Report: Iran captured spy who gathered intel on Qom nuke site

Iran captured two months ago a spy from a Western intelligence agency who gathered information on the Islamic Republic's newly disclosed uranium enrichment site at Qom, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.

However, Tehran has not officially announced the arrest of any agent on its territory. In previous cases, Iran has rushed to boast about the capture of real or fictitious spies working for Western intelligence agencies. In this case, as reported by Channel 2's Udi Segel, the Islamic Republic has not only not announced such an arrest, but there has also been no corroboration from any other news outlet.

Furthermore, the uranium enrichment site at the holy city was revealed almost three months ago, and if this spy did indeed bring about Iran's disclosure of the facility, this would have already have been published. Security services usually prefer to immediately prevent the release of news of spies' arrests, in order to catch their partners during questioning. Three months is a long and unreasonable period of time for such as process.

Following the disclosure of the site at Qom, estimates were already published that there was an "intelligence leak" from the West to Iran. This enabled Iran to know that the United States, and also perhaps other Western nations, knew about the existence of the facility and were about to reveal it in order to embarrass the Islamic Republic. As such, Tehran hurried to announce of its own accord the site's existence to the United Nation's nuclear watchdog. It was also believed that the Iranians suspected a Western spy of having leaked the secret.

Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, disappeared six months ago while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Iran has demanded information on his whereabouts from Saudi Arabia, and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has accused Saudi Arabia of transferring the scientist to U.S. intelligence officials.

The Iranian scientist had worked at the nuclear facility at Qom that Tehran recently revealed to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency.

Along with tensions over Iran's nuclear program, there have been several cases of possible espionage that have affected Iran's relations with the West, especially the U.S. Iran has threatened to put on trial three American students who claim to have accidentally crossed into Iran while traveling in Iraq.

Their possible trial is seen by some as a response to the sentencing on Monday in the U.S. of Amir Hossein Ardebili. Ardebili, an Iranian arms trafficker, was sentenced to five years in prison after being nabbed in a global undercover investigation.