Report: Iranian technocrats offer US intelligence on nukes

WASHINGTON - A growing number of Iranian officials are leaking significant information about Tehran's nuclear program to the West, US officials were quoted by the Washington Post as saying.

The report, published Sunday, quotes western officials as saying that some of the most significant new material has come from informants, including scientists and others with access to Iran's military programs, who are motivated by antipathy toward the government and its suppression of the opposition movement after the disputed June 12 presidential elections.

"There is a wealth of information-sharing going on, and it reflects enormous discontent among Iranian technocrats," a former US government official who until recently was privy to classified reports about intelligence-gathering inside Iran told the Washington Post. He said that among senior technocrats in the nuclear program and other fields, "the morale is very low."

According to the Washington Post, the new information has "complicated work" on a long-awaited assessment of Iran's nuclear program. The report, said the newspaper, will represent the combined judgment of more than a dozen US spy agencies.

"The National Intelligence Estimate was due last fall but has been postponed at least twice amid efforts to incorporate information from sources who are still being vetted," the report said.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that the delay in the completion of the NIE "has to do with the information coming in and the pace of developments."

'Tehran unnerved by the defections'

Sources told the Washington Post that there has been a wave of defections from Iran by diplomatic and military officials, some of which have not been made public. Among the defectors, the report said, was a top diplomat at the Iranian mission in Oslo, who said he was pressured to falsify election returns for Iranian nationals who had cast votes at the embassy.

The Iranian diplomat who defected, Mohammed Reza Heydari, told the Washington Post in a telephone interview from Norway that he represents thousands of young, educated Iranians who are increasingly discouraged by developments in their country.

"I personally had a good situation, both in Iran and as a diplomat, but my conscience would no longer allow me to work for the regime," Heydari told the newspaper. "I was upset that the regime was repressing and killing people, simply for asking the question 'Where is my vote?' "

According to the report, in recent weeks US officials have acknowledged that Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, 32, defected to the West in June. Amiri, who vanished while on a religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, has provided spy agencies with details about sensitive programs, including a long-hidden uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Qom, intelligence officials and Europe-based diplomats said.

The Washington Post said the departures of Amiri and others have given new momentum to a "brain drain" program set up by the CIA in recent years as part of a broader effort to slow Iran's nuclear progress by sabotaging equipment being shipped into the Islamic Republic and enticing leading scientists to defect.

According to the report, some observers say the government in Tehran has been unnerved by the defections and point to the death of Iranian physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi more than three months ago as a sign that it has begun a crackdown designed to frighten would-be spies.

Mohammadi was killed January 12 when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded as he passed nearby.