Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, went missing in May 2009 during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Other than the fact that Amiri subsequently resurfaced in the U.S., almost everything else in the espionage-thriller style case is disputed publicly. The barrage of information offered during the past 5 weeks makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine information, disinformation and spins.
When Dr. Amiri went missing, there were reports that he had defected to the United States in a clandestine intelligence operation, while Iran claimed that he had been kidnapped. The case went almost completely off the media radar for more than a year.
Then on June 8, 2010, in a video clip broadcast on Iranian state media, a man claiming to be Dr. Amiri said he had been kidnapped by CIA agents during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009. "They took me to a house located somewhere that I didn't know. They gave me an anesthetic injection," he said in the video. He then said that he was living in Tucson, Arizona, and had been subjected to eight months of "the most severe tortures and psychological pressures."
On the same day, a different video clip was posted on YouTube, appearing to have been recorded by the same person, completely contradicting the version offered in the previous video. In the second video, the person claimed to be in the United States voluntarily to continue his education, "I am free here and I assure everyone that I am safe."
In a third video broadcast on Iran state TV on June 29, 2010, a man appearing to be Dr. Amiri said, "I, Shahram Amiri, am a national of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a few minutes ago I succeeded in escaping U.S. security agents in Virginia. Presently, I am producing this video in a safe place. I could be re-arrested at any time."
His last video statement coincided with the most recent development in this case: the announcement made by a Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman that confirmed Amiri's arrival at its Washington embassy on July 13, at 6:30pm. The Pakistan Embassy in the United States hosts the Iran interests section, since Iran has no diplomatic ties with the U.S.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Mustafa Rahmani, head of the Iranian interests section, "is making arrangements for [Amiri's] repatriation back to Iran." According to the BBC, Iran state radio reported Thursday, "A few hours ago Shahram Amiri took refuge at Iran's interest section at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, wanting to return to Iran immediately."
The inescapable comparison of these events with the defection and re-defection case of Vitaly Yurchenko makes Amiri's case seem even more bizarre.
Yurchenko, a 25-year veteran KGB officer in the Soviet Union, made a fake defection while working in Rome in 1985, ending up in the U.S. During his interrogations by U.S. intelligence community agents, he identified two Americans as KGB assets: Ronald Pelton, a National Security Agency employee, and Edward Lee Howard, a CIA case officer. The case took a strange turn when in November 1985, just before getting a meal at Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant in Georgetown, Washington D.C., Yurchenko told the CIA agent accompanying him that he was taking a walk. However, he never returned. Shortly thereafter, Yurchenko appeared in a press conference, and announced that he had been kidnapped and drugged by the CIA. Back in Moscow, he was decorated by the Soviet government for the successful "infiltration operation."
Questions:
1. Is the person taking refuge at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington D.C. in fact Dr. Amiri, the missing Iranian scientist?
2. If the person is indeed Dr. Amiri, how did he manage to escape? Wasn't he being held in a safe, escape-proof environment guarded by U.S. intelligence community agents? Did he have outside or inside help?
3. If so, how did Dr. Amiri know to contact and identify his supporters? How did they know to contact and identify him? Was there a pre-arranged procedure of contact, which may support the sham defection theory?
4. Where was Dr. Amiri living? In Arizona, as he claimed in one video, or in Virginia, as he claimed in another video?
5. Whether living in Arizona or Virginia, how did he manage to get to Washington D.C.? Did he have money to pay for the trip? Was there a car waiting for him?
6. In the third video he said that he had escaped a few minutes earlier. If his claim is true, then it means that Dr. Amiri was moved to an Iranian "safe house" in Virginia not far from the location where he was being held by U.S. agents. Who prepared and maintained that "safe house?"
7. How did Dr. Amiri know to go to the Pakistani Embassy? Did anyone who was helping him know that the embassy serves as interest office for Iran?
8. Who filmed/made the videos in which Dr. Amiri claimed to have been kidnapped? You must have an account with YouTube to post. Has the CIA tracked the account holder?
9. Is Amiri trying to re-defect voluntarily, or is he yielding to Iran's threats to harm his family members, whom he left behind in Iran?
10. Is the anonymous leak to the media that "Amiri operated as a CIA asset in Iran for several years before his defection, providing evidence that Iran continued a program to produce nuclear weapons," a credible statement or a low blow by a spurned agency to make Amiri change his mind again and not attempt to return to Iran?
These and other nagging questions indicate that if the person inside the Pakistani Embassy is indeed Dr. Amiri, then there must be people within the United States who helped him. Could they be Iranian sleeper agents? How did Amiri know to contact them, or maybe they traced him? How? Was the defection and re-defection an elaborate Iranian ploy to smear the U.S. and deter other Iranian scientists who would seriously consider the U.S. an option if they wanted to defect?
Is it possible that Amiri did not escape from his captors as he alleged, but rather was dumped by the CIA after he gave all the information he had, and made unreasonable demands, making him a liability? If true, then he may have been driven by the CIA to the curb next to the Pakistani Embassy. Once inside the Iranian interests section, did he simply make up the kidnapping and escape stories to protect himself from the wrath of the unforgiving Iranian security services when he returns to Tehran, where he will have to provide plausible explanations or face hanging from a crane?
Answers anyone?
William Hartung: Bombing Iran? Take it "off the Table"
Joe Klein of Time magazine has a new piece out this week indicating that after being largely dismissed during the Bush administration, "the military option is very much back on the table" with respect to Iran's nuclear program.
For questions of travel, it is possible he could have found aid from the Iranian-American communities in Arizona and Virginia (Arizona has a fair sized Farsi language phone book that one can pick up at a coffee shop - never mind the internet). He could have simply said the truth, that he missed his family and needed to get back to Iran. This doesn't quite explain money, or how under surveillance he was, but this part, I see less difficult to explain.
But, there remain many contradictions and holes in accounts, both from both governments, as well as from Mr. Amiri, himself. I only wonder if more will come out. If any did help him, some intrepid reporter might track them down, unless the CIA has effectively assured their silence.
Whatever the initial story, I find it likely that he was dumped at some point. It isn't too hard to imagine he could have been an Iranian plant, either. But, I'm really not sure why. Why not use a college student, businessman, or other asset that could blend into the larger, often successful Iranian-American communities?
This remains curious, and I won't rely solely on either Washington or Tehran for information.
And, I've seen warnings that he will be imprisoned and jailed, or disappeared comments. I would not be surprised if he is debriefed vigorously, and later monitored at some level. But, he is too high-profile, and the hero's welcome was already rolled out (after Mottaki initially gave a reserved comment). No, even *if* the American version were true, he will be most effectively used as a propaganda tool (Ã la Lynndie England, though there must be a better analogy). The IRI is as shrewd as any with messaging. And he is fortunate, in that his name is known across the world. The bulk of victims in Evin and provincial prisons are those who have no such exposure.
http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2010/07/my-guess-on-shahram-amiri-the-defected-iranian-nuclear-scientist.html
* Arizona, Virginia and the DC area are chock FULL of Iranian nationals, many here on student visas. Without a doubt, this scientist knew at least one person who was in America studying. It didn't need to be an intelligence community based connection - just someone that can get in touch with the Iranians on his behalf for him and arrange further contact. I guarantee you that he had several people to contact here in the States - I know of literally no Iranians who are educated like him that do not.
* It makes more sense to me that the 2nd video during which he appears to be reading things was filmed prior to the first video and then released as a quick response to the leak, possibly during the 8 months of alleged torture. No?
* No Iranian, especially one this close to the regime, would defect like this without pondering the consequences of left-behind family members. Their endangerment is an OBVIOUS consequence. This would be one of the first times a CIA defector ever left his family behind. Even Saddam Hussein's defectors provided for their families' escapes.
I personally believe Amiri is indeed leaving to protect his family in Iran, we've heard countless reports of that kind of intimidation. It is far more likely that the IRI just told Amiri to come back or they'd torture his wife and children, than that there was a complex double-agent spy infiltration thing going on.
The very fact that such a question is being publicly asked must bring tears of joy to the eyes of any Iranian intelligence operative.
There is a pretty wide open Iranian nuclear program, with IAEA inspections, works being published in peer review journals, and the work being done in university labs with students doing the gruntwork, and that is exactly where he was working, and most likely where he will go back to.
For there to be a 'secret Iranian nuclear weapons program', given that it would have to be use completely seperate facilities (one microgram of radioactive material too much or too little in any of the public locations would trigger an IAEA alert), with a completely seperate source of enriched uranium (every operational centrifuge in the public program is monitored 24-7, and the 'secret' site didn't even have one working centrifuge, let alone the whole series that are needed to produce noticably enriched uranium), and every member of the program would have to be confined 24-7, because if Israel can let a Vannunu in, and watch him spill his guts, imagine how hard it would be when someone who could do the same about an Iranian program would be able to ask for, and get, Neverland, with a Presidential level security detail, for starters.
In other words, the odds of this guy ever having come near such a fanciful program are less than the odds of OBL being in New York
Wherever he was held, it could not be anything that resembled a prison, because one picture of that would do incredible damage to the US, and there couldn't be a large group involved in securing him, because that would only increase the likelihood of someone leaking his location. So, he probably just convinced them they had broken/turned him, got access to send the first message, co-operated in the second (while claiming the first had been done much earlier) and eventually got away.
No need for safe houses, third columns, or secret passwords, just human ingenuity and human stupidity.
Most probable scenario is that while he was in Mecca (given that it's a city that the more wealthy, powerful, or connected a Muslim is, the more likely it is that he will show up, I can't think of a city would have a higher concentration of spies, counterspies, informants, information brokers, and muscle for hire) someone learned he was Iranian, a nuclear scientist, and vaguely linked to the IRG, approached some low-level American contact, told him he could get his hands on the same, but only if he acted quickly, and, with visions of becoming a celebrity in his agency egging him on, that contact negotiated a deal, and got a drugged man in return, who he quickly got transported to the US, where, after waking him up and finding they'd got nothing, his superiors got trapped in the everything we can do now is bad, so let's just put off deciding as long as possible loop, until his first message forced the issue.
And if he escaped in Virginia, what's with the first video? Was he re-captured and forced to make the second video before he re-escaped in Virginia? Maybe he isn't sure which side he is on, maybe the first youtube video was blackmail, US govt pressured him to recant/gave him something he wanted, but he finally decided for whatever reason (like family) to return to Iran.
The double-defector hypothesis is interesting, but if this were planned in advance by the Iranians, I don't see the point of the first video, which would alert the US that Amiri was unreliable before making the big move and having him hole up in the Pakistani non-embassy diplomatic building thing and demand to return home.
MY REPLY: Perhaps the CIA abducted him but without being able to use water-boarding (like in the good old days of the Bush/Cheney administration), they could not get him to say what they wanted him to say (that Iran had a program to make nuclear weapons). Since he would not tell the lies we and/or Israel need to justify bombing Iran, the CIA decided to dump him and DAK (deny all knowledge).
As for this guy, he isn't a nuclear scientist, he is a physicist and a PhD with some work in nuclear medicine (something like designing x-ray machines). Apparently CIA took him thinking he knew about Iranian nukes, but he didn't know anything about nukes, or gave CIA what they wanted to hear, they couldn't turn him into the "Ahmadinejad Bomb Maker", and Iran made a lot of noise about it in public so they had to let him go. He probably was kidnapped, otherwise he would have taken his son and wife to Saudi Arabia with him. Case solved.
1. Was the guy in the video really the guy in the video or not the guy in the video?
2. How did this guy know there are embassies in Washington DC?
3. Do all Iranians work for the Pakistani Embassy?
4. Did he stay at Embassy Suites to get free breakfasts without any money?
5. Does the Pakistani Embassy provide free breakfast?
6. Does this guy have a mole on his face, in addition to a mole in the CIA?
7. Did he leave his mole in Saudi Arabia or did he take it with him?
If he really sits down with you and tells you his whole story I guess you will have your fifth thriller out of his manilla.