Clues Suggest Amiri Defection Was an Iranian Plant

By Gareth Porter* 

WASHINGTON, Jul 15  (IPS)  - U.S. officials are explaining Iranian scientist Shahram 

Amiri's return to Iran as the result of a defector having a  change of heart because of his concern about Iranian  government threats to his family. Iran and Amiri himself have  insisted that it is a simple case of a victim of abduction  escaping his captors.  But several features of the story of Amiri's defection  suggest that Amiri may have been acting on Iranian  government orders to defect temporarily in order to  embarrass the U.S. government.  Amiri resurfaced only last month after having disappeared  from Saudi Arabia during a pilgrimage in June 2009. He made  two seemingly contradictory videos which appeared within  hours of one another, the first charging that the United  States had kidnapped him and brought him to the U.S. against  his will, the second saying he was living in the U.S. freely  to continue his education.  That mystery remained unresolved when Amiri turned up at the  Pakistani Embassy Monday evening and said he wanted to  return to Iran.  One indication that intelligence officials are now  considering the real possibility that Amiri's defection was  not really genuine is that questions are being raised about  how the contact was made with Amiri in the first place.   ABC news had reported Mar. 31 that the CIA had approached  Amiri through an intermediary and offered resettlement to  the United States. But the Washington Post's David Ignatius,  who is extraordinarily well connected with CIA officials,  suggested in a column Wednesday that Amiri had contacted the  agency first and ”may have been a virtual walk-in”.  That means Amiri contacted the agency through the Internet û  normally a danger signal for a ”defector” who is still a  government agent.   Ignatius also notes another ”mystery” about the Iranian  scientist now apparently now being discussed in intelligence  circles: ”why he decided to defect without his young wife  and child, leaving them û and himself û vulnerable to  Iranian pressure”.   The normal practice would be for the agency to arrange for  the entire family of a defector to accompany the asset. But  Ignatius notes that Amiri chose to leave the family in  Tehran, which should have been another danger sign for the  CIA.   Yet another indicator that U.S. intelligence officials  suspected that Amiri's defection was a deception is how far  they have gone to portray him as a longtime U.S.  intelligence agent.   The Washington Post reported Thursday that a U.S. official  had claimed Amiri was paid five million dollars for valuable  intelligence on Iran's nuclear programme.   A Jun. 28 ABC news story went much further, quoting U.S.  intelligence officials as claiming that Amiri had been a spy  for the CIA on the Iranian nuclear programme for several  years. The sources claimed the CIA had urged him to flee  Iran last year ”out of fear that his disclosures might  expose him to Tehran as a spy”.  ABC news repeated that same assertion in its Jul. 13 story  on Amiri returning to Iran.  In the arcane world of spying, those claims wouldn't have  been leaked to the media unless the CIA believed Amiri was  working for the other side, according to a former  intelligence official.   ”This is the pattern of a double agent,” said the former  official. ”Nothing else makes any sense.”  Other information that has now emerged about Amiri suggests  that the story that he was a long-term CIA asset was a  falsehood aimed at sowing distrust of Amiri in Tehran.   At age 32, Amiri is a very junior scientist who could not  have had information about such issues as plans for Qom,  even if he were working for the nuclear programme.  The Post story acknowledges that the scientist ”is not  believed to have had direct access to Iran's most sensitive  nuclear sites or leaders involved in decisions on whether to  pursue a bomb.”   Both the Iranian Foreign Ministry and Amiri's wife have said  he was a specialist on radioisotopes for medical purposes,  which would mean that he probably had no knowledge of the  nuclear programme of any value to U.S. intelligence.   Amiri's behaviour this spring appears to reflect an interest  in demonstrating to the world that the U.S. government was  intent on disseminating falsehoods about an alleged Iranian  push for nuclear weapons.  In early April, Amiri recorded a video in which claimed to  have been kidnapped and held against his will, which was  sent to Iran for broadcast.  A central point of the video,  however, was his claim that the real objective of the United  States was to get him to say in a televised interview that  he was an important figure in the nuclear programme and had  brought ”very important documents on a laptop with  classified information on Iran's military nuclear  programme”.  When that video was broadcast on Iranian state television  Jun. 8, it was followed within hours by the posting of  another video of Amiri seeming to deny his previous  statements.  The second video had obviously been produced by  the CIA well in advance.   That sequence of events indicates that Amiri's CIA handlers  had learned weeks before that he was already intending to  return to Iran, and insisted that he do a video in which he  would admit that he was in the United States of his own  volition.   Amiri agreed to make such a statement on camera, knowing  that the CIA would post it on You Tube if and when a video  claiming he was abducted was posted. But he also insisted on  including a statement implying that leaks to the press  indicating that he had given valuable intelligence to the  CIA on Iran's nuclear programme were false.   In the CIA-sponsored video, Amiri says, ”I am free here and  assure everyone that I am safe.” But he also calls for an  end to ”information that distorts the reality about me,” and  says, ”I am not involved in weapons research and have no  experience and knowledge in this field.”   He may been referring to a Washington Post report Apr. 25  that he had provided ”details about sensitive programs,  including a long-hidden enrichment plant near the city of  Qomà”and an ABC report Mar. 31 that he had ”helped confirm  U.S. intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear  programme”.   Even before Amiri posted yet another video portraying  himself as a kidnap victim Jun. 30, U.S. intelligence  officials apparently suspected they had been duped by him  and retaliated by leaking the story that Amiri had been a  long-term CIA intelligence asset in Iran.  The CIA's eagerness to claim an intelligence coup on Iran's  nuclear programme appears to have set the agency up for the  Amiri defection scheme. They viewed his affiliation with  Malek-e-Ashtar Industrial University, which has connections  to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as evidence that  he must be linked to the assumed Iranian plans for a  ”nuclear weapons capability”.  *Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist  specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback  edition of his latest book, ”Perils of Dominance: Imbalance  of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in  2006.