Ahmadinejad puts up N. Korean-educated man for key post

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has nominated a North Korean-educated former Iranian military official for a key post in his government.

The official IRNA news agency reported that Mohammad Hasan Nami has been named as the proposed Minister of Communications and Information Technology to parliament, and will now face a vote of confidence he is likely to pass.

Nami holds a doctorate degree in state management from Kim Il-Sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea. He is also a former deputy defense minister and Iran’s ex-deputy Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Army.

IRNA’s Monday report says Nami is fluent in English and is the man behind an Iranian national intranet project.

The West suspects Iran and North Korea of collaborating on nuclear projects.

It was reported Sunday night that the man whom Western intelligence agencies believe may very well be the head of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program was present as an observer last week when North Korea carried out a critical nuclear test

According to a British Sunday Times report Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi very rarely leaves Iranian soil due to fear that the Mossad will make an attempt on his life, following an alleged pattern of previous assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi is currently pursuing technology that would enable his country to assemble a nuclear warhead compact enough to be fitted to the ballistic missile technology in its possession, Western intelligence sources reportedly informed the paper.

North Korea’s test last week, during which it detonated a nuclear device at a remote underground site, was a key step en route to just such a prototype, South Korean defense officials and Japanese government sources were quoted as saying.

“The atomic bomb appears to have been made compact enough to be placed on a missile,” a Japanese source reportedly said.