seek to accelerate atomic bomb project
- On Sunday, August 29, 2021, Ebrahim Raisi, the regime’s president, appointed IRGC Brig Gen. Mohammad Eslami as a vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization. Eslami was the regime’s principal liaison for acquiring atomic bomb knowledge from the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. This appointment makes it palpably clear that the clerical regime intends to intensify and accelerate its nuclear bomb projects.
- Sixteen years ago, on August 26, 2005, at a press conference in Washington D.C., the Iranian Resistance revealed: “According to information obtained from within the regime by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI.MEK), Brig. Gen. Mohammad Eslami had met with Abdul Qadeer Khan (father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program) at least twice in 1986 and 1987. Eslami was then head of the Defense Industries Training and Research Institute, and his main mission was to research acquiring nuclear weapons. The meeting with Abdul Qadeer Khan was coordinated by Reza Amrollahi, the then head of the Atomic Energy Organization.”
- At another conference in Brussels on September 22, 2005, the MEK announced: The deal with Abdul Qadeer Khan was made directly in Tehran in 1986, and Mohammad Eslami was the negotiator. In addition, Abdul Qadeer Khan’s representatives met with a team of IRGC specialists in Dubai in 1987 to provide them with the plans to manufacture an atomic bomb and other necessary information.
- According to Agence France Presse on November 18, 2005, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer identified as Mohammad Eslami had been in contact with representatives of the nuclear black market since 1987.
Eslami was Rouhani’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development. He had also been working for the Mostazafan Foundation and the repressive “Islamic Revolutionary Committees” since the 1980s. He was initially in charge of the technical affairs of the Committees but later was appointed as the chief commander of the committees. In the following years, he was the Deputy Minister of Engineering and Development Plans of the Defense Industries Organization, the Managing Director of Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Company, the Deputy Director of the Aerospace Industries Organization, the Head of the Defense Industries Training and Research Institute, the Deputy Minister of Industrial and Research Affairs of the Ministry of Defense, and Deputy Minister of Defense for Civil Defense. He was the governor of Mazandaran in 2017 and 2018.
Mohammad Eslami was placed on the UN Security Council’s sanctions list on August 28, 2008, for his role in the proliferation of sensitive nuclear activities or the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems under UN Security Council Resolution 1803.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
August 31, 2021
