The US has expelled two Iranian security guards with Tehran's mission to the UN, after the two were caught repeatedly taking video of the New York subway line.

According to the U.S. official, the first photographing incident took place in June 2002, the second in November 2003, and the third occurred recently, the official said.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in November that two Iranian citizens were questioned while taking video images of the subway tracks on the No. 7 line in Queens.

He said the two men, stopped by a transit officer, claimed diplomatic immunity and were ultimately not charged with any wrongdoing. The commissioner declined to label their behavior suspicious, but called it "unusual."

Unusual, indeed. What could this have been about? Espionage, yes, but to what ends? Who knows. It's a bit unsettling this has been going on since 2002. It would seem that if what they were up to was harmless, it could have all been cleared up with a brief conversation and they would not need to bother to claim diplomatic immunity.

Meantime, this other story on Iran is also disturbing. Essentially, the US is accusing Iran of having used one now-razed Tehran site, Lavizan, for nuclear research. Iran says, it was being used for "military research & development." That sounds a bit ambiguous, doesn't it? From Agence France Press:

"Our inspectors went yesterday to Lavizan (the suspect site). The Iranians said it was a former R and D military site," International Atomic Energy Agency director general ElBaradei told reporters...

The Iranians said the site "was used as a physics institute and later on for biotechnology R and D ... for medicine," ElBaradei said.

Suspicion has surrounded the site since satellite images from a US commercial firm showed that buildings which had been there in August had been razed to the ground by March and that topsoil had been taken away.

The Washington think tank the Institute for Science and International Security(ISIS) said on its website that this set alarm bells ringing "because it is the type of measure Iran would need to take if it was trying to defeat the powerful environmental sampling capabilities of IAEA inspectors."

"I have to wonder if it is the whole story, particularly since they took down all the buildings and razed the site," ISIS scientist David Albright told AFP Tuesday, referring to Iran's claim there was no weapons work in Lavizan.

"Their declaration is rather vague and looks like it covers all the bases. Medical research has to be mentioned" to explain whole body count machines found at the site, machines which measure radiation contamination, he said.

Remember, Albright was not one of those crying wolf about Iraq's nuclear program before the war. Indeed, he was among the most skeptical about the administration's claims regarding Iraq's nuclear program, particularly, the aluminum tubes claim. Here, Albright indicates more reasons to be concerned.

MORE: More from Albright speaking on Mid East WMD proliferation at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy this past week.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman notices, that apparently we almost went to war with Iran last July. Isn't it a bit hard to believe that with thousands of international war correspondents all over Iraq last summer, and tens of thousands of troops, humanitarians, and others in the area, that somehow no one reported this til now?

Posted by Laura at June 29, 2004 04:24 PM