Israel’s intelligence service Mossad is alleged to have abducted and killed Iran’s former deputy defence minister Ali Reza Askari in Turkey.
Globalinfo.az reports that The New York Times (NYT) wrote about this.
According to the report, Mossad abducted the Iranian general in connection with the disappearance of Israeli military navigator Ron Arad, interrogated him for weeks and then killed him.
Ali Reza Askari
The investigation is based on interviews with dozens of officials from Israel, Iran and the United States, as well as people who took part in the search for Ron Arad. One former senior US official claims that Askari was interrogated aboard a ship and his body was later thrown into the Black Sea.
According to Askari’s wife, he disappeared from a hotel in Istanbul in December 2006. Askari was a general of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), maintained ties with Hezbollah’s leadership and arrived in Lebanon shortly after Ron Arad’s disappearance.
Ron Arad
Israel denied its involvement in Askari’s disappearance for many years. However, according to a claim by one former US official, during subsequent talks Israeli representatives told their American counterparts that Askari was dead.
Ron Arad was a pilot and navigator of the Israeli Air Force whose aircraft was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 during a military operation. He was taken captive after ejecting, and his fate remained unknown for many years. According to a 2016 Israeli intelligence assessment, Arad is believed to have died in 1988 in the Nabi Sheet area of Lebanon. However, the location of his remains has not been established to this day.
In March 2026, Israeli soldiers opened one of the graves in a village cemetery in order to find his remains. But the search yielded no results.
Ron Arad’s fate has been a sensitive national security issue for Israel for decades. Allegations that Mossad abducted Iranian officials in order to obtain information about him are also linked to this issue.
Aliyar Khalil
Globalinfo.az
