WarSclerotic

Iran has appointed a nuclear scientist who is subject to UN sanctions and survived an attempt on his life as the country’s top nuclear official in a rebuff to international pressure to halt uranium enrichment.

Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, who has links with the elite Revolutionary Guards and the defence ministry, will head Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, the main body that handles technical aspects of the nuclear programme.

Mr Abbasi, 52, replaces Ali-Akbar Salehi, who recently became foreign minister.Like his predecessors, it is unlikely that Mr Abbasi-Davani will be involved in nuclear talks with major powers. But his appointment indicates Iran’s determination to speed up its uranium enrichment after repeated sabotage, notably by the Stuxnet computer worm, which western diplomats believe has led to setbacks to the nuclear programme.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is merely for peaceful purposes and rejects international concerns that it is on course to produce atomic weapons.

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, president, wished Mr Abbasi-Davani success in “employing all useful and constructive potentials of nuclear energy in various industrial, agricultural, medical and energy aspects”.

According to domestic media, Mr Abbasi-Davani is one of Iran’s few experts on nuclear isotope separation at the ministry of defence. The UN placed restrictions on him in 2007 as a senior ministry of defence scientist involved in nuclear and ballistic missile activities.

Along with Majid Shahriyari, another top nuclear scientist, he was the target of an assassination attempt in November by unknown assailants, which both reform-minded and conservative analysts believe was masterminded by Israel. Mr Shahriyari was killed, but Mr Abbasi-Davani managed to throw himself out of his car before a bomb attached to it exploded.

Iran has vowed that such attacks will not deter it from advancing its nuclear programme, while it pledges to continue negotiations with the US, France, UK, Russia, China and Germany, as well as with the European Union foreign policy chief, Lady Catherine Ashton.

Talks in Istanbul last month and in Geneva in December failed to bring any developments. The EU expressed disappointment with progress in Istanbul.

Failed talks have meant that Iran is continuing to increase its stockpile of low-enriched uranium at Natanz, the main enrichment centre, which now falls under the authority of Mr Abbasi-Davani.