Captain's Quarters -

Iranian intelligence general and former Foreign Ministry official Ali Reza Asgari is among friends, the Washington Post reports, and enjoying the conversation. The Iranians had asked Turkey to help locate Asgari after he disappeared from there in February, but now US officials confirm that "Western intelligence agencies" have been meeting with Asgari and discussing Iran's ties to terrorism:

A former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guard has left his country and is cooperating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization, according to a senior U.S. official.

Ali Rez Asgari disappeared last month during a visit to Turkey. Iranian officials suggested yesterday that he may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States. The U.S. official said Asgari is willingly cooperating. He did not divulge Asgari's whereabouts or specify who is questioning him, but made clear that the information Asgari is offering is fully available to U.S. intelligence.

Asgari served in the Iranian government until early 2005 under then-President Mohammad Khatami. Asgari's background suggests that he would have deep knowledge of Iran's national security infrastructure, conventional weapons arsenal and ties to Hezbollah in south Lebanon. Iranian officials said he was not involved in the country's nuclear program, and the senior U.S. official said Asgari is not being questioned about it. Former officers with Israel's Mossad spy agency said yesterday that Asgari had been instrumental in the founding of Hezbollah in the 1980s, around the time of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

Iran's official news agency, IRNA, quoted the country's top police chief, Brig. Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, as saying that Asgari was probably kidnapped by agents working for Western intelligence agencies. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Asgari was in the United States. Another U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied that report and suggested that Asgari's disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis. A spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council did not return a call for comment.

The tie to the Khatami regime could be significant. Khatami is what passes as a reformer in Iran, which means that he favored a more measured approach to international relations. Calling the US the "Great Satan" and Israel the "Little Satan" sufficed for stirring up anti-Western sentiment amongst the rabble for Khatami and his clique. They saw no need to dive into the waters of Holocaust denial and openly advocating for war with Israel and the US.

Asgari may have become disenchanted with the direction Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provided for Iran after the mullahs staged his election in June 2005. That appears to be around the time that Asgari left the Iranian government, although it seems he continued his work in intelligence. That would make Asgari one of the most valuable defections for Western intelligence in decades, not just in information but also in motivation. The mullahs not only have to stop all programs of which Asgari has knowledge, but they also have to wonder how many other disaffected Asgaris they are creating with their reckless domestic and foreign policy.

The Iranians now want to downplay the impact of his apparent defection. Teheran claims that Asgari has been out of the loop for "four or five years", transparently untrue given his employment history. An Iranian official told the Post that Teheran assumes Asgari is traveling in Europe, which doesn't explain why he went missing in Turkey and why the Iranians demanded assistance from the Turks in locating him.

Asgari's defection is dangerous and embarrassing for the mullahcracy. It threatens to expose all of their connections to terrorism, their operations against Western targets, and the network of sleeper cells they have threatened to activate if attacked. It might also expose points of political vulnerability for the hard-liners in Iran, including the Twelfth Imam clique that apparently sees no problem in massive destruction as long as their #12 highway remains open. It's also concrete evidence that high-ranking officials within the Iranian government are not all supporters of their current policies, showing disunity at a particularly inopportune moment.