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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.
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Georg Hochmuth/European Pressphoto Agency

Fereydoon
Abbasi, the nuclear physicist in charge of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, survived an assassination attempt last year in
Tehran.

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
show that neither the Stuxnet computer worm, which crippled part of its<... >>>