Akbar Etemad (Persian: اکبر اعتماد; born February 3, 1930) was the president of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran from 1974 to 1978.
He also worked for the Swiss Federal Institute for Reactor Research as the chief of its nuclear shielding group for five and a half years.
[5] In a meeting with the prime minister of Iran Amir Abbas Hoveida, Etemad proposed that an independent national organization for scientific research needed to be established.
[3] In September 2008, the transcript of his interview conducted by Maziar Bahari was published in the New Statesman entitled "The Shah's plan was to build bombs.
After the interview was published, Mr. Etemad wrote a letter to the New Statesman which appeared in the print edition of the Dec 1, 2008 issue of the magazine, in which he vociferously denied the claim attributed to him by Maziar Bahari: The title "The Shah's plan was to build bombs" is misleading.
I also said that during a long discussion, the Shah told me that Iran did not need nuclear weapons, because our strong conventional forces would guarantee our security and national interests.