Return to Iran for missing nuclear scientist

Shahram Amiri, who turned up in Pakistan's embassy in Washington on Monday after being missing for more than a year, was flying home via Qatar.

Iran has claimed Amiri, who disappeared three days into the annual haj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June 2009, was abducted by American agents.

The US denies the claim and unnamed security officials were last year quoted in reports claiming he had defected.

It came after Iran lodged a formal protest with the United Nations and it was claimed the defection formed part of a long-term CIA operation to target senior scientists.

Amiri's case could embarrass American efforts to gather intelligence on Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons programme.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday: "Mr. Amiri has been in the United States of his own free will and he is free to go."

While Iran has painted the entire episode as an abduction, Amiri's disappearance last year fuelled reports he was providing information on Iran's nuclear programme.

The United States and its allies accuse Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon, a claim Iran denies, saying its programme is for peaceful purposes.

His return and a bizarre string of videos by him that emerged over the past month raised the question of what went wrong. In one that seemed to be made in an internet cafe and was aired on Iranian TV, he claimed US and Saudi "terror and kidnap teams" snatched him. In another, professionally produced, he said he was happily studying for a doctorate in the United States. In a third, shaky piece of footage, Amiri claimed to have escaped from US agents and insisted the second video was "a complete lie" the Americans put out.

In an interview reported by Iranian television he claimed he was kidnapped in Saudi Arabia by three men in a van and later drugged and flown to America where he has been held in limbo, neither free nor a prisoner. He also promised to reveal all when he could speak freely once back in in his homeland.

"I expect they got to his family," said Clare Lopez, senior fellow at the Centre for Security Policy and a former operations officer for the CIA. "Now he'll go back and save them."

Amiri called home this year because he missed his wife and son in Iran and that his son had been threatened with harm.

One US security official said Amiri, 32, "left his family behind, that was his choice",

Whatever the reason for his disappearance, important questions remain about what of value, if anything, Amiri could have shared with American intelligence about the Iranian nuclear programme.

Before he disappeared, Amiri worked at Tehran's Malek Ashtar

University, an institution closely connected to the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard and Iran's nuclear research programme.

Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said he expects Iran to reap propaganda value from Amiri's return if he appears on TV to claim that he was kidnapped.

"What will happen now, however, is that the Iranians will score propaganda points, they will be able to televise a confession that may be more fiction than reality, but which regardless the CIA will have trouble refuting," Rubin said.

Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi told state TV that Iran will pursue the case of Amiri's abduction through legal means.