At a protest in 2025 in Tel Aviv, supporters of Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas held pictures of the hostages and of Ron Arad, who has been missing since 1986.Credit...Itai Ron/Reuters

By Adam GoldmanRonen BergmanFarnaz Fassihi and Hwaida Saad

Ronen Bergman, Farnaz Fassihi, Adam Goldman and Hwaida Saad have spent years investigating the disappearance of the Israeli airman Ron Arad.

Gen. Abdullah Saberi, an Iranian commander, stepped out for a jog early one morning in an upscale diplomatic quarter of Syria’s capital. Israeli intelligence officers waited nearby. Posing as movers, they had slipped past the neighborhood’s security checkpoints.

As he headed for a nearby park, General Saberi passed two men who carried an oversize refrigerator box. In a flash, the men restrained the general, drugged him, threw the box over his head, shoved him into a white van and left as if nothing had happened.

He was whisked to Israel for interrogation, according to numerous officials in the Middle East, including senior Iranian officials close to General Saberi and a Syrian official who reviewed video of the September 2021 kidnapping.

As a veteran of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Saberi knew many secrets. But his interrogators were interested in only one.

Mr. Arad, an Israeli airman, vanished decades ago, and the Israeli military says he is the only service member classified as missing in action. The government’s long search for him has captivated the public and has come to symbolize Israel’s commitment, rooted in Jewish tradition, to bringing its soldiers home, dead or alive. Articles, books and documentaries have been produced about the hunt for Mr. Arad.

The Israeli government was so determined to find him that, even four decades after his disappearance, it took the risk of kidnapping General Saberi in the shadow of his own embassy.

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