Expert Profile

Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh is an Associate Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. 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 Resident Representative of Iran 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 from 1982. He served as the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva (1999-2002) & Vienna (2006-2013). While serving as PR in Geneva (1999-2002), he was Chief Negotiator on the Protocol of Biological Weapons Convention as well as delegate to Conference of Disarmament (CD). After Iran joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, he was appointed as Secretary of National Authority of Iran for CWC (1997-1999). 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 Iran, Europe (Diplomatic Academy-AIES- IIP - Webster University- Nebrija University, etc.) and the USA (Harvard University on “Managing the Atom” project at the Belfer Centre). The last but not the least, Ambassador was appointed by UNIDIR in 2019, as a member of Reference Group for the 3 -year project on the WMD Free Zone in the Middle East.