Iran executes nuclear
scientist reputed to have spied for U.S. The
strange case of Shahram Amiri launched during Hillary Clinton's tenure at
State, by Nahal Toosi,
8/7/16
The Iranian government has executed
a nuclear scientist who was believed to have cooperated with U.S. intelligence
but who returned to Iran after claiming he had been abducted and tortured by
the CIA.
The tale of Shahram Amiri was one of
the stranger sagas to emerge from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, testing her diplomatic skills in highly
sensitive circumstances. His death comes just over a year after Iran and the
U.S. struck a deal aimed at reining in Iran's nuclear program, an agreement
Clinton was instrumental in launching. Story Continued Below
State-controlled Iranian media on
Sunday confirmed Amiri's execution, quoting an Iranian judiciary spokesman as
saying that Amiri "provided the enemy with vital information of the
country." His family told the BBC his body had rope marks, indicating he
had been hanged, apparently in the past week.
Amiri went missing in Saudi Arabia
in May or June 2009 while on religious pilgrimage to Mecca. In the following
months, Iranian officials accused the U.S. of abducting him. The State
Department claimed for months that it "had no information" on Amiri.
The Iranian resurfaced publicly on
June 7, 2010, in a pair of Internet videos. In one, he claimed he'd been kidnapped by the CIA during his pilgrimage and
was being held in Tucson, Arizona, where he had been subject to torture and
psychological pressure. In the other, he claimed he was in the U.S. to further his education and was free
and safe.
Amiri appeared in a third
video, posted June 29, 2010, in which he
said he'd escaped U.S. custody and had reached Virginia. Two weeks later, Amiri
walked into the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., which houses an Iranian
interests section, and said he wanted to return to Iran.
Clinton confirmed at that point,
during a news conference, that Amiri had been present in the U.S., saying he
arrived “of his own free will and he is free to go. These are decisions that
are his alone to make.”
When he did land in his native
country on July 15, 2010, he was given a hero’s welcome, and
Iranian officials cast him as a
double agent, claiming he had infiltrated U.S. intelligence and that Iran had
the upper hand in an intelligence war. But soon after returning home, Amiri was
taken into custody, presumably imprisoned because of his dalliance with the
U.S.
The CIA and the State Department
declined to comment for this story, and the White House said it had no
immediate comment. But the U.S. was clearly embarrassed over the drama as it
played out six years ago, not to mention unhappy about the public window it offered
into the high-stakes spy battles between Washington and Tehran over the
latter's nuclear program.
American officials at the time
quickly went about trying to debunk Amiri's allegations, scoffing at claims
that they had kidnapped and held Amiri against his will. (It was never quite
clear how Amiri managed to record the videos, still available on YouTube, if he
was being held a prisoner of the U.S.)
The U.S. officials told
American news organizations that Amiri had provided intelligence on Iran’s
nuclear program for years from inside Iran, and that although he was not a
major player in the country's nuclear apparatus, his information still proved
useful. They said he had been paid some $5 million for the information he
provided.
Shahram Amiri claimed to have been kidnapped
by the CIA.
As Amiri made his way across the
U.S. to the Pakistani Embassy, Clinton's advisers fretted over how to react. In
an email published among the trove of messages originally on Clinton's private
server, top Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan (who now has a top role in her
presidential campaign) expressed concern about how Amiri’s story would play in
the media.
“The gentleman you have talked to
[top State Department official] Bill Burns about has apparently gone to his
country's interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has
taken to facilitate his departure,” Sullivan wrote. “This could lead to problematic
news stories in the next 24 hours. Will keep you posted."
Another email, written by energy
envoy Richard Morningstar and sent days earlier, portrayed Amiri as having
psychological problems.
"Per the subject we discussed,
we have a diplomatic, 'psychological' issue, not a legal issue,"
Morningstar wrote. "Our friend has to be given a way out. We should
recognize his concerns and frame it in terms of a misunderstanding with no
malevolent intent and that we will make sure there is no recurrence. Our person
won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave, so be it."
At the time, there were some reports
that Amiri, who was born in 1977, was worried about what would happen to his
family, especially his young son, whom he had left behind in Iran and who
clearly were under the pressure of watchful Iranian authorities.
When he arrived back in Iran, he
held his son, then age 7, in his arms as he faced a bank of microphones. He alleged that
U.S. and Saudi officials were complicit in his kidnapping, that Israeli agents
were involved in interrogating him, and that he'd been offered $50 million to
be resettled in Europe.
Amiri's case was one of several
dramatic U.S.-Iran developments in 2010. That same year, President Barack Obama
signed into law a new set of sanctions on the Islamic Republic, penalties that
are believed to have helped push Iran toward the bargaining table a few years
later.
Clinton left the Obama
administration before the nuclear talks with Iran began in full force in 2013.
But during her final year as secretary of state, she greenlighted secret
bilateral talks with the Iranians — sending Sullivan as an envoy — that
eventually led to the ultimate deal.
The nuclear deal, reached July 14,
2015, has led Iran to dismantle large parts of its nuclear program, which
Tehran has always insisted was meant for peaceful purposes. The U.S. and other
nations involved in the agreement have in turn cut back on their sanctions.
Suspicions remain strong on both
sides, however. Iranian leaders have complained they are not getting sanctions
relief fast enough, leading some in the West to worry that Tehran will back out
of the deal.
Earlier this month, Iran's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Khamenei used Twitter to accuse the U.S. of violating the deal,
saying it proved Iran "cannot negotiate in any issue with U.S. as a
reliable party." He added: "Americans want to take everything &
give nothing. Talks with US on regional issues is a lethal poison & they
cannot be trusted in any issue."
In the days afterward, another flash
point emerged when The Wall Street Journal reported
details of how the U.S. shipped $400 million in cash to Iran in mid-January,
around the same time Iran released five Americans in its custody.
U.S. officials insist the payment
was the first installment of a completely separate $1.7 billion settlement the
Obama administration reached with Iran over a decades-old financial dispute,
and they point out that that agreement was publicly announced at the time of
the prisoner release.
But the Journal's description of the
cash transfer — in pallets of foreign currency — revived Republican allegations
that the so-called separate financial settlement was really a ransom payment
for Americans unjustly held by a rogue regime. GOP presidential nominee Donald
Trump is among those who have attacked
Clinton over the $400 million transfer.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/iran-executes-nuclear-scientist-who-spied-for-us-226763
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