A former Iranian general considered to be the "father of Hezbollah" and who disappeared on a trip to Turkey last month appears to have defected to the West.

Iranian officials said earlier this week that Ali Reza Asgari, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States during a private trip to Istanbul.

But the Washington Post, citing a senior US official, reported today that the general was co-operating with Western intelligence services and providing information on the Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim militia in Lebanon, and Iranian links to it.

The official, who was not named, did not divulge Mr Asgari's whereabouts or specify how was questioning him. But he told the Post that the Iranian was co-operating fully and said that the information he was offering "is fully available to US intelligence".

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The Israelis, in particular, will be eager to gain access to Asgari’s intelligence, after the failure of their military operation last summer to dislodge Hezbollah fighters from southern Lebanon

Richard Beeston

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Asgari was a deputy defence minister under the government of reformist president Mohammad Khatami until early 2005.

The newspaper quoted former officers with the Israeli spy agency Mossad as saying that he was instrumental in setting up Hezbollah in the 1980s, at around the same time as a 1983 bomb attack on a US Marine barracks in Beirut. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he is thought to have oversaw Iran's funding and training of the organisation.

The Post said that another US official had denied a report in an Israeli newspaper that Asgari was now in the United States. That official suggested that Asghari’s disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis - although an Israeli government spokesman denied that.

The London-based newsaper Asharq al-Awsat reported yesterday that the Iranian was being debriefed at a location in Northern Europe.

The Washington Post report also quoted Danny Yatom, a former Mossad director who is now an Israeli MP, who believes that Asgari defected.

"He is very high-calibre," Mr Yatom said. "He held a very, very senior position for many long years in Lebanon."

Asgari's value to Western intelligence agencies would be from his intimate knowledge of Hezbollah and from his wider knowledge of Iran's military.

Iranian officials have said that he had no knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme. The senior US official told the Post that he was not being questioned about that issue.

The theory that Asgari defected was backed by Menashe Amir, an Israeli analyst of Iranian affairs, who said that Asgari's family had been with him.

“According to part of the information, his wife and children managed to leave Iran before his disappearance,” Mr Amir told Israel’s Army Radio, without elaborating on his sources. “It’s very possible that he decided to defect.”

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