He may not elicit scores of provocative headlines, but Vice President Fereydoun Abbasi is the chief brain behind Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Abbasi, who holds a PhD in nuclear physics, became the nation’s second-in-command last February as well as head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) at the request of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Before assuming his current roles, Abbasi chaired the physics department at Imam Hossein University in Tehran, an institution with known links to nuclear weaponization research. As vice president and AEOI director, Abbasi seems to have the perfect platform to actualize his nuclear ambitions.