Saeed Borji, a senior member of SPND (the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research) and an explosives trigger expert who played a pivotal role over the past two decades in developing technologies related to nuclear bomb detonation, was among those killed in the recent Israeli strike on Iran.
Borji, who held a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Malek Ashtar University of Technology, remained an obscure but crucial figure in the Iranian regime’s military nuclear program for years.
His collaboration with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) began in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war and continued actively over the subsequent decades in sensitive projects related to nuclear weapons development.
According to nuclear documents obtained from Iran, Borji was one of the core members of the secret “Amad” project—a program aimed at designing and building nuclear weapons, which was launched in the early 2000s and, according to Iranian claims, halted in 2003.
However, numerous sources indicate that Borji and his colleagues continued their work covertly beyond that date through organizations like SPND.
Development of Advanced Trigger Technologies
For years, he headed the Center for Research on Explosion and Impact Technology, one of the subdivisions of SPND.
He played a central role in developing advanced detonation technologies, such as multi-point initiation (MPI) triggers and exploding bridgewire (EBW) detonators, which are used in implosion-type nuclear bombs.
Borji, in cooperation with foreign experts, including Vyacheslav Danilenko—a Ukrainian scientist and former specialist in the Soviet nuclear program—underwent training in explosive chamber design and participated in designing large explosion test chambers at the Parchin military site.
These chambers were used to simulate the internal explosion mechanism of a nuclear bomb.
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According to intelligence assessments, the Abadeh site in Fars Province was also one of the locations used by Borji for explosive trigger tests.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury placed Saeed Borji on its sanctions list due to his central role in Tehran’s nuclear weapons efforts.
In a statement issued alongside sanctions against 13 other individuals and 17 entities linked to SPND, Borji was identified as an explosives and metals expert working for the Shahid Karimi group.
In addition to his scientific activities, Borji also managed front companies connected to nuclear projects. Until his death in the Israeli airstrike, he served in recent years as chairman of companies such as “Azar Afrooz Saeed” and “Arvin Kimia Abzar.”
These companies ostensibly operated in the oil and petrochemical sectors, but according to intelligence reports, they functioned as covers for military research into nuclear detonation triggers.
Conducting Explosive Tests
Leaked documents from the Iranian regime’s nuclear program show that Borji was also involved in moving explosive tests to highly secured sites such as “Sanjarian” in eastern Tehran and collaborating on classified projects inside “Parchin Project 6,” which intelligence files identify as a location for conducting highly sensitive and top-secret nuclear-related tests.
Borji’s role in post-Amad projects was particularly significant in preserving and expanding Iran’s ability to rapidly resume its nuclear weapons program.
He was one of the few individuals capable of advancing nuclear trigger know-how from theoretical development to actual testing and implementation.
Borji was in effect “Iran’s nuclear trigger man”—a figure who bridged the early circles of the Amad Project with its secret successors, consistently acting as a conduit between the old generation of scientists and the current structure of military nuclear research.
According to reports, the technology developed under his leadership enabled Iran to domestically produce synchronized explosive triggers and elevate them to an operational level.
