Missing Israel pilot paken to Iran?

In a shocking revelation, a German intelligence document says missing IDF pilot Ron Arad, a national icon in Israel, was smuggled to Iran in 1996 – ten years after being shot down over Lebanon.

In a new documentary, Germany’s WDR television cites documents from the German BND intelligence service divulging Arad was held for years in a cave in Lebanon before being handed over in Beirut in October 1996 to an Iranian intelligence official. From there, the documents say Arad was transferred days later via Syria to Iran.

A spokeswoman for BND confirmed today the intelligence papers are genuine but refused to comment on remarks by a former intelligence chief who told WDR he was sure Arad was dead. She said BND was still pursuing contacts with both Hezbollah and the Iranian government, which denies knowledge of the airman’s fate.

The BND has been mediating between Lebanon, Iran and Israel for the past decade to try to broker a solution to the Arad case.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said today Israel is continuing to seek information on Arad, and that for now the working assumption is that he is still alive.

“He is dead. The question is whether he died of an illness, from wounds or whether he was killed. That, for me, is not clear,” former German intelligence chief Bernd Schmidbauer told the documentary makers.

The news comes amid already heightened tensions between Iran and Israel over Tehran’s nuclear program. The mullahs claim they are building several nuclear reactors for “peaceful purposes,” while Israel and America accuse Iran of maintaining an elicit nuclear weapons program.

In July, Israel conducted military exercises for a pre-emptive strike against several of Iran’s nuclear-power facilities and is ready to attack if Russia supplies Iran with rods for enriching uranium.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Iran recently announced it may decide to pre-empt an Israeli or American strike against its reactors with an attack against the Jewish state or U.S. interests in the Middle East. The ayatollahs have also gone to great lengths to warn that Iran can “hit anywhere in Israel” with its upgraded version of the Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has in the past said if he had nuclear weapons, he would use them to “destroy the Zionist entity.”