Yesterday, I highlighted the mysterious disappearance of Iran’s ex-deputy defense minister and prominent Revolutionary Guards General, Ali Reza Asquari in Istanbul Turkey last month.
General Asquari was reportedly the commanding officer in charge of Iranian undercover operations in central Iraq, and either took part in the planning or actually participated in the kidnapping of those five American officers from the US-Iraqi command center in Karbala south of Baghdad January 20th.
BlogPal Dave from The Glittering Eye saw my piece on this and tipped me off to this story, reported in The Australian, that the general has surfaced after being `missing' for a month. The news story cites al-Shark al-Awsat, an Arab paper published in London as a source and says that General Asquari is seeking to defect to the US. According to al-Shark, the general's entire family disappeared from Turkey as well, which would bear out the story of a defection if true.
Whether Asquari voluntarily defected or was kidnapped by the CIA or the Mossad and is now in US custody, this is a major blow to Iran.
As deputy foreign minister he had access to all of Iran's innermost secret, including the ins and outs of its nuclear weapons program. And as the ex- CO of Iran's undercover operations in Iraq, he is in a position to provide hard evidence on whether Iran has been directly behind the killing of our troops in Karbala and whether all those Iranian arms shipments to the Shiite militias in Iran had the "approval from top leaders in Iran."
This could end up being a major development.
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