A senior UN official specialising in disarmament appears to have a secret history of advising Iran’s terrorist militia and links to the country’s sanctioned nuclear weapons programme, the JC can reveal.
Abdolrasool Divsallar, now a prominent figure at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), strenuously denies having any connection to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or the dictatorship’s nuclear activities.
But a CV obtained by the JC suggests that Divsallar advised an IRGC general and held key positions at institutions involved in the nuclear programme that were subsequently sanctioned.
Divsallar's CV details his time working at the Passive Defense Organisation. He claimed the CV contained 'incorrect information'
Divsallar also appeared to boast about his time working for senior IRGC figures – including expressing affection for an IRGC commander wanted by Interpol over a 1994 terror attack – in a 2015 interview with a regime media outlet unearthed by this newspaper.
In the interview with Borna News, Divsallar said he spent time advising his “friend” IRGC General Gholamreza Jalali, a period he calls “one of the best times of my career.. I learned a lot from the commander’s personality and management qualities”.
He also sang the praises of another former colleague, one of the most prominent commanders of the IRGC, Mohsen Rezaie, who is sought over the murder of 85 people in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish AMIA building in Buenos Aires.
Asked more about those roles, Divsallar – who today works within the UN’s Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (MEWMDFZ) initiative, a disarmament project run by UNIDIR – said could not go into details “for security reasons”.
Divsallar was offered breakfast pastries in the offices of the Islamic Republic-backed news agency Borna News during an extensive and flattering interview in 2015 (Photo: Borna)
The JC has also discovered a 2007 book on “military science” authored by Divsallar and published by Iran’s Defence Industries Training and Research Institute (DITRI), a body later sanctioned by Canada that describes itself as “a think tank with the aim of supporting the armed forces in the field of soft sciences”.
The former head of DITRI, Mohammad Eslami, was sanctioned in 2008 – a year after Divsallar’s book was published – and remains on a UN blacklist for his alleged role in nuclear proliferation and atomic weapons development.
Divsallar told the Borna interviewer that worked as an adviser to DITRI between 2006 and 2007, when it was headed by Eslami.
One of the books penned by Divsallar on “military science” published by the Defence Industries Training and Research Institute
According to both the interview and Divsallar’s Iranian CV – which features his picture – in 2008-2009 he was promoted to head up a division of the IRGC’s Passive Defence Organisation (PDO).
The PDO was founded to defend the home front from “ideological challenges” and control Iranian cities during periods of domestic unrest. Since 2010, it has been hit by various Western sanctions over its links to Iran’s nuclear programme, including the uranium-enrichment site at Fordow. The PDO is headed up by General Jalali and, in his 2015 interview, Divsallar said: “The time when I really feel that I learned a lot was when I was in the service of Sardar Jalali in the PDO.
“When you are at the top and you are working, you learn many things from the behaviour and management style of the people above you,” he said.
Jalali is notorious for urging a harsh response to pro-democracy protests in Iran. He has also blamed Israel for bad weather in Iran and called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “Hitler”.
As well as praising Rezaie, Divsallar also spoke of his personal affection for Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a senior member of the IRGC and military adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei who was sanctioned by the US in 2020. Divsallar called both men “loved ones” who gave him “space” and “opportunities”.
He also claimed to Borna News to have given 70 lectures on “threat identification and passive defence” to the IRGC, the Iranian army, the Ministry of Defence, and the Ministry of Interior between 2005-2009.
According to his CV, Divsallar taught at Malek Ashtar University, an institution sanctioned by the UN Security Council in 2010 over its involvement in Iran’s nuclear delivery programme. Sanctions against Malek Ashtar by the EU, US, Australia, Canada and the UK followed.
In September 2023, Divsallar took up a senior research position at UNIDIR in Geneva, Switzerland, and has not returned to Iran.
He now has access to top UN officials and works within an organisation that claims to be “preventing and limiting the impact of the uncontrolled proliferation and use of conventional weapons and ammunition” for “a stable and more secure world in which people are protected from threats of arms-related violence”.
The MEWMDFZ programme at UNIDIR, which aims to achieve a “weapons of mass destruction-free zone” in the Middle East, was set up in 2019 and is funded by the European Union.
Headed by Dr Chen Zak Kane, the programme is in dialogue with countries across the region and the team includes experts from Iran and Israel. Staff are hired by the UN using an external application process and are not state representatives, although several have worked for governments in their home countries.
Abdolrasool Divsallar in the offices of Borna News in 2015 (Photo: Borna)
Last August, UN Watch, a group that monitors the international body, revealed that UNIDIR had employed the son of Russian drone warfare mastermind Alexander Zakharov as an intern. UNIDIR told UN Watch at the time that the intern had been selected through a “competitive and transparent recruitment process...on the basis of his qualifications, skills and experience for the position”.
Since working at UNIDIR, Divsallar has proposed easing sanctions on Iran and advocated for the West to strengthen diplomatic ties with the regime, while also criticising aspects of the Islamic Republic.
In October, he shared a post celebrating Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, and asked his followers to “remember she was against sanctions and coercive measures which only further deprive Iranians from their basic human needs and strengthen extremists”.
On X/Twitter he diminished Iran’s involvement in the October 7 attack on Israel, referring to the “autonomy of resistance groups in decisions”.
But he suggested the Hamas attack on Israel should be “viewed as part of Iranian revenge for Israeli assassinations and sabotages”.
During a panel in Italy, Divsallar compared “religious state-building projects in Israel & Iran”.
After the killing of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, he shared Iran’s letter to the UN, tweeting “the assassination was an infringement of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran and violation of Article 2(4) of UN charter” and said, “the next step is an exercise of inherent right of self-defence under article 51 of UN charter”.
In the past, he has criticised Israel for “nagging” and playing “a game of a defenceless nation”.
Divsallar has recently posted articles critical of the regime. In May 2024, he appeared to advocate against “hardliners” in Iran’s government, tweeting: “It’s terrifying that the best scenario seems to be the Raisi 2 government. We may still face a more hardliner and extremist government. Bad times ahead.”
He said in 2022 that the Islamic Republic “paves the way for even more brutal suppression”.
He has also given a talk at UK think tank Chatham House on the role of Iran in regional escalation, and is a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research centre.
Responding to the allegations, he said: “The organisations you referenced are not affiliated with the IRGC, and I have had no involvement with any IRGC activities or organisations. My expertise in disarmament, which encompasses state security and military assessments, significantly contributes to my advocacy efforts against all nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have never been an adviser to the Passive Defence Organisation or worked there. I authored a book on the topic and am recognised as a scholar in the field. I firmly reject any claims of sanitising my CV, as all my main past experiences are accurately detailed on the MEI and UNIDIR websites.”
Divsallar did not deny giving an interview to the regime outlet, Borna News, but said that the site had published “misinformation”. The article has since been removed from Borna News at Divsallar’s request. “While I did give an interview to Borna News, as I have with many other media outlets, the published piece contained significant misinformation.
“The integrity of a journalist is not always apparent until one encounters issues with incorrect handling of content. Unfortunately, Borna News did not address the errors I identified despite my immediate request for correction. I requested a correction from Borna News again yesterday.
“They acknowledged their mishandling of the interview and a technical issue that led to mixing two separate interviews.”
In an email that Divsallar claimed was from Borna News, a representative for the website said his interview had been mixed up with another: “Due to a technical error, your interview was mixed with another person’s interview that was edited a few days ago, and there were many errors that we were unable to share.”
When asked about his Iranian CV, which was published on another pro-regime site, Divsaller said: “I am not familiar with the website that has my bio... I have never been affiliated with them; they aggregated information from other websites, including the article from Borna with incorrect information.”
He added: “While you are free to write your article, I urge you to avoid perpetuating this misinformation.”
