When he arrived in Jeddah in June 2009, Shahram Amiri was just one of the thousands of Iranians who fly to Saudi Arabia each month for out of season pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam’s holiest site. However, the fact that special agents from Prince Miqrin bin Abdul-Aziz’s security services were assigned to keep a close watch on him indicated that the 32 year old, described in his passport as “university researcher,” might be something more than a simple pilgrim.

According to Saudi sources, Prince Miqrin’s men had two reasons to shadow Amiri’s every move. First, they wanted to make sure he was up to no mischief while in the kingdom and, second, they had been asked by their CIA partners to make sure that Amiri had no contact with Iranian agents in Saudi Arabia.

Amiri had a simple schedule: visit the holy sites in Mecca and Medina, where the prophet is buried, meet in his hotel a man who would stamp his passport with an American visa and board a Saudi jet flying to New York via London.

While almost everyone agrees on that prologue, what actually followed has become the subject of conflicting narratives.

Amiri, who returned to Tehran on Wednesday, with a stopover in Doha, Qatar, after almost 14 months in the United States, claims that he had been given an anaesthetics injection by “CIA and Zionist agents” and forced into a plane bound for New York.

The Saudis say they saw him board the plane free and happy. The Americans add that he came to them as a defector and provided “invaluable information” about the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear project in exchange for $5 million deposited to his bank account.

Even the actual status of the man is a matter of dispute.

When he first disappeared in Saudi Arabia, the Iranian authorities descried Amiri as a nuclear scientist who had been “kidnapped by the CIA with Saudi help.” Now that he is back in Tehran, the official Iranian media describe Amiri as “ a simple university lecturer” with no connection whatsoever to the nuclear project.

Americans, however, insist that Amiri is a nuclear scientist and decided to return to Tehran only after the Islamic authorities threatened to harm his wife and 7-year-old son.

Both Amiri’s version and the one fed to the media by the CIA appear to be full of holes.

Since his “disappearance,” Amiri has spoken of his experience on three occasions.

The first was through a video put on YouTube in February, in which he tried to reassure his family and friends that he was free and well and trying to obtain a Ph.D. from the University of Tucson in Arizona, where he had settled after a brief stay in Phoenix.

The next occasion came in June through a second video, also published on YouTube, in which Amiri claimed that he had been kidnapped and subjected to debriefing. In another video, posted the same day, he seemed to contradict those claims. But soon after, Amiri managed to travel to Washington, DC, and seek admission to the Pakistani Embassy. (In the absence of relations between Iran and the US, Pakistan represents Iranian interests here.)

That tape was then used by Iranian state television as part of a program in which the US was blamed for kidnapping Amiri and torturing and holding him against his will.

The third appearance came last Wednesday when, talking to a handful of reporters at Tehran’s airport, Amiri claimed that the CIA had offered him $10 million for a 10-minute appearance on CNN, in which he would admit that he was a defector and that Iran was, indeed, building nuclear weapons. Once again, Amiri insisted that he was “an ordinary man” with absolutely no knowledge of Iran’s nuclear project.

Amiri also claimed that the CIA had offered him $50 million plus a new identity and full protection for life in an unnamed European country.

Well, Amiri might not be the big fish that the CIA claims, but he is certainly not “an ordinary man” as he says. The official brochure of the Malek-Ashtar Industrial University (MAIU) in Tehran for 2007 describes him as “Director of Research” without any further explanation.

The MAIU is financed and run by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Defense and is one of the top Iranian academic and scientific organizations just put on the sanctions list by the United Nations’ Security Council. The university’s brochure describes it as a “centre for industrial-military research and development.” The MAIU is also one of five academic groups chosen to design the 10 new locations designated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as centers for producing enriched uranium, the basic material needed for making nuclear warheads. The MAIU has already participated in designing the first such locations at Fordo, a mountain redoubt southwest of Tehran. Was it sheer coincidence that President Obama revealed Fordo’s hitherto secret existence just weeks after Amiri had arrived in the US?

Also puzzling is the fact that Amiri was a member of an Iranian delegation attending a scientific seminar on nuclear energy in Frankfurt, Germany, in January 2007. A year earlier, he had briefly served as advisor to the Iranian delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

It is possible that Amiri, who says he was doing research into radioisotopes for medical purposes, was not working on the nuclear project itself. However, he could not have worked at MAIU, where dozens of Iranian nuclear scientists work, and remained with “absolutely no knowledge” of the nuclear project.

Amiri’s conflicting account of his kidnappings reads like part of a bad thriller.

At first he claimed that he had been “injected with anaesthetics” in front of his hotel in Medina.

However, the hotel where he stayed is located in one of the busiest parts of the holy city. The kind of operation he talks of would have been seen by thousands of people.

Later, Amiri claimed that he had been “injected” on the aircraft that was flying him to London.

In that case, he would need to explain why he had boarded the plane in the first place when he was supposed to fly back to Tehran aboard Iran Air?

Amiri’s claim about being debriefed by “Zionists” is manifestly designed to play to the anti-Semitic chord of President Ahmadinejad. Why would the Americans let Israelis attend such debriefings? And even if they did, how would Amiri know that some of the interrogators were Israelis?

Amiri’s claim about being tortured is equally open to question. Back in Tehran he appeared to be in good shape, apart from the fact that he seemed to have gained at least 20 pounds.

Hassan Qashqawi, the Islamic Republic’s deputy foreign minister who welcomed Amiri at the airport, expressed his happiness at the fact that “our scientist is in perfect health.”

Amiri’s claim about being offered vast sums of money before managing to shake off his “round-the-clock” surveillance is even more naive. Everyone knows that the CIA is not as effective as it claims in order to secure its astronomical budget. However, it is hard to believe that Amiri could escape from Tucson to Washington and go straight to the building that once housed the Iranian Embassy without his minders finding out. In any case, Amiri’s first video appeared three months before he went to Washington. It is unlikely that his CIA minders did not see the tape.

The CIA’s version, leaked through the US media, is equally open to question. According to this version, the CIA deposited $5 million to Amiri’s bank account but adds that the Iranian is no longer able to access the funds.

Under a 1949 act of Congress, the CIA is allowed to bring up to 100 foreign nationals to the US outside the regular immigration rules. It is possible that Amiri was brought in under that act. In that case, the CIA cannot claim that Amiri just walked into the US Consulate in Jeddah and offered to defect.

For the 1949 act to apply to Amiri, the CIA must have completed a series of procedures that take several weeks. In other words, Amiri and the CIA must have been in contact some time before the encounter in Saudi Arabia.

The CIA version also states that Amiri provided “original and significant information” without offering any details. In that case, why was he not given more incentives to stay in the US? And why was he not watched more effectively to prevent him from escaping if he did not want to stay?

The US media also quote un-named CIA sources as claiming that Amiri had spied for them “inside Iran for many years” before asking to leave the country. That claim is hard to believe, since Amiri joined the MAIU only in 2007.

The Islamic Republic’s official reaction to Amiri’s sudden reappearance in Tehran is also problematic. Manuchehr Mottaki, Iran’s foreign minister, has expressed doubts about Amiri’s version of events. Speaking at a press conference in Portugal on Thursday, Mottaki said he was not sure that Amiri was a hero because the alleged defector’s narrative had not been fully checked. “We are not sure that what he says is true,” the minister said.

Since his return to Tehran, Amiri has disappeared again. According to Amiri’s friends, agents from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security answer his home telephone number.

Is a third version of the Amiri saga possible? The answer must be a cautious yes.

It is clear that the CIA has been pursuing a program designed to entice elements from within the sensitive sections of the Khomeinist regime to defect.

According to some accounts, the program, code-named “Brain Drain,” enjoys the support of several allies, notably Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. What is certain is that a dozen or so figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have already defected and are living in the United States.

One of Amiri’s former colleagues, speaking on condition of anonymity, claims that the young scientist met and made friends with a German researcher in Frankfurt in 2007. Amiri expressed the regret that he could not fulfill his dream of obtaining a Ph.D. in a Western country by enrolling in a German university because of language difficulties. The German friend, later identified as an intelligence agent, suggested that Amiri, who was fluent in English, should go to the US.

Here, accounts diverge again.

One version is that Amiri exaggerated his importance in order to speed up the process of securing a US visa. He also insisted on obtaining a promise that, once he had left for the US, the Americans would arrange for his wife and son to obtain a US visa in Dubai and fly to Washington. It seems that once Amiri’s “disappearance” had been signaled to Tehran, the Khomeinist authorities prevented his wife and son from going to Dubai.

It appears that Amiri did give the Americans some useful information, including the confirmation of satellite data about the Fordo site.

But the Americans soon realized that Amiri was not the big fish that their German partners had initially claimed.

By the start of 2010, American interest in Amiri had been diminished. Thus, he was left to his own devices, jettisoned by his controllers but free to pursue his studies in Arizona.

Over time, Amiri’s courage was eroded by fears that Iranian agents might assassinate him in the US and blame “the Zionists” while his wife and son remained virtual prisoners in the Islamic Republic.

By February he had decided to return to Iran but wanted to test the waters first. When there was no American reaction to his first video message, he decided to move out of Tucson. He spent a few days in Phoenix, where again, to his surprise, there was no American reaction.

According to former colleagues, he then flew to Milwaukee to visit a relative. Again there was no American reaction. Now, certain that the Americans no longer watched him, Amiri moved to Washington, DC, where he stayed in a hotel for more than a week before walking to the building of the former Iranian Embassy.

A year ago, the Americans wanted to make sure that Amiri was not a plant by Tehran, sent to feed them false information about Iran’s nuclear project. Now the Iranians want to make sure that Amiri is not an American agent ordered to return home to persuade other, perhaps bigger fish to consider the advantages of the “ Brain Drain” project. His talk of big money promised by the Americans might well tempt some into having a look at what is on offer.

Whatever the full truth of the Amiri saga, one thing is clear: This is one minor episode in a war that started some 31 years ago when Khomeinist agents raided and occupied the US Embassy in Tehran.

Amir Taheri is the author of “The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution” (Encounter).

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