The Imam Hossein University (IHU) (, Dāneshgāh-e Emām Hosein) is a public university located in Tehran, Iran. It was established by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Seyed Mehdi Mousavi Zare.
The university was opened in 1986, and is located in Babayi Expressway near Tehranpars and Hakimiyeh in northeastern Tehran. The university is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, and Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics. Its official title is Imam Hossein Comprehensive University. It is named after Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680.
IHU provides undergraduate and postgraduate programs in 15 departments. The student body consists of 6,000 students and cadets.
The procedure for accepting and processing requests at IHU is different from other universities. Regular students can get admission by passing Iranian University Entrance Exam which is done yearly by Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. Those students are without scholarship and will not be employed by the IRGC. They should also pay tuition fees.
However, students with scholarship are accepted by the IRGC after passing ideological interviews and medical tests, and being a member of the Basij will be an advantage for getting a scholarship. Those students are not permitted to go abroad or to work for private companies. For many years, IRGC Cadet College and IHU academic division were in the same place. But Imam Hossein Cadet College was separated from the academic division in 2005. Then, the academic division was relocated to another recently built infrastructure, and was renamed as the "Imam Hossein Comprehensive University".
History The university was established in 1986 by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Seyed Mehdi Mousavi Zare, named Imam Hossein Higher Education and approved as a university by Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. It included faculty of engineering science, faculty of natural science, faculty of social science, and faculty of medicine in 1987. Later, it also included faculty of military science.
In 1994, the faculty of medicine seceded to become the Baqiyatallah Medical Sciences University, which is the primary medical institution, and currently trains students up to PhD levels in three faculties, namely: Nursing, Allied Health, and Medicine, as well as the Institute of Research for Military Medicine.
Background
In 1963, Iran placed all military factories under the Military Industries Organization (MIO) of the Ministry of War. Over the next fifteen years, they produced small arms ammunition, explosives, and mortar rounds and fuses. They furthermore produced rifles and machine guns under West German license. Additionally, they assembled helicopters, jeeps, trucks, and trailers from imported kits. However, the Iran Revolution stopped all activities. The MIO was unable to operate without foreign experts, so it lost much of its management ability and control over its industrial facilities by 1981.
In late 1981, the revolutionary government brought together all military industrial units and placed them under the Defense Industries Organization (DIO). By 1986, a large number of infantry rifles, machine guns, and mortars and some small-arms ammunition were being manufactured locally. However, they required some specialists and technicians. For this purpose, they opened several universities and colleges, e.g. Imam Hossein University, Baqiyatallah Medical Sciences University, and Malek-Ashtar University of Technology, directly or indirectly linked to DIO by mid-1980s.
Prior to 1989, they began working on the ballistic missiles program was responsibility of the missile unit in IRGC. In 1989, the Ministry of Defense and the Guards merged to form the Ministry of the Armed Forces Logistics, and the IRGC's facilities were merged into the Defense Industry Organization. By the mid-1990s, they were reportedly responsible for Iran's missile programs, headed by the Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO).
On 18 June 2025, during the Twelve-Day War, Israeli airstrikes targeted Imam Hussein University. The strike reportedly resulted in at least 15 fatalities, including IRGC personnel, and caused significant structural damage to parts of the campus. The university was among several high-profile Iranian sites hit during a wave of Israeli attacks on military and strategic installations.
Research
It has a scientific group and a nuclear physics department. Imam Hossein University, which is particularly run on military lines by IRGC, is the center for experiments on nuclear research. Iranian scientists are conducting nuclear research and development using university laboratories.
However, it is not only a main center for nuclear research. It also has a place for biological research. Imam Hossein University has a biological section that conducts microbial research. Nonetheless, nuclear enrichment at Imam Hossein University is the mother of all research at what called a nuclear weapons university. Prof. Raymond Tanter, of Georgetown University, an expert on Iran, claimed that this university has become the center for all of Iran's secret nuclear programs. In February 1998, Imam Hossein University was identified by the British government as having procured goods and/or technology for weapons of mass destruction programs, in addition to doing non-proliferation related business.
It was named by the German government as an Iranian military procurement organization working toward acquiring weapons of mass destruction; reportedly conducts nuclear development activities separate from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, according to US officials produces anthrax and aflatoxin. It was added to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list maintained by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on 8 November 2012, freezing its assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting transactions with U.S. parties, which targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, and also listed by the Government of Japan in 2012 as an entity of concern for proliferation relating to missiles and biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.
During the 1990s, the Iran centralized several centers for nuclear research programme under a single unit. They transferred all of their nuclear facilities around the country to the Defense Ministry and also to Imam Hossein University. The announcement on the university's now defunct website shed light on one of Iran's developing nuclear programme and the laser enrichment technique. Prof. Raymond Tanter said that it particularly is importance to mention laser enrichment as a mean to create nuclear fuel. One of the most critical projects is conducted at Imam Hossein University on use of lasers for enrichment. In addition to laser enrichment, the university carried out a test on neutron generator that can also trigger the fission chain reaction.
In January 2006, the university had the third nationwide congress on the modern defensive wars in the field of chemical, biological, nuclear wars as announced on the university's website, which is no longer online. According to the announcement, the congress discussed the new types of bombs, such as: electromagnetic, air fuelled, graphite, laser and enfeebling bombs. Prof. Raymond Tanter argued the conference was a part of the accelerating research and development on nuclear programme.
Physics Research Center According to the El Baradei's report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the university called a technical university in the report houses the Physics Research Center (PHRC), which controls the Iranian nuclear program, once under the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Iran's civilian nuclear agency. One of the principal sources of nuclear experts has been Imam Hossein University. Part of the takeover of the Iranian nuclear program also necessarily included transferring experts from around the country into this university. The IAEA stated the IRGC is believed to have co-opted the nuclear research facilities and experts of the university system in order to conceal and cloak the true military aspect of the Iranian nuclear program. For example, an Iranian company, Kimia Maadan (KM) Company, made use of experts from this university. The IAEA had also questions regarding the role and origin of KM Company. The company was founded by nuclear experts, a core staff about half a dozen experts who had previously worked for the Iranian Ore Processing Center (OPC). There are relationships among various university research teams, PHRC of Imam Hossein University, the Education Research Institute (ERI) and the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP) and KM Company, each working on different aspects of the Iranian nuclear program.
One of the research projects addressed in the IAEA report is the Iranian Green Salt Project, apparently managed by KM Company. The project performed a flowsheet of bench scale conversion of uranium oxide (UO2) into 1 ton of UF4 per year, also known as Green Salt. It is an early step in an enrichment process, beyond the capacity or scope of the Uranium Ore Concentration (UOC) plant. According to the IAEA report, KM Company designed and built a turnkey (flowsheet). The document also referred to the project concerning the missile re-entry vehicle.
The IAEA has also reported the Iranian testing of multiple high-explosive detonators designs and documents the layout for an underground nuclear blast test facility in this university. In 2006, a senior US official revealed the Washington Post a diagram being schematically consistent with a nuclear test-site schematic in Iran. Later in 2006, a contingent of senior officers from Iran travelled to North Korea to see an underground facility to test explosion. IAEA also asked questions about the Iranian Shahab-3 missile designs. Specifically, re-entry vehicle designs are believed to be engineered for the ability to carry nuclear warheads.
The various scientific research groups of Iran's nuclear program, run from this university under the direction of the IRGC, are including efforts to obtain training courses and software on spark gaps, shock wave software, neutron sources, special steel parts, radiation measurement equipment, including borehole spectrometers. Nonetheless, Iran answered that it sought PAM shock software to study aircraft, collision of cars, airbags and for the design of seatbelts.
Biological Research Center The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) made a report about the biological activities in Iran, which are centered on the productions of microbial bombs using anthrax, smallpox virus, typhoid fever, high dosage of aflatoxin, plague microbes, and chloromicrobes, done at Imam Hossein University in Tehran. Genetic cloning is also being carried out at Malek-Ashtar University of Technology. These claims were provided by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in a press conference at the Willard Hotel in Washington on 15 May 2003. The activities about biological weapons began in 1985, during the Iran–Iraq War. In 1985 and 1986, they established a research center in the Pasteur Institute of Iran in Tehran to work on toxic fungus and microbial substances. The center succeeded in producing toxic fungus, including aflatoxin. In the next years, as they succeeded in mass production of microbial material, they moved the production centers to Imam Hossein University. Centers such as Pasteur Institute are now being used for research purposes.