Iran's newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian has given Mohammad Eslami, 67, a renewed assignment as head of the country's nuclear program. The US-educated civil engineer Eslami is simultaneously one of the country's vice presidents.
Pezeshkian has said that his ambition is to breathe new life into the nuclear agreement with Western powers, JCPOA, from 2015. The then US President Donald Trump terminated the agreement in 2018.
The UN imposed sanctions on Eslami in 2008 for being directly involved in "sensitive nuclear activities or the development of systems that can deliver nuclear weapons": He was then head of research and training within Iran's defense industries.
Eslami was appointed head of Iran's nuclear program for the first time in 2021, and has held the role of chief negotiator towards the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA. Iran has consistently claimed that its nuclear energy program has solely civilian purposes.
