Iran denies that returned citizen is nuclear scientist

Iran says the man at the center of a murky intelligence caper -- stretching from the deserts of Saudi Arabia to the strip malls of Tucson to the diplomatic outposts of Washington and back to Tehran -- is a nobody, a simple researcher with no special knowledge of the country's nuclear program.

Shahram Amiri, whose plane landed in Tehran on Thursday, had been described by Iranians up until now as a radio isotope scientist employed by the nation's Atomic Energy Organization, as well as an affiliate of an elite university that turns out specialists for the Revolutionary Guard. In a report Thursday, the Washington Post cited unnamed U.S. officials as saying Amiri had been paid $5 million for defecting and cooperating with American intelligence.

But Hassan Qashqavi, a deputy foreign minister appearing alongside Amiri at a press briefing this morning, insisted that Amiri knew nothing about Iran's nuclear program.

"We deny that Amiri is a nuclear scientist," said Qashqavi. "Amiri is a researcher at one of Iran's universities."

In appearances Thursday on the Al Jazeera news channel and Iranian state television, Amiri insisted that he had been kidnapped, psychologically tortured and grilled for information in an attempt to forge intelligence against Iran.

"I can say for sure that I was kidnapped by the CIA with the assistance of Saudi Arabia, and this is definitely what happened," he told Al Jazeera. "Over 14 months, I was subjected to several kinds of pressure inside America."

He added that he did not have "any expertise in any nuclear domain or anything else pertinent to the military nuclear domain."

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