By Javad Heiran-Nia
As tensions between Israel and Iran continue to rise in the aftermath of missile strikes and counterstrikes, current and former Iranian officials are openly debating whether the acquisition of nuclear weapons would help or hurt Iran’s national security.
The topic is not new but has taken on more urgency since an Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Damascus killed seven Iranian officers in April. A few days later, the commander of Iran’s Nuclear Centers Protection and Security Corps, Brigadier General Ahmed Haq Talab, declared that if Israel decided to strike one of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Islamic Republic could “revise” its nuclear doctrine which regards weapons of mass destruction as against Islam.
Israel, which struck Iran on Oct. 26 in response to an Iranian missile barrage against Israel Oct. 1, has so far refrained from targeting nuclear facilities in Iran, in part at the insistence of the Biden administration. However, there are proponents of hitting Iranian nuclear sites both in Israel and the U.S.
Kamal Kharrazi, a veteran former foreign minister who heads an influential foreign affairs advisory body, warned recently that if Israel “dares to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities, our level of deterrence will be different. We have no decision to produce a nuclear bomb, but if the existence of Iran is threatened, we will have to change our nuclear doctrine.”
Even Ali Akbar Salehi, a former foreign minister and former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, who helped negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that limited Iran’s nuclear program, said provocatively in February that an atom bomb is like a car for which Iran possesses all the necessary parts.
More recently, Seyyed Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the leader of Iran’s 1979 revolution, called for an increase in Iran’s level of deterrence.
Some American experts have warned that Iran might quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), using the three-month notice period as a bargaining tool in the interim before a new U.S. president takes office.
Aladdin Boroujerdi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that “withdrawing from the NPT … to defend the country’s national interests is a serious idea, but of course its implementation ultimately requires the parliament’s approval.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in 2009 issued a religious fatwa against weapons of mass destruction, would have to approve such a change.
On Oct. 18, nearly 40 members of parliament sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, its top security policymaking body, requesting that the council revise the defense doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran to permit development of nuclear weapons.
However, Mahmoud Vaezi, who heads the office of former President Hassan Rouhani, warned that such a step – while a message to Iran’s adversaries — should not be taken without more input from Iran’s diplomatic and foreign policy community.
Iranian media have organized roundtable discussions and polls about the pros and cons of developing nuclear weapons. The Tabnak news agency, which is affiliated with Mohsen Rezaei, a veteran former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), asked readers for their views. Of 66,000 people who responded, two-thirds were in favor.
The Tehran Times newspaper affiliated with Ayatollah Khamenei wrote in a frontpage editorial on Oct. 8 entitled “Rising call for nukes” that more than 70 percent of the Iranian people want to get the atomic bomb.
Some have noted the theory of U.S. scholar Kenneth Waltz—expressed in a 2012 article in the journal Foreign Affairs– that if Iran gets the bomb, it will create a balance of terror against Israel and other Iranian enemies that would inhibit Israel from attacking Iran and its regional partners.
The argument that Iran needs a new kind of deterrence has been bolstered by the experience of the past year and serious damage to Iran’s non-state partners Hezbollah and Hamas – including Israel’s killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and assassinations of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and senior military commanders in Lebanon as well as serious damage from a new Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Under Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa, which was issued in a message to an international conference on disarmament and non-proliferation, “in addition to nuclear weapons, other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons and biological weapons are also considered a serious threat to humanity. We consider the use of these weapons to be forbidden.”
However, Hassan Ali Akhlaghi Amiri, a member of parliament, said recently that the fatwa could be altered if circumstances changed.
Still, many reformists and moderates oppose such a shift as contrary to national interests. Some see it as an emotional decision that could have heavy costs for the Iranian people, who are already contending with economic sanctions.
Rahman Ghahremanpour, a disarmament expert, noted that withdrawal from the NPT would fall afoul of the UN Security Council, where European countries have until October 2025 to “snap back” UN sanctions lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal. In addition, he said that to achieve complete deterrence, Iran would need a nuclear triad composed of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers and submarines. While Iran has sufficient fissile material to build several bombs, its only delivery system at present are missiles.
Some opponents of building bombs are also worried about the chances for sparking proliferation in the region – including by encouraging Saudi Arabia to go nuclear. Also, Iran – unlike North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel, which have all acquired nuclear weapons outside the NPT – does not have the explicit support of any major power to develop nuclear weapons despite warming relations with Russia and China.
Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, the former head of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that the request of members to change Iran’s defense and nuclear strategy in the middle of a war could actually benefit Israel. “All the countries that got the nuclear bomb, from the United States to Israel, North Korea and Pakistan, all got the bomb in a secret process,” he said. “Because if a country, especially in the Middle East, wants to get an atomic bomb openly, it will be targeted.”
As Iran weighs whether to change its nuclear doctrine, it is also considering extending the range of its missiles beyond a self-imposed limit of 2,000 kilometers. Former foreign minister Kharrazi noted that in the past, “we have taken into account the sensitivities of the West, especially the Europeans … but when they do not take into account our sensitivities, especially on the issue of the territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there is no reason for us to take their sensitivities into account. Therefore, there is a possibility that the range of Iranian missiles will increase.”
Kharrazi’s spoke after a speech on Oct. 11 by Ayatollah Khamenei in which he said that “some Iranian officials, through strange analysis and imagination, think that refraining from producing armaments that make the arrogant powers sensitive, including missiles, can bring security to Iran. However, this misconception and thinking actually tells the nation and officials to keep the country weak in order to be safe.”
So even if Iran does not decide to build nuclear weapons, we may see changes in the range of Iran’s missiles.
Javad Heiran-Nia directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran. His book, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf, is being published by Routledge. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @J_Heirannia.
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