Iran is willing to adjust its official nonproliferation doctrine and fully pursue a nuclear weapon if the country’s existence is threatened, a senior advisor to the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader told state-affiliated media this week.
While the regime has long maintained that it has no intention to utilize its nuclear program to build an arsenal, Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the country’s Student News Network on Thursday that “we have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine.”
Kharrazi also expressed that a potential escalation in the conflict with Israel may also force the regime’s hand.
Kharrazi’s statement comes mere days after the chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog traveled to Iran to evaluate whether the regime was abiding by the restrictions against weapons-grade enrichment.
Rafael Grosso, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), held talks with senior Iranian energy and political officials but, upon returning from the trip, said the Iranian government’s level of cooperation was “completely unsatisfactory.”
Khamenei, who has the final say on the country’s nuclear program, publicly banned the development of nuclear weapons about two decades ago in a fatwa, or religious ruling, saying the use of such weapons was “wrong” and “haram.” He reaffirmed this principle in 2019.
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