IRAN HAS sentenced an American citizen to death and reports have emerged that the country has started enriching uranium underground in a show of defiance of western sanctions. The man, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an Iranian-American born in Arizona in 1983, was shown on Iranian television in December confessing to being a CIA agent sent to gain the trust of the Iranian government by pretending to offer US state secrets.
Mr Hekmati’s father said he had gone to Iran to visit his grandmother. Meanwhile, Keyhan, a newspaper with close connections to the conservative clerical establishment, reported that Iran has started enriching uranium at the Fordow plant, a heavily fortified site dug under a mountain near the city of Qom.