Where is Iranian defector Gen. Ali-Reza Asgari? A new report says the CIA settled him in the U.S., but the agency firmly denies it (Fars-Reuters)
Devil’s Bargain: The intelligence business is often about tradeoffs. The CIA, like all intelligence agencies, sometimes has to cut deals with killers, thugs, and weapons dealers to gain critical insight into an adversary’s plans and capabilities.
The CIA allegedly made one such deal with Maj. Gen. Ali-Reza Asgari, a former senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leader who is said to have been living in the United States for the past 17 years. Asgari reportedly was also a critical source of intelligence on Iran and Hezbollah, the Iran-funded terrorist group operating in Lebanon. As such, he also has the blood of Americans on his hands, possibly including one celebrated CIA spy.
Iran International, a London-based media outlet funded by the Saudi Royal family, reported that Asgari was recruited by U.S. intelligence in Thailand in 2005 and identified Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh as the key figure leading the Islamic regime’s military and nuclear program. (Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in a CIA/Mossad operation in 2020. )
Asgari also played a central role in steering the United States away from plans to attack Iran over its nuclear program in 2007, Iran International reported, citing three unnamed U.S. intelligence sources and an anonymous senior European diplomatic source. The Times of London reported that Asgari’s debriefing was so sensitive that information went directly to the CIA director, Michael Hayden.
Author Kai Bird wrote in his 2014 book The Good Spy that Asgari revealed that Asgari had given the United States much more. The former IRGC commander revealed that Iran had built a new centrifuge enrichment plant near Natanz. He also provided evidence that convinced some in the CIA that Iran was helping Syria to develop nuclear weapons. (That intelligence reportedly led to a 2007 Israeli airstrike against a suspected Syrian reactor.)
Bird wrote that Asgari may have provided the information needed to carry out the 2008 CIA-Mossad assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s international operations chief. (SpyTalk editor Jeff Stein, then writing for Newsweek, reported that Mughniyeh was deeply implicated in the CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley’s torture and murder in 1985.) It’s unclear whether Asgari received some or all of the $5 million reward posted by the State Department for Mughinyeh’s capture or killing. “Amazing that he is apparently still alive and here,” Bird told SpyTalk.
Asgari also possessed intimate knowledge of Hezbollah’s operations that Tehran no doubt wanted to keep the CIA from learning. In 2007, The Washington Post reported, citing former Mossad officials, that he commanded the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in the 1980s, where he helped establish and nurture Hezbollah.
Whatever intelligence he possessed, Asgari also had dirty hands. Former CIA officer Robert Baer wrote in TIME that “Asgari was in the IRGC’s chain of command when it was kidnapping and assassinating Westerners in Lebanon in the ‘80s.” Bird reported that he may have helped orchestrate the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people, including legendary CIA spy Robert Ames and 16 others. Curiously, however, Iran International says Asgari wasn’t involved.
Asked about Bird’s reporting in 2014, a CIA spokesperson gave Jeff Stein an unusually firm denial: “As a general matter, the CIA does not comment on who may or may not have been a source for the agency, but we can categorically state that the assertion that CIA arranged the defection of Ali Reza Asgari to the United States or resettled him in the United States—as alleged in Kai Bird’s book on Robert Ames—is false.” Spokesperson Tammy Thorp told SpyTalk this week there’s been “no change” in the CIA’s position.
Thus, the status of Asgari remains murky. If the new allegations are true, the CIA may have to live with the knowledge that the price they paid for the intelligence on Iran was to allow Ames’ killer to roam free in the United States under their protection.
Long Arm of New Delhi: A tradeoff of a different kind lay behind the Biden White House’s decision to keep quiet about evidence that a plot last year to kill a Sikh activist in New York was directed from within India’s intelligence service.