Posted on 06/14/2003 4:30:50 PM PDT by Pokey78
Iran is recruiting top Iraqi weapons scientists to join a dangerous brain drain from Baghdad as international concern grows about Teheran's clandestine arms programme.
The pro-Iranian Badr Brigade, an Iraqi Islamic militia, is helping scientists to travel through tribal areas north east of Baghdad and across the border for meetings with senior military and regime figures in Teheran, The Telegraph has learnt.
The Iranian regime is particularly seeking Iraqi specialists in solid missile propellants, a technology in which Baghdad was strong but Teheran weak. Iran wants to switch from liquid to solid fuels to improve the performance of its long-range Shahab missiles, which may soon be able to reach Europe.
Last week Iran barred United Nations inspectors from taking samples from a suspect nuclear plant, heightening fears that the regime is secretly preparing to make enriched uranium, the crucial raw material for nuclear weapons. Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, issued a warning that Iran was actively working to develop a bomb.
A senior Pentagon official who has just visited Baghdad privately confirmed that Iran headed a list of states - including Syria, Libya and possibly North Korea - which have approached some of Saddam Hussein's leading missile experts. Senior employees of Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission (MIC), the body that ran Baghdad's weapons programmes, have also told this newspaper that scientists are being recruited overseas.
There are particular fears over the intentions and whereabouts of Gen Mudh'her Sadeq Sabe'a, Saddam's chief missiles expert, and the man behind the al-Samoud missile that was proscribed by UN inspectors for exceeding the permitted 92-mile range.
Gen Mudh'her, who shares the same Shia Muslim faith as Teheran's ruling clerics, disappeared from Baghdad after the war. An Iraqi businessman with close links to the MIC said that the general was travelling between his home province of Diyala and Iran, under protection from the Badr Brigade. Former MIC associates predicted that several leading weapons scientists would take their expertise to Iran after falling victim to the clear-out of ruling Ba'ath Party officials ordered by the coalition.
"Do not be surprised when some of these people start turning up in Teheran," Brig Marouf al-Chalabi, the former director-general of the MIC, told The Telegraph.
"If the Americans do not find work for MIC's employees soon, and if they continue to rule out all of the Ba'athists, then many of our best scientists will leave. Some want to go to the West, but others will go to Iran."
Brig al-Chalabi, who insisted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme after 1991 during a lengthy interview last week, said that he did not know Gen Mudh'her's specific plans.
He also gave a warning that files and computer disks looted from his Baghdad research facility could be sold abroad.
The brigadier, who studied mechanical engineering in America and was honoured by Saddam for his work last year, said that he had previously been questioned extensively by UN inspectors, but had not been questioned by the Americans.
American officials confirmed that Iran and Syria are making lucrative financial offers to Iraqi scientists. One intelligence official said: "Some have gone, and others will go. We need to get a programme in place quickly to keep these people and their expertise in Iraq."
It does have the advantage of concentrating them inside one nice target circle...
--Boris
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