Profile: Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi, Veteran Scientist and Linchpin of Iran’s Nuclear Program

Friday, 13 June 2025 1:49 PM

By Ivan Kesic

Among those assassinated in the Israeli military strikes on Iran early Friday was veteran nuclear scientist and former lawmaker Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi.

Dr. Abbasi served as the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and was active in various nuclear, educational, economic, and political fields since 1987.

Born in 1958 in Abadan, a city in Khuzestan Province, his family hailed from the village of Davan near Kazerun in the northwest of Fars Province.

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Dr. Abbasi joined the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and participated in several operations during the Imposed War in the 1980s.

He was active in southwestern Khuzestan province alongside Martyr Seyyed Mohammad Jahan Ara and other defenders of the land, and was also tasked with supporting the Construction Jihad (Jihad-e-Sazandegi) in southern Fars province.

After the war, he graduated in nuclear physics from Shiraz University in 1984 and earned a doctorate in 1987 from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.

In 1993, he joined the faculty of the Physics Department at Imam Hussein University—affiliated with the IRGC, the Ministry of Science, and the Ministry of Defense—and later became head of the department.

He went on to earn additional doctorates: one in nuclear engineering from Amir Kabir University of Technology in 2003, and another in nuclear physics from Shahid Beheshti University.

Dr. Abbasi also led the Astan Quds Razavi Industry Holding and served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Razavi Business Company, which oversees over 30 manufacturing and service firms, including Shahab Khodro Company, Iran Combine Harvester, and Razavi Juice Factory.

In 2010, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt when a terrorist on a motorbike attached a bomb to his car near Daneshju Square as he was driving to work.

While he was injured and survived, a separate bomb attack on the same day killed another scientist, Majid Shahriari, who also taught at Shahid Beheshti University.

In the 11th term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (2020–2024), Dr. Abbasi was elected as a representative from the Kazerun and Kuhchenar constituencies and served as head of the parliamentary energy commission.

His wife, Nezhat Shaban-Azad, was a candidate in the 12th term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly from the Hormozgan constituency.

His martyrdom has been described as a big loss to the country’s scientific community.