Thanks for the comment.

It’s fairly natural that both Iran and the US are going to draw some reflexive support over this. Neither has a particularly happy record to draw on; Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib all demonstrated that the US intelligence agencies have a flagrant lack of respect for the citizens of other countries, while Iran’s actions over the last thirty years – including their response to the post-electoral discontent last year – show that Iran is unafraid to abuse its own populace. Worst-case scenarios for both parties have to be recognised as being plausible.

However, there are several factors that suggest to me that the US is more likely to be culpable than Iran. Firstly, there are a few things we know for a fact. Amiri was a guest of the CIA; that much is clear. He was dropped off at the Iranian section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington by a CIA car (as reported by Al Jazeera), and the Washington Post today states that the video of him that popped up on the internet last month was produced by a CIA film unit (more info here). One way or another, the CIA allowed him to return to Iran. How you chose to interpret that is another question, but I’ll get to that.

Furthermore, we know that Amiri had no contact with his wife while he was in America. She started to campaign for his freedom a long way before the Iranian government caught on.

We know that Iran claims to have proof that the CIA abducted Amiri, and have shown it to the Swiss consulate in Tehran. Coincidentally, Amiri’s release occurred within days of Tehran announcing that they had this proof.

So those are the things we know. On top of that we have interpretation and supposition. The timing of Iran’s declaration of proof and the CIA’s abrupt release of Amiri suggests that the CIA didn’t want that proof in the public domain; more likely than not, because it would compromise ongoing intelligence efforts. Further, while it’s fairly clear that Amiri was neither “imprisoned” (in the dramatic, shackles-and-legirons sense) nor extensively tortured (although some measure of harsh interrogation seems likely), the fact that he has had no contact with his family in Iran does strongly suggest that his silence was coerced. Finally, the fact that he has been a guest of the CIA at all strongly suggests that they are not giving him up willingly.

Finally, you suggest that it’s possible that Iran was using Amiri’s family as a way of extorting compliance from him. Sadly, this is unlikely. Defectors tend not to return to Iran because the government in Tehran has a miserable record when it comes to keeping its promises. As a defector returning to Iran, he would be delivering his family and himself to a far worse fate than if he simply stayed away. He would know that, his family would know it, and the CIA would certainly know it.

So, yes; there’s a bit of thumb-sucking and a very liberal application of occam’s razor to my reasoning. I do feel that the evidence points towards CIA culpability more than Iranian, however.