Iran
Imam Hussein University (IHU)
About
The Imam Hussein University (IHU) is a university based in Tehran run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The IRGC runs the university like a military organization, and uses it as a training and recruiting ground. 1 Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, known as the father of Iran’s nuclear program and a leading advocate for the development of nuclear weapons in Iran, lectured weekly on physics at the university. 2 The exile group The National Council of Resistance of Iran claimed that the IHU is the main center for experiments on nuclear weapons technology and that 21 professors and researchers work on a secret weapons program. 3 The IHU also has an extensive nuclear physics department, demonstrating a suspicious connection between a military organization (the IRGC) and nuclear research. 4
In 2020, the Institute for Science and International Security obtained a document – a research proposal from the late 1990s or early 2000s – from the Iranian Nuclear Archive that demonstrates that Imam Hussein University was involved in nuclear weapons work at the time.5
In June of 2025 as part of an Israeli airstrike operation IHU was attacked and a building on the east side of campus was damaged.6 These strikes are part of an ongoing campaign targeting Iranian missile and nuclear infrastructure, including the educational and scientific infrastructure for these programs.
Glossary
- Nuclear weapon
- Nuclear weapon: A device that releases nuclear energy in an explosive manner as the result of nuclear chain reactions involving fission, or fission and fusion, of atomic nuclei. Such weapons are also sometimes referred to as atomic bombs (a fission-based weapon); or boosted fission weapons (a fission-based weapon deriving a slightly higher yield from a small fusion reaction); or hydrogen bombs/thermonuclear weapons (a weapon deriving a significant portion of its energy from fusion reactions).
Sources
- Alireza Jafarzadeh, The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), p. 146.
- Joby Warrick, “UN Alleges Nuclear Work by Iran’s Civilian Scientists,” The Washington Post, 11 March 2008, www.washingtonpost.com; Damien McElroy, “Iran Accused of Testing Nuclear Bomb Triggers,” Telegraph, 14 December 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk.
- “Revolutionary Guard runs Iran’s nuclear arms program: exile,” AFP, 21 March 2006.
- “Revolutionary Guard runs Iran’s nuclear arms program: exile,” AFP, 21 March 2006.
- David Albright and Mark Gorwitz, “Iran’s Early Development of Nuclear Weapons Codes—An Example from the Nuclear Archive of a Project Proposal at Imam Hussein University,” Institute for Science and International Security, 18 February 2020, https://isis-online.org.
- According to satellite analysis by Sam Lair at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, June 2025.
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