BEIRUT — The Iranian at the center of a murky intelligence caper — stretching from the deserts of Saudi Arabia to the strip malls of Tucson to the diplomatic outposts of Washington and back to Tehran — is a simple researcher with no special knowledge of his country’s nuclear program, an Iranian official said Thursday.
Shahram Amiri, whose plane landed in Teh ran on Thursday, had been described previously by the Iranians as a radio isotope scientist employed by the nation’s Atomic Energy Organization, as well as an affiliate of an elite university that turns out specialists for the Revolutionary Guard.
In a report Thursday, The Washington Post cited unnamed U.S. officials as saying Amiri had been paid $5 million after defecting and cooperating with American intelligence.
But Hassan Qashqavi, a deputy foreign minister appearing alongside Amiri at a media briefing in Tehran, insisted that Amiri knew nothing about Iran’s nuclear program.
“We deny that Amiri is a nuclear scientist,” Qashqavi said. “Amiri is a researcher at one of Iran’s universities.”
In appearances Thursday on the Al-Jazeera news channel and Iranian state television, Amiri insisted that he had been kidnapped, psychologically tortured and grilled for information in an attempt to gain intelligence about Iran.
“I can say for sure that I was kidnapped by the CIA with the assistance of Saudi Arabia, and this is definitely what happened,” he told Al-Jazeera. “Over 14 months, I was subjected to several kinds of pressure inside America.”
He added that he did not have “any expertise in any nuclear domain or anything else pertinent to the military nuclear domain.”
U.S. officials say Amiri, who is thought to be 32 or 33, came to America on his own volition and left after he became either homesick or worried for his wife and child in Iran. They have dismissed his claim of being kidnapped as a ruse meant to smooth his way back into the graces of Iranian authorities.
