The Iranian scientist who Washington says defected to the US, only to return to Tehran on Thursday, had been an informant for the CIA inside Iran for several years, providing information about the country’s nuclear program, according to US officials.
The scientist, Shahram Amiri, described to US intelligence officers details of how a university in Tehran became the covert headquarters for the country’s nuclear efforts, the officials confirmed. While still in Iran, he was also one of the sources for a much-disputed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s suspected weapons program, published in 2007, the officials said. For several years, Amiri provided what one official described as “significant, original” information about secret aspects of his country’s nuclear program.
This account by the US, some of whom are apparently trying to discredit Amiri’s tale of having been kidnapped by the CIA, provides the latest twist in one of strangest tales of the nuclear era. It also provides the first hint of how the US acquired intelligence from Iranian scientists, besides its previously reported penetrations of Iranian computer systems.
Amiri arrived in Tehran on Thursday repeating his allegation that he had been grabbed in Saudi Arabia by the CIA and Saudi intelligence and tortured. US officials, clearly embarrassed that he had left a program that promised him a new identity and benefits amounting to about US$5 million, said his accusations that he had been kidnapped and drugged were manufactured and an effort to survive what will almost certainly be a grilling by the Iranian authorities.
“His safety depends on him sticking to that fairy tale about pressure and torture,” insisted one of the US officials, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified while discussing a classified operation to attract Iranian scientists. “His challenge is to try to convince the Iranian security forces that he never cooperated with the United States.”
On Thursday, even as Amiri was publicly greeted at home by his seven-year-old son and held a news conference, Iran’s foreign minister gave the first official hints of Iranian doubts about his story. “We first have to see what has happened in these two years and then we will determine if he’s a hero or not,” the BBC quoted Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki, as saying to a French news agency. “Iran must determine if his claims about being kidnapped were correct or not.”
After more than a year of denying any knowledge of Amiri while he was living undercover in Tucson, Arizona, and then briefly in Virginia, US officials in recent days have been surprisingly willing to describe their actions in the case. That may be in part to fend off charges that the handling of the Amiri case was badly bungled.
The Washington Post first reported that Amiri had been given US$5 million, which officials described on Thursday as standard for someone who had provided essential information. However, the money would have been paid over an extended period, the officials said, and Amiri was not able to take it with him because US sanctions prohibited financial transfers to Iran.
Amiri, a specialist in measuring radioactive materials, is not believed to have been central to any of Iran’s efforts at weapons design. However, he worked at the Malek Ashtar University, which some US officials think is used as an academic cover for the organization responsible for designing weapons and warheads that could fit atop an Iranian missile.
The US officials said that at some point while working as a secret informant, Amiri visited Saudi Arabia, and the CIA arranged to spirit him out of that country and eventually to the US. It is unclear whether Amiri tried to bring his wife and child with him.
Administration officials conceded that Amiri’s decision to come out of hiding and return to Iran was both a large embarrassment and a possible disincentive to future defections.
The incident, however, is also an embarrassment for Iran. Analysts said that even if he were publicly greeted as a hero, Amiri would probably be viewed with suspicion by the Iranian government.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS