something to give the West, it is in this context of terrorism and Hezbollah’s network in Lebanon.”
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