Soltanieh, Ali Asghar

Born on 1st October 1950, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh as nuclear scientist and multilateral diplomat has been active as participant/guest speaker at over 200 international and regional conferences, specifically on international security, WMD Non-proliferation and Disarmament since 1982. He has served, two times, as the Resident Representative to the IAEA (1982-87; 2006-20013). During the first mission to the IAEA, he was simultaneously the Chief Negotiator and Head of Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Promotion of International Cooperation on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (PUNE). He has been fully involved at the NPT conferences since 1982. He served as the Ambassador to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva (1999-2002) & Vienna (2006-2013). While serving as DPR in Geneva (1999-2002), he was Chief Negotiator on the Protocol of Biological Weapons Convention as well as delegate to the Conference of Disarmament (CD). He was appointed as Secretary of National Authority for the Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC) from 1997 to1999. During this period, he was entrusted by Member States of the OPCW to serve as Facilitator for Negotiation on “Model Facility Agreements” for verification of Chemical Facilities. In 2016, he was appointed by DG of the OPCW as member of Advisory team on preparing the history of the OPCW. He has assumed the positions of President/Chairman of several international conferences and bodies such as UNIDO, IAEA, UNODC, G-77, Non-aligned Movement, Asian Group, etc. Since retirement in 2016, he has been serving, in his personal capacity, as “Senior Evaluation Consultant” at the CTBTO, UNODC, and UNIDO in Vienna. He has also been lecturing and doing research at different universities/ research centres/think tanks in several countries in the Middle East, including Arab Centre for Security Studies in Jordan, American University in Beirut in Turkey ( Bosphorus and TRT), in Europe (Diplomatic Academy, AIES, IIP, PIR, Webster University- Nebrija University, etc.) as well as in the USA (Harvard University on “Managing the Atom” project at the Belfer Centre). He has published several papers in international journals and books in nuclear physics, WMD non-proliferation, and disarmaments. Ambassador was appointed by the UNIDIR in 2019, as a member of Reference Group for the 3 -year project on the WMD Free Zone in the Middle East. The last but not the least, he is the President of the newly established Think Tank, VIIMES, the Vienna International Institute for Middle East Studies. PIR Center Advisory Board member since 2015. 10/22