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TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran said Tuesday its intelligence agents mounted a "complicated" cross-border mission and freed a diplomat kidnapped in 2008 in northwestern Pakistan.

Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said Iran had asked Pakistan to free Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, but after it failed to do the job, Tehran stepped in.

However a senior Pakistani security official said Pakistani intelligence did help in the rescue. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Another Pakistani official, Governor of North West Frontier Province Owais Ahmed Ghani, said Afghan officials helped recover Attarzadeh. He said he received information suggesting the diplomat was handed over to Iranian authorities in the Afghan capital Kabul.

Iranian state television reported agents carried out a "a complicated intelligence operation" to rescue Attarzadeh, who was a commercial attache in the Peshawar consulate at the time he was kidnapped. They then took him back to Iran, the report said.

"We have a high intelligence capability in the region," Moslehi said. "We have a good intelligence dominance over all other secret agencies active in the region," he added, accusing U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies of supporting the kidnappers.

Attarzadeh and his Pakistani bodyguard were driving over a narrow bridge in Peshawar on Nov. 13, 2008 when two gunmen blocked their way with a car and opened fire. The attackers fled wit... >>>