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More and more of Iran’s politicians and hardliners are demanding the country develop nuclear weapons as war continues with the US and Israel — finally admitting what has long been feared by both nations.
Top lawmakers, analysts and politicians in Iran are calling for the country to formally drop the international Non-Proliferation Treaty and embrace a full race to create an atomic weapon following the seven-month war.
“The latest military confrontations showed that achieving nuclear weapons for Iran is not an ambition, but a necessity more important than bread,” Davoud Modarresian, an activist close to hardline forces wrote earlier this month.
Iranian leaders have long danced around their true intentions with their nuclear program after former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa against developing atomic weapons in 2005.
Since then, officials have maintained that any atomic enrichment happening inside Iran was for domestic nuclear energy development and not for bombs, despite doubt from nuclear watchdog groups — as well as American and Israeli leaders.
Following Khamenei’s death at the start of the war, calls for a nuclear-armed Iran have increased, with the ayatollah’s successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, yet to say whether he would deviate from his father’s path as he remains out of public sight.
Should he endorse the development of nuclear weapons, Iran’s leaders would have no choice but to follow suit, claimed Hassan Ghashghavi, a spokesperson for the parliament’s National Security Committee.
Ghashghavi, a hardline member of parliament, claimed that Iran needed a strong tool of “deterrence” to ensure no country can openly wage a convention war against the regime again, the Financial Times reported.
Another regime insider told the outlet that Iran needs to be like North Korea and develop nukes to end foreign interference within the country, with the official saying that support for the bomb rose “from almost zero to more than 50%” after the war began.
Some hardliners have even used President Trump’s threats about destroying Iran to fuel the need for the bomb, labeling the US as a threat to the country’s existence.
“The war has strengthened those who argue that a country exposed to existential attack ultimately needs the ultimate deterrent,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at Crisis Group, told the FT.
The current state of Iran’s nuclear program remains unclear after the country expelled United Nation watchdog monitors at the start of the war, when the US and Israel bombarded the country’s atomic facilities.
US officials have repeatedly claimed that Iran’s more than 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium was destroyed and buried in rubble.