How Israel Kidnapped an Iranian General to Find Ron Arad
Israeli intelligence officers kidnapped Iranian general Abdullah Saberi in Damascus in September 2021 as part of a decades-long hunt for missing air force navigator Ron Arad, according to an investigation published by The New York Times.
General Saberi stepped out for a jog in an upscale diplomatic quarter of Syria’s capital when two men carrying an oversize refrigerator box restrained, drugged, and shoved him into a white van, according to Middle Eastern and senior Iranian officials. Operatives whisked him to Israel for interrogation exclusively regarding Arad, the only Israeli service member classified as missing in action.
The Mossad also abducted former Iranian deputy defense minister Ali Reza Asgari in Turkey roughly two decades ago, interrogating him on a vessel before killing him and dumping his body into the Black Sea when questioning failed to link him to the case, according to Yahoo News.
Investigation Findings and Historical Reassessment
A secret report compiled by Iran and Hezbollah concluded that Arad died in 1988 in the eastern Lebanese village of Nabi Sheet and was likely buried nearby, i24NEWS reported. Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani sent one of his children to Germany to deliver the findings personally.
German mediator Gerhard Conrad told reporters that Hezbollah and Iranian officials made extensive efforts to locate Arad’s remains. Raz Zimmt, a former Israeli Military Intelligence analyst who helped write a 2005 report implicating Tehran, acknowledged that the assessment was likely wrong and driven by a tendency to blame the Iranian regime.
The Times of Israel said that in March 2026, IDF troops raided Nabi Chit and opened a grave in the village cemetery, but the search yielded no findings. “The operation carried out last night did not produce what we were looking for,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement at the time.
Searches for Arad's Remains Continue in Lebanon
Despite mounting evidence that Iran was never involved in Arad’s disappearance, the search for his remains in Lebanon continues. Former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin led a 2006 review concluding that reports of Arad’s transfer to Iran relied on unreliable information. A 2016 review by Avi Kalo similarly found that Arad had most likely died in 1988 in Nabi Sheet.
