Fereydun Abbasi-Davani, 52, succeeds Ali-Akbar Salehi, who was approved last week as Iran’s new foreign minister. Like Salehi, Davani will be both a vice president of Iran and the chief of the nuclear program.
Last November 29, Davani was being driven to his office with his wife when a motorcyclist pulled up beside his car and stuck a magnetic bomb to the side of the car as it was stopped in traffic. News reports said Davani realized what was happening, pushed his wife out the other side of the car and ran out behind her before the bomb exploded.
Only minutes earlier, another nuclear physicist, Majid Shahriari, was targeted in exactly the same manner. Shahriari died.
The previously January, another nuclear scientist was also killed in a bombing. In that case, the bomb was packed into a motorcycle parked next to the scientist’s car and set off by remote control.
The promotion of Davani to head the nuclear program suggests that the assassins are targeting major figures in the nuclear program and not just run-of-the-mill technicians.
News reports last November said Davani and his wife were both injured in the bombing and hospitalized. The extent of the injuries has never been reported.
Iran has blamed the CIA and Mossad for the three assassination attempts. The CIA is barred from engaging in assassinations by a presidential order that states: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” US agencies are authorized to target terrorists, but Iranian nuclear scientists are not defined as terrorists.
Davani, who holds a doctorate in nuclear physics, is listed as the head of the physics department at Imam Hossain University in Tehran. The university was founded in 1986 by the Defense Ministry to develop the body of skilled professionals that it needed to expand weapons development and production.