Sahimi received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 1977. After briefly working for the National Iranian Oil Company, he received a scholarship from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and travelled to the USA in 1978, completing his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1984. He then moved to the University of Southern California, becoming Chairman of his department from 1999–2005. Since then he has held the NIOC Chair, which was formerly known as the "Shah Chair", having been endowed by Shah Reza Pahlavi. He has also been a visiting professor in Australia and Europe, and a consultant to many industrial corporations.
Political views
Since 2003, Sahimi has written many articles on the subject of Iranian politics for websites such as , Antiwar.com and the Huffington Post. He has been a regular columnist for Tehran Bureau since 2008, and has written occasional pieces for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal the Harvard International Review and The Progressive. Sahimi writes in broad support of moderate and reformist elements of Iranian politics, considering himself a member of the Iranian Green Movement and often reprinting statements of prominent Greens. He holds the view that Iran's disputed 2009 election was fraudulent. He has on many occasions defended Iran's nuclear program as being peaceful, and the actions of Iran as being essentially legal and justifiable. In the process, he has frequently levelled criticism against other writers on the subject, accusing Con Coughlin of knowingly spreading lies and disinformation, and David Albright of exceptional bias.. He has also criticized two former Deputy Directors-General of the IAEA, Olli Heinonen and Pierre Goldschmidt, citing unnamed sources to accuse Heinonen of breaking the IAEA protocols by leaking confidential information and of spreading unconfirmed claims about the contents of a laptop that was supposedly stolen from Iran and given to Western intelligence agencies, as part of a "crusade against Iran." He also accused Goldschmidt of having a "personal agenda" about Iran's nuclear program, whilst also disputing his assessment that Iran has violated the NPT. In his writings on Iran's nuclear program Sahimi has also expressed the view that the United Nation's Security Council sanction resolutions against Iran are illegal. Because of his strong support for the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear program and the similarity of his arguments to those used by the Iranian government in its IAEA submissions, he has been accused of being close to the government in Tehran. Sahimi has denied these accusations, but has stated that his articles have been used without his knowledge by members of the Iranian political establishment including Ayatollah Rafsanjani.
