A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Defector from Iranian Nuclear Program?

This story has been popping up for a couple of days in various Middle Eastern media and now I see the BBC has picked it up: supposedly an Iranian working for the nuclear program disappeared while on hajj this year in Saudi Arabia. The Iranians are claiming the US had something to do with it; one version I saw earlier said there were two Iranians missing. The BBC report names one. This has popped up in Al-Sharq al-Awsat and in Israeli papers as well.

I often don't comment on these sorts of things because if it's a defection I'm sure he's safely ensconced in a safe house somewhere and we won't get the full story for a good long time; if it's something other than a defection, we're even less likely to get reliable information. But given the interest in the Iranian nuclear program at the moment, it's always worth noting when these kinds of stories pop up.

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