When the FBI offers 200,000 dollars for information about a former agent of its own air force, this is not a routine bounty. It is part of a long-running ledger that is still not closed - and that, in a moment of tension between Washington and Tehran, has a new weight on it.

The target is Monica Witt, a former counterintelligence specialist in the US Air Force, who defected to Iran in 2013. In 2019 she was indicted for espionage. According to the prosecution, Witt handed Iran "a top-secret intelligence programme" and the identity of one US intelligence officer - putting that man in mortal danger.

Between January 2012 and May 2015, Witt allegedly supplied Iranian authorities with "documents and information on US national defence." Not once. Not twice. Systematically, over three years. How she managed to stay inside the system that long is a question the US counterintelligence still has not answered publicly - and that is not by accident.

The FBI, in its statement, believes Witt "likely continues to support Iranian malign activity." Special agent Daniel Wierzbicki said the agency "has not forgotten" - a sentence carrying both threat and frustration. Ten years have passed, the money is bigger, but Witt is still in Iran, under regime protection.

According to the prosecution, the Iranian authorities provided her with "housing, computer equipment and other support" after she arrived from the US. Four Iranian nationals have also been charged - with conspiracy and identity theft. That is a clear operational intelligence model: defection + support + exploitation.

For Balkan readers, the story has one interesting layer. The Monica Witt case shows that even the largest intelligence services in the world can have a "mole" inside for a long time - and only find out when it is too late. The question of how she went from an Air Force uniform to an Iranian apartment in three years is a story full of unexplained gaps. And those very gaps are why this bounty is still being reissued ten years later, with a higher number on it.