I've been following the supposed defection of Ali Reza Asgari.
An essential question is what Asgari took with him. The London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat claimed on March 9 that Asgari had left Turkey on a new passport, under an assumed name, in cooperation with “Western parties.” (English summary here) He allegedly carried off “military and intelligence maps and documents on the Iranian military establishment, and on relations between the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Mehdi Army, and the Badr Organization.”
No less significant is whether Asgari managed to get his family out? The Sunday Times claimed that “[a]t least 10 close members of his family had to flee the country” with Asgari, including sons, daughters and daughters in law. If true, this would suggest he had considerable time to plan his departure, or at least was given great leeway, despite Vavak’s purported suspicion. However, developments in Tehran on March 13 contradicted this. Asgari’s wife, daughters, sons, and brother–or at least people claiming to be them–held a press conference denying he could have defected. Mrs. Asgari asked the Iranian authorities to find her husband, and claimed that he had actually disappeared in December, not in February.
