“So sad that they don’t value me or people like me,” says the former president of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoon Abbasi, who for the second time lashed out this week again President Hassan Rouhani’s record on the nuclear issue. At the same time Abbasi defended Saeed Jalili, the former chief nuclear negotiator, whose negotiations with the P5+1 group failed to produce an agreement.

Abbasi, who stressed in an interview two weeks before Rouhani’s victory, that Iran’s nuclear policies would not change, stepped down from office in August of this year after Rouhani took office. He was succeeded by Ali Akbar Salehi who had also been his predecessor at the same organization before he was appointed foreign minister under Ahmadinejad in 2010.

Abbasi, a nuclear scientist, is known as an active figure in Iran’s nuclear program. Since March 2007 he has been on the U.N. Security Council's list of individuals whose assets are frozen and cannot travel without notification. On November 29, 2010 he survived an assassination attempt on the same day when another Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a separate bomb attack.

In a rebuttal to President Rouhani’s statement that “it is not only centrifuges but also people’s livelihoods that should run,” he said: “the Westerners want to dictate how the centrifuges must run. Jalili knew this. The President did not say whether the centrifuges should run full or empty?”

He also criticized how the current government is treating him. “The new officials have nothing to do with me,” he said. “They have forgotten that I was blacklisted and was the target of an assassination attempt. They throw away people with ease. It is sad that they don’t value me or people like me in nuclear matters and negotiations.”

Abbasi had more direct criticism along with an indirect defense of Jalili’s record. “Why the current officials are fabricating heroes?” he asked. “If, in Germany [round] 2, Jalili had given away just one tenth of the concessions that they gave away in Geneva, he would be president now.”

People With American Visas

Abbasi’s directed his criticism not only at the record of Rouhani’s government, but also towards previous directors of Iran’s Nuclear Energy Organization. “There was a domestic current that stopped the manufacturing of centrifuges,” he said. “Their excuse was that a new generation of centrifuges is on the way. It happened around 2009 and 2010 when they replaced people like the martyr Ahmadi-Roshan [the assassinated nuclear scientists] with people who had American visas.”

Previously he has also criticized the organization under Salehi, his predecessor and now his successor, for being late to employ the services of people like the nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, who was assassinated in 2010.

Before this round of Abbasi’s criticisms, the father of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, the assassinated scientists, had complained about the conduct of Rouhani’s government. “Mr. President,” he asked, “why did you remove my son’s colleagues who had brought the nuclear efforts so far? The President knows whom I am talking about. This is one of our biggest complaints.”

This statement and the absence of Ahmadi-Roshan’s family in a memorial gathering prompted Salehi, the new chief, to visit and try to soothe them. Nevertheless the former chief took a contrary position towards Rouhani’s government. “This government does not have the capacity to work with us,” he said in his farewell ceremony on August 18. “I am unhappy because it is the enemies who introduce us to the society by assassinations.” He was referring to previous administrations as well who, according to him, did not fully exploit the expertise and the abilities of Iranian nuclear scientists.

A long-time member of Revolutionary Guards, he spoke with sarcasm about the security component of Rouhani’s government: “The friends who are involved in security and have entered the cabinet must not think that security is good but Guards are bad.”

“Superficial and the result of a childish sickness” is how he branded the proposal to merge the Atomic Energy Organization and the Ministry of Energy, put forward in the early days of Rouhani’s administration. “Some people who have ossified brains or want to hide their heads in the sand like an ostrich,” he said “come up with such proposals, perhaps to tell the West that we have lowered the nuclear level...The nuclear issue cannot be settled except through power. Power, as the Supreme Leader has said, is to become powerful in advanced technologies and be an influential country in the Middle East.” Otherwise, he added, “we would not be able to solve even children’s rights or human rights problems, let alone the nuclear problem.”

Sergeants and Generals

Abbasi’s previous criticisms were partially partisan and targeted the electoral approach of Rouhani’s campaign. In the run-up to the elections, Bijan Zangeneh, the current oil minister, compared Ahmadinejad’s government administrators to sergeants and said that they should be replaced with generals. Abbasi accused Zangeneh of securing his job through connections and called his remarks offensive. “Some people call themselves generals,” he said, “but if they want to take rank into account I do happen to be a real general...They wanted to call me a sergeant? Being a sergeant is a very high rank; Sergeants run the garrisons and the officers live off them...I was annoyed when during debates and the election campaign they said such things. God willing, we shall see how much they can increase the oil production and how well they can bring in the oil money.”

He also criticized the extensive criticisms directed at Ahmadinejad’s administration. “Ahmadinejad’s government did not really do anything?” he asked President Rouhani. “Why are you bashing his government constantly? Now that the elections are over and the new cabinet is formed, he should act like an elder statesman, prevent further criticism of Ahmadinejad and his government, and point out the good things that his government did as well.”

Rouhani, however, turned a deaf ear to such suggestions. In reporting his first 100 days in office, he sharply criticized the record of Ahmadinejad’s government.This approach has provoked hardliners and especially key figures under the previous administration. The dueling, quiet after Geneva, seems to have heated up.