Theunis Bates Contributor
AOL News
(March 31) -- The CIA has persuaded an Iranian nuclear scientist to defect to the U.S., ABC News reported Tuesday, scoring a major intelligence coup in its ongoing operation to thwart the country's nuclear ambitions.
Shahram Amiri -- an expert in radioactive isotopes at Tehran's Malek Ashtar University, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard -- mysteriously vanished in June, just three day after arriving in Mecca for the annual Haj pilgrimage. News of his disappearance was only made public in the fall, when Iran accused the U.S. of kidnapping the researcher (believed to be in his early 30s) with the help of Saudi intelligence.
presstv.ir
Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, here in an undated image, disappeared from Iran in June and is now living in the United States, sources told ABC News.
However, unnamed officials briefed by the CIA told ABC that Amiri willingly switched sides and has since resettled in the U.S. -- leaving his wife and family behind in Iran. The source added that his disappearance was part of a long-running CIA operation to win over the scientist, and that the agency first made contact with him through an intermediary in Iran.
The timing of Amiri's defection has raised speculation that the physicist may have provided the U.S. with vital information on the secret construction of a second uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom. Iran revealed the existence of that facility to the International Atomic Energy Agency in September, a few days before President Barack Obama announced that the U.S., the U.K. and France had evidence the regime had been building a "covert uranium enrichment" plant for several years.
The Times of London noted that Western intelligence agencies believe Tehran was forced to come clean about the facility as they knew its secrecy had been compromised. At least one Iranian Web site, said ABC, claimed Amiri worked at the Qom site before his defection.
Exactly how much Amiri knew about the wider nuclear program is not clear. Security experts caution that the regime keeps scientists in the dark about much of the operation, so that no single researcher or official can derail the program should they defect. However, turncoats can still offer valuable insights into individual nuclear projects.
The CIA's campaign to lure key figures away from the regime has been running for at least two decades but was stepped up in 2005 with the launch of operation "Brain Drain." A former agent told the L.A. Times in 2007 that the agency was targeting dozens of potential defectors based on a single criterion: "Who, if removed from the program, would have the biggest impact on slowing or stopping their progress?" That would suggest that Amiri was an important figure, worthy of the agency's attention.
To date, the most senior Iranian official believed to have changed sides is Ali Reza Asghari -- a former brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guard and the most senior military officer overseeing the nuclear program -- who disappeared while on a trip to Turkey in 2007. The London Times says that his name appeared alongside Amiri's on a list of kidnapping victims passed by Tehran to the U.N. late last year.
And the West isn't just targeting Iran's human resources. Julian Borger, the Guardian's diplomatic editor, says a U.S. official hinted to him that the U.S. has deliberately seeded malfunctioning nuclear centrifuge parts across the global black market. That strategy, he said, explained why scientists at the Natanz refinement plant had struggled to enrich uranium as fast as Tehran wanted. http://www.aolnews.com/nation/articl...or-us/19421223
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
.. yes and c/sections.. actually a large number of the doctors I encounter in every hospital are Iranians .. it is unfortunate that many of them are either completely divorced from the religion or have a completely skewed sense of the religion.. i.e those who are observant are deranged shiites it makes me sad ..
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
Siding with the enemies of Muslims, does this not make one a murtad? Unfortunately, there are many traitor Iranians abroad who have left Islam completely.
Last edited by Argamemnon; 04-02-2010 at 05:42 PM.
It might be the Chinese year of the tiger, but scientifically, 2010 is looking like Iran's year.
Scientific output has grown 11 times faster in Iran than the world average, faster than any other country. A survey of the number of scientific publications listed in the Web of Science database shows that growth in the Middle East – mostly in Turkey and Iran – is nearly four times faster than the world average.
Science-Metrix, a data-analysis company in Montreal, Canada, has published a detailed report (PDF) on "geopolitical shifts in knowledge creation" since 1980. "Asia is catching up even more rapidly than previously thought, Europe is holding its position more than most would expect, and the Middle East is a region to watch," says the report's author, Eric Archambault.
World scientific output grew steadily, from 450,000 papers a year in 1980 to 1,500,000 in 2009. Asia as a whole surpassed North America last year. Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear
Archambaut notes that Iran's publications have emphasised inorganic and nuclear chemistry, nuclear and particle physics and nuclear engineering. Publications in nuclear engineering grew 250 times faster than the world average – although medical and agricultural research also increased.
Science-Metrix also predicts that this year, China will publish as many peer-reviewed papers in natural sciences and engineering as the US. If current trends continue, by 2015 China will match the US across all disciplines – although the US may publish more in the life and social sciences until 2030. China's prominence in world science is known to have been growing, but Science-Metrix has discovered that its output of peer-reviewed papers has been growing more than five times faster than that of the US. Euro-puddings
Meanwhile, "European attitudes towards collaboration are bearing fruit", writes Archambaut. While Asia's growth in output was mirrored by North America's fall, Europe, which invests heavily in cross-border scientific collaboration, held its own, and now produces over a third of the world's science, the largest regional share. Asia produces 29 per cent and North America 28 per cent.
Scientific output fell in the former Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991 and only began to recover in 2006. Latin America and the Caribbean together grew fastest of any region, although its share of world science is still small. Growth in Oceania, Europe and Africa has stayed at about the same rate over the past 30 years. Only North American scientific output has grown "considerably slower" than the world as a whole.
"The number of papers is a first-order metric that doesn't capture quality," admits Archambaut. There are measures for quality, such as the number of times papers are cited, and "Asian science does tend to be less cited overall".
But dismissing the Asian surge on this basis is risky, he feels. "In the 1960s, when Japanese cars started entering the US market, US manufacturers dismissed their advance based on their quality" – but then lost a massive market share to Japan. The important message, he says, is that "Asia is becoming the world leader in science, with North America progressively left behind".
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
As I said, the link didn't work for a while. The link given was to another forum, which linked to a new scientist post, which had the link to the report. I've given the direct link to the report in my post.
As I said, the link didn't work for a while. The link given was to another forum, which linked to a new scientist post, which had the link to the report. I've given the direct link to the report in my post.
There's nothing to contest, as none of seems to be news. Growth rates favour the small, and absolute numbers favour the large.
All the best,
Faysal
This concerns me how? You desired for your own purposes a link and it was provided you-- there is no further discussion as far as I am concerned least of which on two separate threads!
all the best
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
This concerns me how? You desired for your own purposes a link and it was provided you-- there is no further discussion as far as I am concerned least of which on two separate threads!
all the best
It didn't concern you. I didn't refer to you on this thread, and had you read what I wrote this wouldn't have been a conversation. You're free to comment as you like, and you seem to like, and I will clarify myself as and when I see fit.
It didn't concern you. I didn't refer to you on this thread, and had you read what I wrote this wouldn't have been a conversation. You're free to comment as you like, and you seem to like, and I will clarify myself as and when I see fit.
All the best,
Faysal
You did quote me on the other thread in reference to this one .. I am free to point out your pitfalls and shortcomings as pleases me.. da*n straight!
all the best
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
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Theunis Bates Contributor
presstv.ir
.. yes and c/sections.. actually a large number of the doctors I encounter in every hospital are Iranians .. it is unfortunate that many of them are either completely divorced from the religion or have a completely skewed sense of the religion.. i.e those who are observant are deranged shiites it makes me sad ..
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