Critic of Iran’s Nuclear Policy Is Charged With Spying

By NAZILA FATHI, Published: May 3, 2007

TEHRAN, May 2 — A prominent critic of Iran’s nuclear policies over the past two years was arrested this week on spying charges, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Wednesday.

The critic, Hossein Moussavian, who served as a senior nuclear negotiator until President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, was arrested after he appeared before a court Monday evening, Fars reported.

“He was arrested because of his ties with foreigners and for giving them information” about the country’s nuclear program, the news agency said, quoting an “informed source.” Mr. Moussavian is being interrogated, the source told Fars, and will not be released soon.

His arrest precedes a scheduled meeting of Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the international conference on Iraq in Egypt on Thursday.

At the time of his arrest, Mr. Moussavian was working at the Strategic Research Center, a research organization affiliated with the Expediency Council, which is headed by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president.

Iran has been locked in a dispute with the United Nations Security Council over its enrichment of uranium, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes but Western nations fear will be used in a bomb. The Security Council has passed two resolutions since December demanding that Iran cease enrichment and it imposed sanctions when it refused.

The next deadline for compliance is at the end of May. Mr. Moussavian had warned in an interview with the ISNA news agency earlier this year that the government should not ignore the United Nations resolutions, saying that they were mandatory for all United Nations members.

He also said the country would be pursuing its current nuclear policy even if a more moderate figure than Mr. Ahmadinejad had been elected president. That seemed to place responsibility for the policy squarely on the country’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on all state matters.