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Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri is back home with his family – and likely undergoing some friendly questioning about the strange story of his defection to the United States. If “defection” in fact is what it was, because the story just keeps getting stranger.

Reports Sunday paint a murky picture: That the CIA now thinks Amiri may have been a double agent; That the US wanted to swap him for three US hikers in custody in Tehran, who in fact were spies themselves; That Amiri had been a US informant for several years before he left Iran; That he was one of two US spies spirited out of Iran when the CIA feared their cover was about to be blown.

The British newspaper the Sunday Telegraph reports that the CIA suspects that Amiri was a double agent, sent here to find out how much the US knows about Iran’s nuclear program.

Why else would he have been allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia, given his knowledge of secret information back home and given that he left his young family behind? And why, then, are US officials revealing so much about the case – including the $5 million Amiri was offered to defect?

“It might look as if the CIA is taking revenge on Amiri for returning to Iran and that by telling the US media about his cooperation and long record as an agent they are simply signing his death warrant and ensuring that the Iranian authorities would eventually execute him,” a CIA analyst “with direct knowledge of the case” told t... >>>