It is widely assumed in the West that he defected. But his old boss, one-time Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, said last week he is sure Asgari is resisting appalling conditions in an Israeli prison.
That was a different scenario from one year ago when regime officials asserted he was murdered in an Israeli prison in November 2010.
While no one knows for certain what happened to Asgari, it appears most likely that he defected to the West—and took a lot of information with him.
But Iran just ignores all evidence of defection and instead last year embraced an obscure allegation of Israel nefariousness.
The Ynet website in Israel, which is run by the respected daily Yedioth Ahronoth, reported last December that an Israeli prisoner had committed suicide in Ayalon prison.
The website said nothing about the identity of the suicide. But Richard Silverstein, writing on the obscure Eurasia Review website, quickly asserted that his sources within the “inner circle” of the Israeli Defense Ministry told him the dead man was Asgari and that he may have been murdered rather than a suicide.
The Islamic Republic picked up these two stories and treated them, at least a year ago, as hard evidence of Asgari’s fate.
Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said it was a “certainty” that Asgari had been kidnapped by Israeli intelligence five years ago, although that gives new meaning to the word “certainty.” Deputy Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Majlis National Security Committee, said the Israelis have even acknowledged holding Asgari in prison, something they have never said.
Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi then wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to “strive to clarify the fate” of Asgari. Ban’s office told inquiring Iranian reporters to take the matter up with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Separately, an Israeli private group that reports on all unnatural deaths in the country, confirmed that an unnamed prisoner died at Ayalon prison December 15. But it said the dead man was aged 32, while Asgari would have been about 50 years old.
The most definitive word on Asgari’s fate came in March 2009 when a retired German Defense Ministry official wrote that Asgari had defected to the United States and revealed that Iran was helping Syria get nuclear weapons.
That information led directly to the Israeli bombing raid on a secret Syrian nuclear reactor, wrote Hans Ruehle, the former chief of the planning staff in the German Defense Ministry.
Ruehle wrote about Asgari in the Zurich daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung. The article was mainly about Syrian nuclear plans, but stated in passing that Asgari “changed sides” and gave the Americans much information, including the information about Syria.
Given the timing, there was speculation Asgari might have given the Americans the information that prompted US intelligence to say Iran suspended research on how to build a nuclear warhead in 2003.
Ruehle’s main point was that Iran was paying North Korea to provide everything Syria would need to make nuclear weapons. That, Ruehle wrote, was “the biggest surprise” in what Asgari revealed. No one in either the United States or Israel had even suspected that Syria was trying to go nuclear. Ruehle said Israel estimated Iran paid North Korea between $1 billion and $2 billion to help Syria.
American officials have never said anything about Ruehle’s article, neither denying nor confirming it.
Asgari was understood to be 46 years old when he flew to Istanbul on business and checked into a hotel December 7, 2006. Two days later he walked out of the hotel, but did not check out, and all public records on him cease.
Sima Ahmadi, one of his two wives in Tehran, said she went to the Iranian authorities a few days later when she got no answer to repeated calls to his cellphone.
Asgari’s daughter, Elham, gave the regime’s official line. “I am certain that my father was abducted by Israel and the United States because of the services he rendered to the Islamic Republic and the revolution,” she said.
Asgari has been described in various news reports as a) a major figure in Iran’s nuclear program, or b) a major figure in dealing with the Lebanese Hezbollah and the one-time Iranian commander in Lebanon, or c) a major figure providing arms and training for Iraqi militants. In recent years, the Iranian media have consistently cited him as a former deputy defense minister.
Ali Nourizadeh, an exiled Iranian journalist who often writes in the Western media, gave an entirely different perspective. Writing in the London-based Arabic daily, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat, Nourizadeh said Asgari handled internal investigations for the Defense Ministry and was forced to resign after exposing instances of corruption in the ministry.
Another report, however, said Asgari had long been in conflict with Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad and left the ministry when Ahmadi-nejad became president in August 2005.
In the United States, officials have declined all comment on Asgari. Sean McCormack, then the State Department spokesman, was asked in 2007, “Would you at least deny that he’s in the United States?” McCormack answered, “I couldn’t tell you.” The next day, his deputy, Tom Casey, said, “I have the same nothing that we had previously.” That kind of evasiveness with a chuckle is commonly used when a spokesman has the information, is barred from giving it and avoids lying with a laugh line.
The Washington Post quoted an unnamed “senior US official” as saying Asgari was “cooperating with Western intelligence services” and providing much information on Hezbollah and Iran’s links to it, but had nothing on Iran’s nuclear program.
Ram Igra, a retired official of Israel’s Mossad, said Asgari was a Pasdar officer in his early career who was posted in Lebanon in charge of Pasdar operations there in the 1980s and early 1990s before becoming a deputy defense minister.
The Islamic Republic has focused on damage control over the years, avoiding all talk about defection and maintaining that evil western intelligence agencies went after him.
An “informed source” in Tehran told the Fars news agency that Asgari had been kidnaped in Istanbul, dragged off to the US airbase at Incirlik in Turkey, then flown to “a covert CIA detention center in Europe” where he was “being tortured to testify against Iran.”
The source said, “According to the latest information, a joint committee formed of US, Israeli and British agents are torturing Asgari both mentally and physically with the same style US troops used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.”
In May 2007, friends of Asgari said he might have defected out of anger for being falsely imprisoned by the government. The Financial Times of London reported Asgari had been accused of espionage and corruption and detained for about 18 months from 2003 to 2005 on the charges.
The daily quoted an unnamed friend as saying Asgari was eventually cleared of all the charges, “but psychologically he became disturbed and unbalanced.”
A second friend and former official quoted by the Financial Times said he had spoken to Asgari shortly before he disappeared and Asgari was “resentful about his arrest.”
A third source told the daily that Asgari was released from jail as a result of “a lot of support” from Shamkhani, the defense minister under President Khatami for whom Asgari worked. “His arrest wasn’t a smart move. The worst thing about this kind of move is the insecurity it can create among other security people, who may become worried they may get arrested, too.”
After Asgari’s release and retirement from the government, he became an importer of vegetable oils. He was in Istanbul on that business when he disappeared five years ago.
