Iranian hardliners say the time for nuclear weapons has come

Killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who prohibited atomic bombs, has prompted calls to weaponise enrichment programme

Two decades ago, Iran's then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons, a religious prohibition that would underpin the regime's insistence that its atomic energy ambitions were peaceful even as rampant enrichment put it on a collision course with the west.

Now, however, amid the devastation of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a growing number of hardline politicians, analysts and MPs are calling for Tehran to drop this stance, leave the international Non-Proliferation Treaty and embrace nuclear weapons.

"The latest military confrontations showed that achieving nuclear weapons for Iran is not an ambition, but a necessity more important than bread," Davoud Modarresian, a political activist close to hardline forces, wrote this month.

The public debate is a marked shift in a country where openly advocating for nuclear weapons has long risked being seen as challenging the authority of the supreme leader, the country's ultimate decision maker.

But Khamenei's killing, in a US and Israeli bombardment at the start of the war on February 28, may have paradoxically helped end this. His successor and son Mojtaba Khamenei, who has been in hiding since, has not publicly clarified whether he will stick to his father's position, a silence that has created the space for hawkish ideologues in Iran to argue their case.

Modarresian said Shia Islam was sufficiently dynamic to allow religious rulings to evolve in response to changing circumstances. And Hassan Ghashghavi, a spokesperson for the parliament's National Security Committee, last month said Iran's new leader could issue a new ruling on the nuclear issue and "nobody can stop him from doing so".

Iran needed to establish a "complete cycle of deterrence" to prevent the current pattern of negotiations and war from recurring, Ghashghavi said.

Part of this has been brought about by the fact that many regime loyalists see the conflict with the US -- which remains in a volatile, fraught stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has insisted it must control -- as existential.

Dozens of leaders and senior officials were killed during a 40-day bombing campaign, which came to a halt following a fragile ceasefire in April, and Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have repeatedly floated the prospect of regime change.

The US president has gone further, threatening to destroy Iran's "civilisation" and take the country back to "the stone ages", comments one senior western diplomat in Tehran said made regime officials wonder whether the US planned to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Iran's official stance remains that its nuclear programme is peaceful and it has no intention of developing arms. The country's top nuclear official Mohammad Eslami on Sunday said work towards producing 20,000 megawatts of nuclear-powered electricity had continued "even under war".

The open advocacy for a nuclear deterrent is a source of concern for some pragmatic politicians, including reformists who have long called for a less confrontational foreign policy.

Hossein Marashi, a senior reformist, last week told local media that "more important than enrichment and safeguarding nuclear achievements is safeguarding Iran and the Islamic republic".

Experts say that, with the war ongoing, Iran does not appear to be at the point of making a decision over the country's nuclear doctrine.

"It's a serious debate and is no longer a taboo due to the former supreme leader's fatwa," said Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at Crisis Group. "The war has strengthened those who argue that a country exposed to existential attack ultimately needs the ultimate deterrent."

But he added: "Tehran may seek to preserve its nuclear [infrastructure] while bargaining over the programme for economic or security concessions, rather than racing openly for a bomb."

"Much will depend on whether Iranian leaders believe weaponisation would prevent the next attack against it, or merely bring it forward."

Abolfazl Bazargan, an international relations analyst close to hardliners, told Tasnim news agency -- which is affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- that it would be an act of "self-defeat" for Iran to insist it would never develop an atomic weapon.

Tehran, he argued, should adopt a doctrine of not using nuclear weapons first but retain the ability to respond if attacked with them.

According to US intelligence assessments, Iran had begun initial work on a nuclear weapons programme decades ago before it was halted in 2003. Former US intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard told Congress last year America's intelligence community assessed that Tehran was not building an atomic weapon.

But a sharp increase in enrichment activity after Trump in 2018 pulled out of a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers nonetheless turned the country into what experts described as a "threshold state", with the capacity to weaponise the programme if it chose.

Today the Islamic republic's nuclear programme has been severely set back.

The US bombed Iran's three main facilities -- Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan -- during Israel's 12-day war against the Islamic republic in June last year. Trump, who insists Tehran must dismantle its nuclear programme, has also threatened to target a deeply buried facility beneath Kolang Gazla -- known as Pickaxe Mountain -- in central Iran.

One immediate concern for the US and western powers is the fate of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which consists of about 440kg of the element enriched to 60 per cent purity, a step away from weapons grade.

The stockpile -- which could theoretically provide enough uranium for about 10 nuclear weapons if enriched further -- is believed to lie beneath the rubble of the bombed nuclear sites.

Trump has demanded Iran, the only non-nuclear-armed power enriching at such levels, transfer it out of the country. But while Tehran has resisted, regime officials have indicated they could discuss diluting the stockpile as part of a wider agreement by which US sanctions are lifted and frozen funds held overseas released, conditions unacceptable to Washington.

Iran has not given the International Atomic Energy Agency access to its main nuclear sites since the June 2025 war.

Under the terms of the NPT, Iran must give three months' notice to all other parties and the UN Security Council were it to withdraw from the treaty, which diplomats say Tehran could use as a tactic to press Washington into reaching an agreement.

Two senior Iranian officials told the FT that withdrawal was not an immediate priority. "Our policy regarding the NPT has not changed yet, but this doesn't mean it won't in the future," one said.

The suggestion nonetheless remains controversial, even among some of those in favour of a more assertive Iranian defence stance.

Hamzeh Safavi, the son of a military adviser to Iran's supreme leader, has argued in interviews with local media that using other forms of unconventional weaponry -- including so-called dirty bombs -- could be just as effective a form of deterrence.

But such attitudes infuriate other hardliners. The principal obstacle to developing a nuclear weapon was not the religious prohibition, the political activist Modarresian argued, but "hesitation in the power ranks".