Former Mossad official Rami Igra on Ron Arad: ‘At that moment, Israel lost the thread’

Rami Igra, former head of the Mossad's division for prisoners of war and missing persons, spoke on Sunday about the disappearance of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad with Prof. Arieh Eldad and Ron Kofman on 103FM, following a New York Times investigation into the decades-long search for him.Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator, has been missing since his plane went down over Lebanon in October 1986.The New York Times reported that the Mossad abducted former Iranian deputy defense minister Ali Reza Asgari in Turkey in 2006 and interrogated him about Arad, and that Israeli officials now believe Arad was most likely executed in 1988. Israel has denied involvement in Asgari's disappearance.'When they came back, he wasn't in the room'Igra began by describing the night Arad's trail went cold.“Let's say what can be said. On the night of May 4, 1988, Israel carried out an operation in Lebanon, and Ron Arad's guards left him to go fight Israel. When they came back, he wasn't in the room. At that moment, Israel lost the thread that connected it to Ron,” he said.For about 20 years, the prevailing assessment in Israel's intelligence community was that Arad had been taken to Iran.“That view was based on two things,” Igra said. “First, a source said he had seen him in Iran.