On Tuesday, when I read this, my suspicious mind immediately raced:
Ali Reza Asghari, a retired general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister, had arrived in Turkey on a private visit from Damascus, Syria, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday.
Iran's top police chief, Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam, said Iran was investigating the fate of Asghari through the Turkish police.
"It is likely that Asghari has been abducted by the Western intelligence services," IRNA quoted the Iranian police general as saying. The general did not elaborate.
Would we really be so bold as to kidnap a retired Pasdaran general?
So I looked around a bit (tip to Mick Hartley):
One respected analyst with sources in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard says Gen. Ali Reza Asgari has defected and is now in a European country with his entire family, where he is cooperating with the U.S.
Other reports have suggested that the general may have been kidnapped by the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. A spokesperson at the CIA declined to comment on the reported defection.
"This is a fatal blow to Iranian intelligence," said the source, explaining that Asgari knows sensitive information about Iran's nuclear and military projects. Iran called tens of its Revolutionary Guard agents working at embassies and cultural centers in Arab and European countries back to Tehran out of fear that Asgari might disclose secret information about their identities, according to the analyst.
Defected? With his entire family?
I know we keep saying we aren't planning any war with Iran. But if there is a revolt in Iran and we support it, I bet that doesn't count.
I've read that the Iranian mullahs don't even fully trust the Pasdaran anymore. Could we have turned Ali Reza Asgari to get someobody with revolutionary credentials to stand against the mullahs? And he knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak?
Yet Debkafile (and yes it sometimes seems like the tabloid of international affairs) says the general was involved in the Karbala infiltration, assault, and murder of five of our officers. We are playing rough in response by this theory.
Attacking Iran is a bad option. Letting Iran get nukes is worse. Regime change would erase the worse aspects of either option. It won't be easy mind you, but better. And President Bush still seems determined to stop Iran from going nuclear despite his low poll numbers. I know I worry that our CIA is better at destabilizing our own government, but couldn't our spies come up with something over the last four years?
Or is it all about Iraq and nothing more?
Or something else?
Whatever it is, the Iranian government is very worried:
The recent disappearance of Ali Reza Asgari, Iran’s former deputy defense minister who was on a visit to Istanbul has been a mystery for the past several days.
Now a report by the Arabic newspaper Al Sharq Al Wasat says that Asgari defected to the US after arriving in Istanbul from Damascus on February 7th.
Although the story has not been confirmed by any sovereign authority, it is already evident that the saga has created panic inside Ahmadinejad’s administration.
Soon after his disappearance was discovered, Iran dispatched an operations team to Ankara to help the Turkish authorities to look for him. At the same time, a public relations campaign was launched with Iranian minister Mottaki has doing his best to downplay Asgari’s importance as an official in order to reduce the damage to the Iranian government’s image.
He wasn’t fooling anyone. It is clear that Asgari is a man privy to numerous secrets which Iran desperately does not want revealed. As well as being a former deputy defence Minister, Asgari was also a General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). The IRGC, more than any other branch of Iran’s armed forces, is aware of, and has access to Iran’s nuclear program. Its members are in charge of monitoring and protecting Iran’s nuclear installations, and scientists.
If the Iranians are claiming Asgari was kidnapped, that tends to indicate an effort discredit the idea that he defected. Were the competing stories about reasons to kidnap him our efforts to cloud the story to buy time to move hime to safety?
Just who is Ali Reza Asgari (Asghari) and who is he with now? A game is afoot. What game?
UPDATE: We seem to have him, but our people make it sound like this is an intelligence operation to exploit a cooperative source:
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.
With all the stories out about who had him and why, I don't assume this is accurate information. We may have him and the topic they mention is Hezbollah? I'd think that would be rather lower on the list of items to ask Asgari about even if Israel is the one who snatched him.
I just don't believe that President Bush has decided that the next president can deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.
