In the televised confession, Amir Mirzai-Hekmati, 28, says he served in US military intelligence and then was recruited by the CIA and dispatched to Iran as an agent to infiltrate Iranian intelligence.
But his father, Ali Hekmati, who teaches biology at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan, said his son was in the Marines, where he served as an Arabic translator for troops in Iraq. The father said his son was never in US intelligence. “He is not a spy. It’s a whole bunch of lies,” he told The Associated Press in an interview.
The CIA is understood to have long recruited Iranian-Americans. That makes the Iranian charge plausible.
The problem comes with the telecast confession, in which Hekmati gives laughable descriptions of his activities as a spy and outlines non-existent US policies that just happen to correspond to the official line of Iranian state propaganda.
For example, Hekmati says United States plotted to “bankrupt” the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by taking control of Iraq’s oil wells. He also said Washington was seeking to force oil to be traded in US dollars so that US power would exceed that of Russia and China.
The elder Hekmati said his son went to Tehran in September to visit his grandmothers there. The father said all went well for the first two weeks. Then he was suddenly arrested and the family heard nothing for three months until his confession was televised.
The televised confession has some major problems. Much of the information is conveyed by announcers and by a voice purporting to translate Hekmati’s comments from English.
There are other problems. At one point, the announcer says Iran has agents inside the US Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where Hekmati was based and thus knew what was going on even before Hekmati flew to Tehran. But at the end of the program, the announcer says that skilled Iranian intelligence analysts in Tehran who interviewed Hekmati when he came to Iran pretending to want to spy for Iran uncovered his deception and exposed him.
The announcer also tells the audience in Farsi that Hekmati joined the US military as an intelligence person from the very beginning. But then the video carries a statement in English from Hekmati saying he joined the Marine Corps as an infantryman.
Hekmati says that when the Marines learned he knew some Arabic they wanted to send him off to college to perfect his language skill. The announcer then says, “Hekmati was now turned into an intelligence analyst.” But Hekmati’s father says he was given Arabic language training and sent off to Iraq to serve as a translator for Marine units.
Extensive excerpts from the television program will be found on page six.
The State Department said Monday that it had asked Iran to allow Swiss diplomats, who represent the United Stats in Tehran, to visit Hekmati and had also asked for Hekmati’s swift release. The State Department, however, did not deny that Hekmati was a spy as it repeatedly denied that the American hikers held captive for more than two years in Tehran were spies. But the State Department pointed out that Iran has a long history of arresting dual nationals and broadcasting extracted confessions that the dual nationals later deny on release.
The television broadcast said Hekmati was hired to pose as a double agent. It said he was sent to Tehran to give information—some true and some false—to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry in hopes that he would then be hired to spy on the United States and would be able to “mislead the Iranian intelligence service.”
Hekmati was born in Arizona. The family later moved to Michigan where he graduated from Central High School in Flint and joined the Marines after graduation.
The regime has been having a propaganda field day with the Hekmati allegations. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast boasted that the Hekmati arrest proved that any US effort to spy on Iran would end with complete humiliation for the United States.
Back in May, Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi announced the arrests of 30 American spies. He said many of them had confessed and their videotaped confessions would soon be broadcast on nationwide television. That was seven months ago. None of those alleged confessions have yet been broadcast. Last week, just days before Hekmati appeared on television, the Tehran prosecutor said 15 people would soon be tried for spying for the US and Israel.
Over the years, the Islamic Republic has arrested several Iranian-Americans and accused them of being spies. A few, like Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-Japanese-American, were actually tried and convicted. Most were never tried. All were eventually released.
There have also been many announcements like the one in May of American spy networks being broken. But nothing is ever heard of them again.
The last instance of a person being accused of espionage, tried and executed dates back three years.
Ali Ashtari was hanged November 17, 2008, for spying on behalf of Israel. His trial was open to the media, a rare event.
Ashtari confessed to espionage, although confessions are not really a high standard of proof in the Islamic Republic. But Ashtari provided extensive details and the government showed off equipment it said Ashtari had been provided by Israel.
Ashtari sold telecommunications equipment, with some sales to Iran’s military services and to the nuclear program. Ashtari said Mossad gave him equipment it wanted him to provide to those programs. The equipment had small radios hidden inside so Mossad could listen in.
The state news agency quoted the unnamed head of counterintelligence as saying Ashtari’s crimes were so massive that all levels of the Judiciary endorsed the death sentence during the sentence review period.
Those comments, the sophistication of the equipment displayed in court and the length of Ashtari’s espionage work (three years) all suggested that Ashtari’s work was very damaging to the Iranian programs he tapped into. But the government said not a word about the damage done.
