On the other big news ...the defecting Iranian....Hattip to the Mudville Gazette:
Secret Network Helped Iranian Defector
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Apparently, Gen. Ali Reza Asghari's Feb. 7 disappearance at a hotel in Istanbul days after his wife and other family members left Iran for a purported vacation was neither a kidnapping nor a mystery; it occurred with the help of a well-organized Iranian dissident group and experts say more defectors are on the way as opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad increases within Iran. And it seems that more are planned:
The group is currently negotiating with Western intelligence agencies from a hideout somewhere in Europe for a permanent place of exile, sources said.Asghar's defection is nothing less than a devastating blow for Iran. The leading Arab international daily, asharq alawsat, reports that a source who is a close friend of Asghari says the former Iranian Deputy Defense Minister has military and intelligence documents and maps about Iran's military institution and others revealing relations between the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, al Mahdi army and the Badr organization (formerly Badr Brigade) which follows the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).The United States and Israel, fingered by Iran's police chief as Asghari's kidnappers, have issued carefully worded denials that their governments were involved.
Tehran regards Asghari's defection as a disaster.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Walid Phares, an expert in Iranian-backed Shiite terrorism.
"Opposition to Ahmadinejad is growing inside Iran."
Is it possible that what Turkish security sources believe is true, that Mr Asghari has knowledge of Iran's nuclear work, in spite of Iran's claims to the contrary?
What remains to be determined is whether or not the information Asghari has and what he says is true, and can it somehow be collaborated. Is he a bona fide defector or is he a human instrument of al-taqiyya?