Ex-CIA agent detained over ’Iran leak’

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Jeffrey Alexander Sterling in the city of St. Louis on Thursday for disclosing national defense information to a New York Times reporter.

Details in Sterling’s indictment suggest that the case is connected to a 2006 book written by the daily’s reporter James Risen. The book, Sate of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration contains details about the spy agency’s plans to sabotage Iran’s nuclear research program.

According to Risen, in an operation codenamed “Merlin” the United States attempted to provide Iran with flawed blueprints for key nuclear components through a Russian nuclear scientist.

However, the scientist allegedly double-crossed, cooperating with the Iranian side in revealing the flaws in the designs. The Iranians were able to “extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws,” the book adds.

Iranian observers, however, scoff at the report, emphasizing that the Iranian scientist do not need others to point out design flaws and that they are competent enough to detect potential flaws on their own.

Sterling, who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993 until he was fired in 2002, had served as the chief operations officer handling a “human asset” in a program related to the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country, said the indictment charges.

The United States, as the only country to have used a nuclear weapon on another state, adamantly opposes Iran’s nuclear program, claiming without any evidence that it harbors a secret military aspect.

Tehran has refuted the accusations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has the right to benefit from the peaceful applications of the nuclear technology.

As a member of the NPT, Iran has long pushed efforts to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, insisting on a global elimination of nuclear weapons