[9] The Israeli website Debkafile claims that Asgari ran Iranian operations in Iraq, and is linked to the January 20, 2007 Karbala provincial headquarters raid.

[27] On March 8 The Washington Post said that Asgari was willingly cooperating with Western intelligence officials, and was providing information on Hezbollah and its Iranian connections.

[29] Asgari also smuggled out intelligence documents and maps that detail Iranian involvement with Muslim militia groups, including Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and the Iraqi Mahdi army and Badr Organization.

[28] The New York Post reported that an Iranian dissident group helped plan the defection and is negotiating with Western intelligence agencies for a "permanent place of exile".

"[31] According to The Sunday Telegraph, Asgari's defection was part of a CIA program called "the Brain Drain", which began in 2005 and later netted Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri.

[35] On March 12, Asgari's wife Ziba Ahmadi and daughter Elham lodged a complaint at the Turkish embassy in Tehran, saying that "He has not asked for political asylum and will never do.

"[34] In an interview on July 10 with the news agency Mehr, Ziba Ahmadi said that 90% of the evidence points towards Israel being responsible for her husband's disappearance, although she has not received any information on him.

Miniter spoke with Professor Hasan Koni of the American Studies program at Bahcesehir University, who said that senior Turkish generals were angry at not being told which ally had taken Asgari, and that the identity of this country was a hot debate among "military, intelligence, and police circles.

[40] In December 2007 when the US intelligence community released the findings of an NIE stating that Iran had stopped its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 (as opposed to the 2005 NIE which said they were continuing), some observers suspected that Asgari played some role in providing intelligence or prompting the reassessment; however, current officials have said that there was no single thing which prompted the reversal,[41] though another source cited current diplomatic and security officials as saying that a defector was likely to be the cause of the new information.

[42] On September 28 the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jareeda reported that Asgari provided information for the Israeli airstrike on September 6 in Syria, code-named Operation Orchard;[43] this was echoed by the intelligence group Stratfor, which reported that Asgari "gave Israel the intelligence on Syria's missile program needed for the Syrian airstrike.

"[44] In March 2009, Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported that after defecting, Asgari told the U.S. about the secret Syrian nuclear reactor, built in partnership with North Korea and with Iranian financing.

[47] Earlier in October, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had said that "The United States should be accountable as it is directly or indirectly responsible for causing problems for Shahram Amiri, Ali Reza Asgari and Ardebili".

[49] The blogger, Richard Silverstein, had earlier reported that a confidential source close to Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak had given him the identity of the prisoner.