Opinion: US Sends Iranian Home, Iran Keeps Americans Locked Up

(July 14) -- This seems to be spy season in Washington.

First, a dozen Russians and now a purported Iranian nuclear defector are on their way home. At least Russia released some Russians alleged to have spied for the U.S. in return.

Iran, on the other hand, so far isn't returning the favor by releasing three American hikers held there for nearly a year without charge.

The circumstances surrounding Iranian Shahram Amiri are admittedly murky.

Iranian officials allege that the CIA and Saudi intelligence snatched Amiri while he was on a religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in June 2009. The U.S. says he came of his own free will.

According to Iranian press reports, Amiri, 32, was a researcher on radioactive isotopes at Malek-Ashtar University of Technology in Tehran. U.S. press reports say Amiri may have worked at a uranium enrichment plant under construction in a mountain near Qom -- a plant whose existence was revealed by President Barack Obama in September.

U.S. intelligence has long sought to recruit Iranians with knowledge of their country's nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes, but which can also give Iran the ability to make bombs.

In recent weeks, three videos of Amiri that told wildly different tales about him have surfaced. In two, he claimed he was being held against his will and had even been tortured, while in a third, he said he was here to pursue higher education.

On Monday night, he turned up at the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, D.C. -- an office that provides legal documents for Iranian-Americans and visas to others seeking to travel to Iran. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that Amiri "was scheduled to travel to Iran yesterday, but was unable to make all the necessary arrangements to reach Iran through transit countries."

"Mr. Amiri has been in the United States of his own free will and he is free to go," Clinton said. "In contrast, Iran continues to hold three young Americans against their will, and we reiterate our request that they be released and allowed to return to their families on a humanitarian basis.''

Iranian security forces arrested the three -- Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal -- while they were hiking in Iraq's Kurdistan region. The Iranians say the three crossed the border illegally into Iran, but there have also been reports that Iranian officials went into Iraq to snatch them.

Iran has yet to charge the three with any crime. It permitted the mothers of the Americans to visit them in Tehran's Evin prison in May, raising hopes that they might soon be freed. However, Iranian officials have also demanded the release of a half dozen Iranian nationals in U.S. jails convicted of crimes including trying to smuggle sensitive U.S. technology to Iran.

The three Americans clearly want to go home. Amiri's motives for wanting to return are less clear. Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that it is not unusual for defectors to have second thoughts. Governments can put pressure on defectors' families and threaten them if they do not urge defectors to return, Clawson said. It is possible that Amiri felt alone and alienated.

Kenneth Pollack, a CIA veteran and director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said it is likely that U.S. intelligence has already gotten whatever it could from Amiri. "With most defectors, you get 90 to 99 percent of what they have to offer in the first go-round," he said.

A U.S. official familiar with the case who spoke on condition he not be named told AOL News that Amiri "may well be feeling some pressure from back home. The Iranians aren't beyond using family to influence people. That could be one explanation for his contradictory messages. That said, he's decided of his own volition to go back, and the U.S. won't stop him. He's been a free man here, and that includes the freedom to make his own choices. The choice to come this country, and who he brought with him, were his."

Alas, the same cannot be said for the Americans who have become pawns in the long and undeclared intelligence war between the U.S. and Iran.

Iran has held the three for far too long and it is time to let them come home.

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