Survivor of Attack Leads Nuclear Effort in Iran

WASHINGTON — Eight months after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt on the streets of Tehran, Fereydoon Abbasi, the nuclear physicist whom Iran’s mullahs have put in charge of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, is presiding over what intelligence officials in several countries describe as an unexpected quickening of Iran’s production of nuclear material.

The selection of Dr. Abbasi earlier this year was itself a clear message to the West. As a university scientist, he was barred from traveling outside Iran by the United Nations Security Council because of evidence that his main focus was on how to build nuclear weapons, rather than power plants. But in recent weeks he has publicly declared that his country is preparing to triple its production of a type of nuclear fuel that moves it far closer to the ability to produce bomb-grade material in a hurry.

Filtering out the hyperbole surrounding recent proclamations about Iran’s tangible progress is always difficult, especially at a time when the country is determined to demonstrate that neither the Stuxnet computer worm, which crippled part of its nuclear infrastructure last year, nor Western sanctions have proved to be more than modest setbacks. Dr. Abbasi himself is rarely seen or heard outside of Iran.

But international nuclear inspectors and American officials say that all the evidence points to the imminent installation of centrifuges at an underground nuclear plant on a military base near the city of Qum. Iran revealed the existence of the plant in 2009, after learning that the United States and European powers were about to announce that they had discovered the complex, deep inside an Iranian military base.

What concerns inspectors and European and American officials is Iran’s announced effort to increase production of uranium enriched to nearly 20 percent purity. Iran insists that it needs that fuel for a medical research reactor. But last week William Hague, the British foreign minister, dismissed that claim as a cover story.

“When enough 20 percent enriched uranium is accumulated at the underground facility at Qum,” Mr. Hague said in the opinion pages of the British newspaper The Guardian, “it would take only two or three months of additional work to convert this into weapons-grade material.”

Outside analysts note that during Dr. Abbasi’s brief tenure in his new job, Iran’s top leaders have focused on demonstrating that they have overcome multiple setbacks, inflicted by what they suspect has been covert actions by the United States and Israel, and broad economic sanctions.

“The evidence is there that they are accelerating,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran expert and the director of the nonproliferation and disarmament program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “They have increased the production of uranium, they have increased the number of centrifuges they have spinning, they are putting in a larger number of second-generation centrifuges.”

Senior Obama administration officials with access to the intelligence say they concur with that assessment, but they do not sound alarmed. They argue that Iran’s continued reliance on an older, unreliable centrifuge model shows that it is having trouble making the leap to more sophisticated and efficient models. “They’ve talked about moving up the line for years, before Abbasi got the job,” said one senior official.

The White House’s recent silence is notable because President Obama built much of his Middle East policy, before the recent Arab uprisings, on organizing other countries in the region to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. The administration commented on the most recent Iranian announcements only when asked.

“Iran is prohibited from installing or operating any centrifuges as a result of the U.N. sanctions that have been imposed upon it,” Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said when asked about Mr. Abbasi’s recent announcements. “Provocative behavior of this sort reinforces the need for countries to implement fully their international sanctions obligations with respect to Iran.”

Diplomats say that Dr. Abbasi’s approach to nuclear diplomacy is a stark contrast from that of his predecessor at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi. Mr. Salehi, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in nuclear engineering, is a polished diplomat who speaks fluent English and handles the news media with ease.

Dr. Abbasi is “not as skillful — or as comfortable,” said a diplomat in Vienna who recently saw him in action when he visited Austria for a nuclear safety conference. “He’s very stiff with the press.” Since Dr. Abbasi has become one of the country’s top government officials, he has received periodic exemptions from the United Nations travel ban.

According to Mashreghnews, an Iranian news Web site, Dr. Abbasi holds a doctorate in nuclear physics and has been a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps since the Islamic state was founded in 1979. The Revolutionary Guards Corps runs the country’s nuclear weapons research effort and for years has deflected demands from inspectors for details about what are suspected of being experiments that would suggest work on a weapon.

In March 2007, the Security Council put Dr. Abbasi on its sanctions list because of allegations that he had ties to the Iranian nuclear effort, which poses a diplomatic problem: the man insisting that Iran’s effort is entirely peaceful is suspected of working on elements of weapons experimentation.

The United Nations described Dr. Abbasi as a senior scientist in the Ministry of Defense who was “working closely” with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — an officer in the Revolutionary Guards considered by Western intelligence to be a leader in Tehran’s effort to acquire nuclear arms.

Mr. Fakhrizadeh has not been seen in public in years. Dr. Abbasi’s experience may explain why: driving to work on Nov. 29, 2010, he saw a motorcyclist pull up next to him and plant a bomb on the driver’s side door of his car. He escaped, pulling his wife with him, seconds before it detonated. A separate attack that same day killed one of his nuclear colleagues. Iran variously blamed the Mossad and the United States.

Bibliographies of Iranian nuclear research show that Dr. Abbasi over the years has written a number of papers on neutrons, speeding subatomic particles that can split atoms in two, releasing the bursts of atomic energy that enliven both reactors and atom bombs.

“Abbasi’s been a big player in their nuclear weapons program,” a federal official who assesses scientific intelligence said Thursday on the condition of anonymity.

Now, Dr. Abbasi, as the leader of Iran’s effort to enrich uranium, has overseen the stabilization of the sprawling plant at Natanz, in the desert. And, at a hollowed-out mountain near Qum, he is spearheading the expansion of Iran’s enrichment program into underground halls protected by some 300 feet of solid rock.

Diplomats said the mountain site, known as Fordow, was about to receive its first centrifuges — tall machines that spin incredibly fast to purify uranium. In June, Dr. Abbasi announced that Iran would triple production of its most concentrated form of uranium and transfer some production to Fordow from Natanz.

“It’s a real policy escalation to triple the production,” the Viennese diplomat noted. “It’s provocative.”

Source: NYTimes.com