IAEA’s Olli Heinonen to Join Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center

Olli Heinonen, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the world's leading outside expert on Iran's nuclear program, will join Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a Senior Fellow this fall.

Heinonen, a veteran of the IAEA and head of its Department of Safeguards, led the agency's efforts to identify, dismantle, and contain the nuclear proliferation network headed by Pakistani rogue scientist AQ Khan.

Known informally as the "Sherlock Holmes of nuclear detection," Heinonen has led multiple teams of international investigators to look into nuclear programs of concern, illuminating the dark corners that exist in the global nuclear black market. He has inspected nuclear facilities from South Africa to Iraq, North Korea to Syria, Iran and beyond, ensuring that nuclear materials are never diverted for military purposes.

"We are thrilled that Olli Heinonen is joining the Belfer Center," Director Graham Allison said. "No individual outside of Iran knows more about that country's nuclear program, and I am confident that Olli will play a major role in advancing the Center's analysis of the Iranian nuclear challenge, as part of the larger effort to combat nuclear danger."

Heinonen joins a well-known and growing roster of nuclear experts at the Belfer Center. In 2008, the State Department's highest-ranking career diplomat, R. Nicholas Burns, who managed the Bush Administration's Iran policy, joined the Center's board of directors and the faculty of Harvard Kennedy School. The Center also appointed two top national security executives as Senior Fellows: Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the CIA's leading expert on al Qaeda and WMD, and William Tobey, who managed the $2 billion annual Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs to secure and eliminate former Soviet nuclear weapons and materials. They joined an already-robust group of faculty and experts, including Graham Allison, Matthew Bunn, Joseph Nye, Steven E. Miller, Kevin Ryan, and Martin Malin.