Iranian defector briefed UN inspectors on Iran nuclear program

Qum facility

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An Iranian nuclear scientist who vanished during a pilgrimage to Mecca last June has defected to the West and has briefed American and United Nations officials about Iran’s nuclear program. As intelNews reported on October 9, rumors have been circulating in the Arab press that Shahram Amiri, a senior figure in the Iranian nuclear research program, was not abducted by Saudi and Western intelligence agencies, as Iran claims, but actually defected to the West. Now British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has cited “a source close to France’s overseas secret service, the DGSE”, who claims that Amiri’s defection was facilitated through a carefully planned intelligence operation involving the CIA, as well as French and German operatives. Moreover, the alleged defector secretly briefed International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Frankfurt, Germany, before they traveled to Iran to inspect a previously undeclared Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Qum. The British paper claims that Amiri’s defection was facilitated through a secret CIA program, nicknamed ‘brain drain’, reportedly initiated in 2005, with the aim of damaging the Iranian nuclear program by encouraging the systematic defection of senior Iranian officials. If this is true, the program would appear to precede an ongoing CIA sabotage operation, authorized in 2008 by then US President George Bush, and handed off to his successor, Barack Obama, specifically targeting Iranian nuclear laboratories and installations.