| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Defector spied on Iran for years - report |
| 2007-03-11 |
| An Iranian general who defected to the West last month had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip, the online edition of The Sunday Times quoted Iranian sources as saying. Former colleague says Ali Rez Asgari left Turkey with documents, maps that shed light on Revolutionary Guards' links to Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad; defector was privy to confidential information regarding Iran’s plans in case of conflict with US, he adds This weekend Brigadier General Ali Reza Asgari, 63, the former deputy defense minister, is understood to be undergoing debriefing at a Nato base in Germany after he escaped from Iran, followed by his family, the UK-based newspaper said. It is unclear which intelligence organization he was spying for, the report said. “He probably was working for Mossad but believed he was working for a European intelligence agency,” an Israeli defense official was quoted by the Times as saying. According to the Times, a daring getaway via Damascus was organized by western intelligence agencies after it became clear that his cover was about to be blown. Iran’s notorious secret service, the Vavak, is believed to have suspected that he was a high-level mole, the report said. The Iranian sources told the Times that the escape took several months to arrange. At least 10 close members of his family had to flee the country, they added. The Times said Asgari has two sons, a daughter and several grandchildren and it is believed that all, including his daughters-in-law, are now out of Iran. Their final destination is unknown. Asgari is said to have carried with him documents disclosing Iran’s links to Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups based in the Middle East. According to the report, Asgari’s escape has provoked alarm in the Iranian regime. “Asgari is a gold mine for western intelligence,” an Israeli defense source was quoted by the Times. “We have been following him for years, especially since the late 1980s when he was commander of the Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon.” The report said that in 1997 he was appointed deputy defense minister in charge of internal investigations. He uncovered several cases of embezzlement in the Republican Guard that made him unpopular. He was pushed aside after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2006. The two had been rivals for many years and Asgari realized that his days were numbered, according to the Times. During an overseas business trip in 2003 he is said to have met a new business partner, who turned out to be a foreign intelligence officer. “Ali Reza was a wealthy man even before 2003,” an Iranian source told the Times. “Since 2003 he has become a very wealthy man.” On February 7, four days after arriving in Damascus and having been assured his family was safe, Asgari boarded a flight to Istanbul, the report said. He was given a new passport and left Turkey by car. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #10 Zhang I actually agree and withdraw my speculation. When I posted that I was running off the info from yesterday and not the added facts that this guy had not just immediate, but multiple family members pulled out. To scoop that many people at the sametime in a police state would be impraticle, just getting that many people together in one place for voluntary extraction is a feat in and of itself. On the rest of your guess, true a patriot would not just give up the goods BUT the muslim world is a patriarch family center belief. The Dictators of the region are very very effective at breaking radicals by capturing threating thier family lines. Some even use family members to pressure surrender of radicals. I would agree that those type tactics are dirty but you cannot refute thier effectivness, and we do live in a dirty world. As far as returning home to refute he was a sell out after this media blitz, right the Mullahs would forgive him then execute him just in case. |
| Posted by: C-Low 2007-03-11 23:09 |
| #9 C-Low: I don't know about you guys but I have a odd feeling that this was a well planned snatch and grab of a very high ranking officail. He disappears in Turkey then all the sudden his family disappears. I remember awhile back of US interrogators using certian news articles placed in the dorms of AQ at Guantonomo. Imagine if you were a Iranian hop general just got yoked up all the sudden news, papers, everything show you as a traitor sell out confirmed by your family showing up. You can either work with the infedels fully or they may just accidentally leak to the Quds force were you or your family are being held. You better have a dam good cover story if you are going to go around snatch and grabbing top leadership of a foreign nation in todays PC world. Very, very unlikely. Effective police states keep their minions in line by holding family members hostage. If a senior official is out of the country, his family members can't leave. That way, if he defects, they can wreak their vengeance on his family, up to, and including, executing them en masse. His family members probably got out by bribing various border officials, who are likely to have not have recorded their departure from Iran (the better to not leave any tracks for what might be the capital offense of helping a spy to defect). The problem with a kidnap scenario is that many committed patriots would rather die than give up the goods. And if the family wasn't going along, they could always return to Iran and reveal that they (and the family patriarch) were kidnapped. Which would be a green light for Iran to start kidnapping senior American officials. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-03-11 22:41 |
| #8 I don't know about you guys but I have a odd feeling that this was a well planned snatch and grab of a very high ranking officail. He disappears in Turkey then all the sudden his family disappears. I remember awhile back of US interrogators using certian news articles placed in the dorms of AQ at Guantonomo. Imagine if you were a Iranian hop general just got yoked up all the sudden news, papers, everything show you as a traitor sell out confirmed by your family showing up. You can either work with the infedels fully or they may just accidentally leak to the Quds force were you or your family are being held. You better have a dam good cover story if you are going to go around snatch and grabbing top leadership of a foreign nation in todays PC world. |
| Posted by: C-Low 2007-03-11 13:08 |
| #7 Article: “He probably was working for Mossad but believed he was working for a European intelligence agency,” an Israeli defense official was quoted by the Times as saying. Excellent. A false flag operation. Now that he's come in from the cold, he probably doesn't care, anyway. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-03-11 11:54 |
| #6 Sneaze, honey - type a word to represent the link's subject (or just use "link"), highlight it, click on the "link" button below the comment box, and paste the url into the window that pops up. Link Check in preview to make sure it's OK, then submit. Nothin' but love for ya', honey. :-D |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-03-11 10:57 |
| #5 And he was not alone. What Iran really needs is a Stalin-style purge of its officer corps. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-03-11 10:53 |
#4 Meanwhile, a Shiite has propagated a plan for multi-culturalist subversion of the West. First they build segregated communities where they speak Arabized English, and remain relatively passive until they have the numbers, then its final jihad. These savages trampelled the Byzantine, Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Indian Empires.
| |
| Posted by: Sneaze 2007-03-11 10:30 |
| #3 some numbered bank accounts would have been nice also names of Persian operators in the West probably didn't have those however since he was closer to the military end of things |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-03-11 09:57 |
| #2 Maybe I know now how the Joooooooooos knew where those medium range missiles were. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2007-03-11 08:24 |
| #1 Iranian military professionals have never been happy with Basij' intrusions on their affairs. And they would be well aware of the billions stolen from the Treasury by the Ayatollahs. That sick system cannot yield refined gasoline or diesel. But as long as the clerics get their tax (khumus) they could care less about economic decline. |
| Posted by: Sneaze 2007-03-11 08:19 |