Friday, March 09, 2007

A Set Up?

I'm getting more suspicious of the defection of Iranian General Ali Reza Asghari with every new report.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Former Iranian General and assistant defense minister Ali Rez Asghari left Iran using a new passport and pseudonym and managed to smuggle important intelligence documents, according to a report published Friday morning by London based newspaper Asharaq Alawsat.

According to the report, the missing Iranian general was carrying documents and maps of Iran's military and intelligence infrastructure as well as information regarding the relations between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad.
This is either one of the greatest intelligence coups of recent memory or the General is a false defector. I'm leaning to the false defector side of the equation.

Maps, documents, new passport? Normally people pulling off one of these deals try to leave without documents. They attract attention and create suspicion if found. Plus if it was an American or Israeli operation they would normally provide fresh identity documents. To avoid any compromised Iranian papers.

One must account for the fact that sometimes improbable things happen in the intel world. However, I'm sceptical.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

to me this feels like an internal Iranian sting operation. sucker potential defectors into carrying meaningless documents, not to fool the US but just to neutralize internal dissenters. Asghari may have been a security threat and now he's out of the way. why else make so much noise about it?