Mossad Kidnapped Two Iranian Generals in Search for Ron Arad

The "New York Times" revealed that Israel kidnapped two Iranian generals over the past two decades, one from Syria and the other from Turkey, as part of its efforts to determine the fate of missing Israeli pilot Ron Arad.

The investigation stated that General Abdullah Sabri was kidnapped using a large refrigerator box, while General Ali Reza Asgari disappeared in Istanbul in 2006, and his fate remained a mystery for years. The investigation relied on accounts from former senior US officials, revealing that Mossad agents interrogated Asgari for weeks regarding his possible involvement in Arad's disappearance, and when the interrogation yielded no useful information, they killed him and dumped his body into the Black Sea, according to one official.

It is now widely believed among Israeli officials familiar with the case that Arad was never held in Iran, and that Tehran and Hezbollah were not involved in his disappearance, based on intelligence reviews and information gathered during Israel's recent wars.

Former intelligence officials acknowledged that previous assessments relied on fragmented evidence and confirmation bias, and Iran expert Raz Zimmt said investigators tended to blame Tehran, while retired officer Avi Kalo described the failure as a collective blind spot.

In 1992, an Iranian doctor claimed he had treated Arad in Lebanon and Tehran; he was identified by Mossad officer Israel Perlov and interrogated, but two polygraph tests did not prove his story true, and the doctor disappeared after being offered a financial reward. Former Mossad officer Rami Egra said the doctor fabricated his story in pursuit of money, and that Mossad found what it was looking for, but his assessment was not supported, and the doctor's narrative became part of the evidence against Iran.

In 1994, Israeli commandos kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, a senior security official in the Lebanese Amal movement, in an operation known as the Poison Sting. Dirani told investigators that Arad was held in a house in the Lebanese village of Nabatieh al-Shatiyeh, and that guards left him overnight to respond to fighting with Israeli forces and returned to find him gone; he also claimed an Iranian official told him the Revolutionary Guard transferred him to Iran, a narrative not proven by evidence. Egra concluded there was no evidence of Iran holding Arad, suggesting he may have been killed during an escape attempt or in retaliation, considering his story began and ended in Lebanon, while then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced in 1995 that Iran was directly responsible for his fate.

Israel exerted significant international pressure on Tehran, and Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, Iran's Vice President from 1997 to 2005, said the Arad case followed Iranian officials at every diplomatic meeting, and Tehran continued to insist the disappearance occurred in Lebanon; the case reached the Vatican when Pope John Paul II delivered a letter from Arad's wife to President Mohammad Khatami in 1999.

In 2004, Israel agreed to release a prominent Lebanese prisoner in exchange for genetic evidence, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah sought Iranian assistance to search for Arad, with Tehran assigning the task to General Sabri. Three former Iranian officials reported that a secret report from the joint Iranian-Hezbollah investigation concluded that Arad died in 1988 in Nabatieh al-Shatiyeh, was likely buried there, and that former President Rafsanjani arranged to hand him over personally to Germany.

Israel interpreted the assignment of the mission to a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard as proof of internal Iranian knowledge, and an Israeli report in 2005 concluded the Revolutionary Guard kidnapped Arad. However, the Shin Bet concluded in 2006, according to its former head Yuval Diskin, that assessments placing Arad in Iran were fundamentally wrong, and that the answer lay in Nabatieh al-Shatiyeh, though this received little attention.

Mossad did not abandon its suspicions, kidnapping General Asgari in Istanbul in December 2006; former US officials said Israeli intelligence later informed them he was dead, and that Mossad agents interrogated him for weeks, killed him, and dumped his body in the Black Sea. His widow, Zeiba Ahmadi, said an Iranian investigation concluded Israeli agents drugged and kidnapped him, and the vehicle used was found abandoned near the Black Sea.

Avi Kalo, who headed the Missing Persons Unit in the Israeli army, reached similar conclusions and submitted a report to Netanyahu in 2016 stating that Arad likely died in 1988 in Nabatieh al-Shatiyeh and was not transferred to Iran, warning that kidnapping Iranians would not solve the mystery.

However, Mossad kidnapped General Sabri in Damascus in September 2021, focusing its investigators exclusively on Arad, then leaving him on a street in Johannesburg, where he later claimed he was tortured. Then-Mossad Director David Barnea admitted he authorized a planned operation to obtain information about Arad that failed, and later told his team to ignore everything they knew about the case, so Mossad finally focused on Nabatieh al-Shatiyeh.

In December 2025, Ahmed Shukr, a retired Lebanese security officer believed to know what happened to Arad, disappeared, with suspicion falling on his kidnapping by Israeli agents.

Israeli officials said the strongest current theory is that Arad was executed in retaliation for the killing of Shukr's brother in 1988. In March 2026, Israeli forces entered Nabatieh al-Shatiyeh and searched a cemetery without finding anything, and the search continues with a focus on Lebanon rather than Iran.

Source: RT + "New York Times"