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When nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri returned home in July from the United States, Iran feted him as a national hero and said he in fact acted as a double agent and provided valuable information about the CIA. American authorities claimed Amiri willingly defected to the U.S. but changed his mind and decided to return home without the $5 million he had been paid for what a U.S. official described as significant information about his country's disputed nuclear program. Iran said he was kidnapped by American agents in May 2009 while on a pilgrimage to holy Muslim sites in Saudi Arabia. Upon Amiri's return, Tehran portrayed the affair as an intelligence battle with the CIA that it asserted it had won. More recently, nuclear intrigue has fallen on a complex computer worm that has swept through industrial sites in Iran and was also found on the personal laptops of several employees at Iran's first nuclear power plant. The malicious computer code, known as Stuxnet, was designed to take over industrial sites like Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant and has also emerged in India, Indonesia and the U.S. But it has spread the most in Iran. On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iran believed the computer worm was part of a Western plot to sabotage its nuclear program. Who created the Stuxnet code and what its precise target is, if any, remains a mystery. The web security firm Symantec Corp. has said Stuxnet was likely spawned by a government or a well-funded private group. It was apparently constructed by a small team of as many as five to 10 highly educated and well-funded hackers, Symantec says. As Iran battled the computer worm over recent weeks, the intelligence minister announced authorities had arrested two nuclear spies. He did not, however, reveal their identities or clearly link them to the Stuxnet problem.
[Associated
Press;
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