Spy vs. Spy: Iran Detains Nuclear Scientist
I love it when Iran arrests its own nuclear scientists; it reminds me of Stalin purging his officer corps.
Iran has detained an atomic scientist said to have provided the United States with intelligence on the Middle Eastern nation's uranium enrichment activities, the London Times reported on Thursday.
Shahram Amiri, 33, returned to Iran from the United States last July, contending he had been kidnapped during a trip to Saudi Arabia the prior year. News reports in the United States, though, said he had defected and was supporting CIA activities against Tehran's nuclear program, which Washington suspects is geared toward weapons development.
Iran publicly maintained Amiri was abducted and praised his return last year as an espionage victory.
Actually, the other thing this item reminds me of is the Vitaly Yurchenko story. I think we still have no real idea what happened there, unless someone has figured it out from recently opened Soviet archives. As far as I last knew, it was still one of those unsolved bizarro world-of-mirrors espionage mysteries.
Anyway, may I suggest we announce they've all defected? I'm not a spy, I'm a spy novelist, but that's how I'd handle it in a novel.
- Comment (3)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments :
Aug '10
Re: Spy vs. Spy: Iran Detains Nuclear Scientist
Fascinating. Kidnapping - especially within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - by our guys seems extremely unlikely under those circumstances; a diplomatic breach of huge proportions. We probably pressured him to defect, and he changed his mind later.
The likely outcome of New Caliphate resurgence is chaos, and tribal warfare with nukes. Iranians aren't Arabs, and have always fought. Sunnis and Shias have been at each others' throats since the 7th Century.
Westerners are a convenient scapegoats for now, but if we were taken out as a threat, they'd all immediately turn on each other.
That would be some novel, wouldn't it?
Jun '10
Re: Spy vs. Spy: Iran Detains Nuclear Scientist
I'm sure he wasn't dumb enough to believe that the welcome back home would last. He probably thought, if he didn't come back, his family would pay the price instead of him. Even if the Iranians believe he was abducted, he's probably considered guilty of not committing suicide immediately, to avoid talking.
Dec '10
Re: Spy vs. Spy: Iran Detains Nuclear Scientist
It could also be that we (the US) just leaked the defection story to burn him with the Iranians.
The guy could have never set foot in America (or if he did, he could have been here for any number of reason), but he disappears for a bit, and then resurfaces, we put out the story that he wanted to defect and help us, and then let the Iranians kill him themselves.
It's a very cheap way to rub out one of the bad guy's experts without actually having to do the wet work ourselves.
Doesn't really matter what actually happened, so long as the Iranians now distrust all their scientists and vice versa.