Shahram Amiri, who arrived back in Iran early on Thursday, is not obligated to return the money but might not be able to access it after ending “significant cooperation” with the CIA and returning home, the newspaper reported.
“Anything he got is now beyond his reach, thanks to the financial sanctions on Iran,” a US official said. “He’s gone, but his money’s not. We have his information, and the Iranians have him.”
Amiri’s request this week to be sent home stunned US officials who said he had been working with the US intelligence agency for more than a year, the Post reported.
Amiri surfaced at the Iranian interests section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington on Monday after disappearing more than a year ago.
On his arrival back in Iran, Amiri repeated claims he was kidnapped and transferred to the United States, adding that he was offered $50 million to remain in America and “to spread lies” about Iran’s nuclear work.
The scientist also said Israeli agents were involved in interrogating him.
Asked why Amiri was going back, a US official said the Iranian authorities could have put pressure on his family back home.
But Amiri, holding his 7-year-old son at a news conference at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, said: “My family had no problems.”
Tehran and Washington have traded accusations over the murky saga which has underlined deep mistrust between the two nations.
“Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will to use me for revealing some false information about Iran’s nuclear work,” Amiri told reporters.
The mystery surrounding Amiri fueled speculation that he may have passed information about Iran’s nuclear program to US intelligence. ABC News reported in March that Amiri had defected and was helping the CIA.
“It is on Iran’s agenda to pursue this case,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to state television. “Details must be clarified.”
Wearing a beige suit, Amiri made victory signs as he hugged his tearful son and wife, who greeted him with other family members and a senior Foreign Ministry official, Hassan Qashqavi.
Amiri said he had no valuable intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program. “I am an ordinary researcher ... I have never made nuclear-related researches,” the scientist said.
A US official said on Wednesday the United States had obtained “useful” information from him.
Before his disappearance, Amiri worked at Iran’s Malek Ashtar University, an institution closely connected to the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards. Tehran initially refused to acknowledge Amiri’s involvement in Iran’s nuclear program.
Intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program is at a premium for the United States, which fears a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten its close ally, Israel, as well as oil supplies from the Gulf, and friendly nations in Europe. Iran insists its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.
