The STOP THE BOMB coalition will be protesting in front of the Austria Center Vienna against Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of the Iranian nuclear program, on June 20th, 9:00 AM. Abbasi was appointed as vice-president of Iran by Ahmadinejad in February 2011 and has reportedly been a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) since 1979. Abbasi-Davani plans to attend the IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety from June 20 until June 24 in Vienna. Due to his direct involvement in the Iranian nuclear weapons program, he has been subject to UN sanctions since 2007 and his name is mentioned in the EU sanctions resolution passed in 2010. Nevertheless, the travel restrictions were lifted for his visit to Austria.

The spokesperson of STOP THE BOMB, Simone Dinah Hartmann, emphasises that it was no other than Abbasi himself who declared publicly earlier this month that Iran is going to triple its capacities of uranium enrichment in continued disregard of resolutions passed by the UN Security Council: "The Iranian regime relies on people like Abbasi to acquire the technological means necessary for executing its fantasies of destruction. Even before his appointment as head of the Iranian nuclear program he acted as the mastermind of the nuclear weapons program. The fact that travel restrictions are lifted for such a figure shows clearly that previously adopted sanctions are inadequate. In addition to coherent action against representatives of the regime, tough sanctions targeting the energy sector would be needed to prevent the Iranian regime from continuing its projects."

Hartmann points out, that everybody knows about the aims of the Iranian regime: "Only a few days ago, Ahmadinejad renewed his threat of annihilation of the Jewish state and described Israel as a 'cancer cell' that must be 'removed'. Recently, a website run by the Revolutionary Guards speculated about 'the day after the first successful nuclear bomb test' publicly for the very first time." Hiwa Bahrami from the Democratic Party of Kurdistan-Iran criticizes: "For the second time this month, Vienna is to give a forum to the Iranian regime, which persecutes minorities, organizes conferences on the denial of the Holocaust, finances worldwide jihadi terror and currently participates in the brutal suppression of the protests against its ally, the Assad regime in Syria."