Brontides

That’s Shahram Amiri.

Mr. Amiri is an Iranian who vanished while on hajj in 2009. What happened to him is a mystery. A video released by the Iranian government in June suggested that he was an Iranian nuclear scientist, that he had been kidnapped by the CIA and tortured, and that he was being held within the US against his will. In a concurrent video, a person who appears to be the same man explains that he wasn’t kidnapped – he moved to the US of his own volition, to complete his PhD. Further muddying the waters was this ABC report, which cited unnamed CIA officials, and which claimed that Amiri is a nuclear scientist, but that he defected to the CIA of his own free will.

That’s the straightforward bit.

Yesterday morning, both the Pakistani and Iranian governments claimed that he had taken refuge in Pakistan’s Washington embassy – which serves Iran’s interests in America in the absence of its own diplomatic mission – and was trying to get home. America flatly denied the claim, however, and Wired’s Danger Room blog has a repudiation from a spokesperson at the Pakistani embassy.

But a Pakistani embassy official tells Danger Room that the reports of Amiri turning up in the embassy are ”incorrect information” and “we have no one here” matching his description. That’s from an individual at the press office who didn’t identify herself and said she could not speak for the record. She added she couldn’t explain why a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in Islamabad told reporters that the scientist is at the embassy’s Iranian interest section, about two miles away from the main facility in D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood. But she also didn’t split hairs: “He’s not in the embassy at all.”

That said, the Iranian interest section is staffed by Iranians, not Pakistanis. A spokesman for the Iranian interest section, Ali Shahrazi, tells Danger Room, “When we arrived this morning, [Amiri] was here.” He dodged a question about whether the Pakistanis assisted in Amiri’s alleged arrival, saying that it was the job of Iranian staff to help Iranian nationals. But there are lots of questions remaining about Amiri’s true identity, to say nothing of his whereabouts.

What to make of this? Firstly, if you think that the CIA isn’t trying to abduct Iranian scientists and hold them against their will then you’re out of your mind. The only question is, would they do so so badly? If true, this shows a frightening lack of finesse, not least in allowing the captured scientist the liberty to broadcast his unexpurgated thoughts onto YouTube, and then permitting him to wander into Pakistan’s embassy unimpeded. Also, the still above – of Amiri’s pro-Merican-version video – is so obviously staged it hurts. The chess set? The globe, artfully set to show America on its visible face? The warm, structured lighting rig (note how the light illuminates Amiri on the face, despite the low, mood-lighting behind)? C’mon, you can almost see the camera crew and military escort just offstage.

On the other hand, this could quite easily be an Iranian stitch-up, although it would be hard to see the benefit to Iran to escalate the story to the level that it has unless it had something worth revealing.

One thing is for sure, though, and that is that you couldn’t pay me enough money to be an Iranian nuclear scientist. Wherever he is right now, I’m quite sure that Mr Amiri is wishing for nothing more than a quiet life.

EDIT: Looks like answers may be forthcoming, as he’s on his way home.