Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Israel has held Iran responsible for his fate, though Tehran has denied having any knowledge of Arad's whereabouts.

The deputy secretary of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, Sheik Naim Kassam, said in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper that the fundamentalist group never held Arad, and, if it had, it would have tried to arrange a prisoner swap for him.