Iran nuclear scientist defects to US - Intelligence coup.

[applecorped]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/iran-nuclear-scientist-defects-us-cia-intelligence-coup/story?id=10231729

"An award-winning Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, has defected to the CIA (http://topics.abcnews.go.com/topic/Central-Intelligence-Agency) and been resettled in the United States, according to people briefed on the operation by intelligence officials.

Shahram Amiri, a nuclear physicist in his early 30s, went missing last June three days after arriving in Saudi Arabia (http://topics.abcnews.go.com/topic/Saudi-Arabia) on a pilgrimage, according to the Iranian government.

The officials were said to have termed the defection of the scientist, Shahram Amiri, "an intelligence coup" in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran's (http://topics.abcnews.go.com/topic/Iran) nuclear program.
A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment. In its declassified annual report to Congress (http://topics.abcnews.go.com/topic/U.S.-Congress), the CIA said, "Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons though we do not know whether Tehran (http://topics.abcnews.go.com/topic/Tehran) eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons."

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Score for the good guys!

Need more like this please. :)

[Thunder]

any connection to Obama's sudden call for new tough sanctions "within weeks". i would not doubt it.

this guy could be a gold mine of info...........OR counter-intelligence. i hope he is vetted properly.

[DC]

i hope he is more informative than the WMD guy from Irak.

[casebro]

any connection to Obama's sudden call for new tough sanctions "within weeks". i would not doubt it.


He defected in June, we've had his info for a long time. Probably since he walked into our embassy in Saudi Arabia?

[Tricky]

He defected in June, we've had his info for a long time. Probably since he walked into our embassy in Saudi Arabia?
Plastic surgery takes a long time to heal.

[Dragoonster]

Plastic surgery takes a long time to heal.

Was it even illegal for him to emigrate out of Iran? I've been trying to search the net for Iranian emigration laws and can only find mentions of restrictions on Jewish emigration. But there seem to be hundreds of thousands of Iranian emigrants who freely left in the last 20 or so years.

I guess I'm wondering whether using "defection" is charged language.

Are there cases of Iran assassinating former scientists who've left it, or preventing scientists who want to leave it from doing so?

http://www.mongabay.com/history/iran/iran-emigration.html

Since the Revolution, there has been a small but steady emigration of educated Iranians. Estimates of the number vary from 750,000 to 1.5 million. Most such emigrants have preferred to settle in Western Europe or the United States, although there are also sizable communities of Iranians in Turkey. Newspapers in Istanbul claimed during 1986 that as many as 600,000 Iranians were living in Turkey, although the Turkish Ministry of Interior has reported that there are only about 30,000 Iranians in the country. The United States census for 1980 found 122,000 Iranians living in the United States. By 1987 it was estimated this number exceeded 200,000, with the largest concentration found in southern California.

Iranian emigrants tended to be highly educated, many holding degrees from American and West European universities. A sizable proportion were members of the prerevolutionary political elite. They had been wealthy before the Revolution, and many succeeded in transferring much of their wealth out of Iran during and after the Revolution.

Doesn't quite sound like USSR-style "defection".

[theprestige]

Doesn't quite sound like USSR-style "defection".
Nobody said it was any such thing.

I would, however, be very interested in any case you care to make that Iranian nuclear scientists with inside knowledge of Iran's nuclear programs are free to walk out of the country and openly disclose their knowledge to the U.S. government.