The Washington Post is now confirming the Asharq Alawsat story I noted yesterday:
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 yesterday that he may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States. The U.S. official said Asgari is willingly cooperating. 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.
[…]
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 State Department lists the Shiite Lebanese group 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.”
Cernig of Newshog called Asharq Alawsat transatlantic—the editors will decide today whether to post the story in English. The Arabic version is here. Thanks, Lounsbury.
I interpret the WP story as a confirmation from the State Department. Note that the details on Gen. Asgari tends to support my intuition that whatever information he may possess and convey to us is likely to be more helpful in providing details on the relationship between the Iranian regime and Hezbollah (and, hopefully, contacts with people in Iraq) than it will be in providing new information on an Iranian nuclear weapons development program.
It will be interesting to consider Gen. Asgari and whatever information he may furnish to the U. S. as a prism through which to view the statements of both the U. S. government and the Iranian regime of the last few weeks and, no doubt, the next.
Update
Fox News is contradicting the WP story:
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Ali Rez Asgari, who is credited with founding the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, was fully cooperating with and divulging information to U.S. and other intelligence services.
Click here to read the full Washington Post story.
However, a senior U.S. official flatly denied the report.
U.S. intelligence agencies remain extremely interested in Asgari’s case, the official said, but they do not know his current whereabouts.
The official did not rule out the possibility that Asgari, who once commanded Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and served as the country’s deputy defense minister, was conducting negotiations with an intelligence organization, but denied that there was any type of cooperation with the U. S.
The alternatives we seem to be left with include
- The Washington Post is wrong.
- Fox News is wrong.
- They’re both right but you’ve got to parse the story very closely.
Hat tip: California Yankee (in the comments)
Update 2
The Times of London has confirmed the story, too, noting that this is the first defection of a high-ranking Iranian official since the revolution.
Hi Dave,
Asharq Alawsat doesn’t have the original article in English up today, but it does have a follow-up based off the WaPo story. The article says the General is helping the West with their enquiries on Hizboullah and related terror incidents, rather than on anything nuclear-related – which agrees with the WaPo report.
“Earlier this week A source from the Iranian military, who was among the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Beirut since the late 1980s, confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the former Iranian Deputy Defense Minister, “is well†and that he is being well cared for in a northern European country where he meets for several hours a day with a group of military experts to oversee the completion of a number of controversial issues that the Revolutionary Guard has played a major role in; including the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut [October 1983] and the destruction of the American Embassy and the French camp in the early 1980’s, in addition to a number of security issues and terrorist operations that have targeted a number of countries in the region, and the elimination of various Iranian opposition leaders abroad.
…Regarding the circumstances of Asghari’s disappearance in Turkey and the allegations that he has sought refuge in the US, Asharq Al-Awsat has discovered that the former Iranian deputy minister of defense has gone to Damascus, to head a delegation of experts from the fields of military and defense with the purpose of holding talks with officials from the Syrian Defense ministry regarding the establishment of compounds for the production of military equipment in Syria. The visit to Istanbul was not for the officially stated reasons, rather the intention was to meet with a renowned European arms dealer. According to an Iranian diplomat in Istanbul, the arms dealer postponed his departure by a day following a phone call with Asghari.”
Now some background that may or may not be relevant but may well color reporting. The byline is indeed Alireza Nourizadeh. He was political editor of Iran’s biggest selling newspaper under the Shah and participated in a BBC hosted reunion of five of the most influential survivors of the Shah’s inside circle. He has close ties, including via Ken Timmerman and Peter Rodman’s neoconservative-funded “Foundation For Democracy In Iran” regime change group, to Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son.
(Another expert Timmerman cited in his MaxSpeak article yesterday – Shahriar Ahy – is Pahlavi’s political strategist, mentor, and speechwriter. Timmerman neglected to mention any of these ties in his article.)
Regards, C
Thanks, Cernig, I appreciate these updates. As I noted in my post this conforms to my intuitions on the report.
Things being as they are practically everybody with any Iranian connections whatever are either pro-regime or anti-regime and a lot of those who are anti-regime will inevitably be pro-Shah. Not dispositive one way or another but it’s good to consider the source.
I’m wondering who “renowned European arms dealer” is. To me, this meeting might be the most interesting part of the whole story so far.
Could it be Viktor Bout? Boulk is certainly the most renowned of Europe’s arms dealers and is well known to the educated readership of Asharq Alawsat as a man once based in the UAE with royal family protection.
He’s an ex- soviet GRU man and his father-in-law was a senior KGB man. He is/was arms dealer to the Taliban and the man suspected of rerouting 200,000 AK47s away from the Iraqi security forces to recipients unknown.
He also, it seems, has a contract to fly supplies for the US military into Iraq using his UK-based carrier British Gulf.
Reporting is unclear so far on whether the contact with the arms dealer, whoever he was, was officially sanctioned or a private venture by the Iranian general. That’s one I’m going to be watching for clarification on. Either way, it could throw a lot of light on arms supplies in Iraq. If official, then it would strengthen the case for Iranian leadership’s direction of same. If private, it would strongly suggest the contrary – that certain Iranian figures were lining their own pockets by supplying to Iraqis.
Good thing – “European” rules out Adnan Koushoggi. 🙂
Regards, C
I would note that I am not sure the article I located for you is the original source article. It’s simply the only one online that meets the criteria. I suppose I could go to the local news seller and get some back copies of the paper, but frankly I think you’re getting excited over something that smells rather strongly of agit-prop efforts.
Mate, The Times is merely quoting the Washington Post story.