Iran is gearing up to tell its version of the story of Shahram Amiri, the missing nuclear scientist whose sudden appearance at the Pakistani embassy in Washington has injected new drama into a long-running mystery.
Tehran had maintained that Amiri was kidnapped by the CIA, while US sources have hinted heavily that he is a defector who was giving valuable information about the Iranian nuclear programme.
As ever in the world of espionage, not everything is necessarily as it seems. Has the scientist really escaped the clutches of his purported captors – as he claimed in one bizarre video broadcast by Iran at the end of June? If so, that looks like a serious error by the US authorities. Could he, in fact, have been allowed to go free? Was he all along some sort of double agent, feeding false intelligence to his interrogators?
Iran has always insisted that Amiri, who disappeared while on the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009, was abducted by American agents. The US denies the claim. Iranian state TV has shown videos of the scientist claiming kidnapping and torture. Saudi Arabia, which shares US concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions, and has poor relations with Tehran, has denied handing him over to the Americans.
Perhaps the only certainty is that the US and other western governments, as well as Israel, are involved in a major clandestine effort to gather intelligence on Iran's nuclear programme. Last September's revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility at Qom was public proof of that. Rumours of technical setbacks are attributed to deliberate sabotage. Occasional assassinations have taken place as well.
Experts have described Iran's as the most "penetrated" nuclear programme since the second world war-era Manhattan project – the US drive to build a nuclear weapons that was compromised by Soviet spies.
Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, said last month that Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium to produce two nuclear bombs within two years. Tehran dismissed that statement as "psychological war" and insists, as ever, that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
If Amiri is now free to speak, he may be able to shed some light on a fascinating but inevitably obscure story. But the suspicion is that the requirements of propaganda will be paramount for everyone involved.
Ian Black @'The Guardian'
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