Scientist in 'defection' row to return to Iran from US

AN IRANIAN scientist who spent 14 months in the US as either defector or captive is due to return to Tehran today.

Shahram Amiri, a specialist in medical radioactive isotopes, disappeared in June 2009 while performing the annual Muslim pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Shortly afterwards the US announced an “intelligence coup” involving Iran.

Tehran charged the US with kidnapping Mr Amiri and called on UN secretary general Ban Ki- moon to return him. Yesterday Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hassan Qashqavi, said Tehran would pursue charges of abduction through legal means.

While US media reported last March Mr Amiri was in the US, his whereabouts were not verified until last month when three videos of him appeared on the internet.

In the first amateurish effort made at a cafe, he said he had been taken to the US after being snatched in the Muslim holy city of Medina. In a second polished video, he said he was studying for a doctorate in the US, and in the third, he claimed the second video was “a complete lie” produced by his abductors and that he had been held against his will in Tuscon, Arizona.

His fate was settled on Monday when he entered the Iranian interests office attached to the Pakistani embassy in Washington and asked for an air ticket to Tehran.

Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for him to be allowed to go home “without any obstacle.” US secretary of state Hillary Clinton responded by saying he was free to leave whenever he liked.

US analysts suggested Mr Amiri had changed his mind about defecting because the Iranian government threatened to exert pressure on his wife and seven-year- old son living in Tehran.

Unidentified US officials believe he has been providing information on Iran’s nuclear programme, which, Washington insists, is designed to produce weaponry. Tehran argues it is meant to yield fuel for civilian power plants.

Mr Amiri may or may not have been directly involved in Iran’s nuclear programme. He was a researcher at Malek-e-Ashtar industrial university which has connections with the country’s atomic energy organisation and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran).

It is not known if he had any intelligence of value for US agents, whether on the nuclear programme or the Pasdaran, which is playing an increasing role in Iran’s politics and whose activities are of considerable interest to the US. Pasdaran general Ali Reza Asgari went missing in Turkey in 2007 and is believed to be in the US.

In January 2007, US troops stormed a well established Iranian liaison office in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. The object of the operation was to capture of Muhammad Jafar, head of Iran’s national security council, and general Manouchehr Frouzandeh, Pasdaran intelligence chief, who had been meeting Iraqi president Jalal Talabani and Kurdish region president Massoud Barzani.

Instead, they grabbed five Iranian consular officers who were held until July 2009, a month after Mr Amiri disappeared.