On October 5, the ground shook in Semnan, about 200 kilometers east of Tehran. It was a simple earthquake, recorded by the United States Geological Survey, but social media users began to speculate about an alleged nuclear test by Iran. Last Wednesday, the Iranian English-language daily Tehran Timesconsidered the unofficial spokesperson for the hard wing of that country’s regime, titled its cover “The demand for nuclear weapons is growing,” in an article in which it cited Ali, a 25-year-old Iranian nurse who expressed his disappointment because this tremor did not It really would have been an atomic test. That same day, a letter from 39 conservative parliamentarians addressed to the Supreme National Security Council was published in which they requested the review of the national defense doctrine, which prohibits the manufacture of atomic weapons, to “strengthen the defensive deterrence” of their country. . The letter cited the “Zionist regime” [Israel].
Since last October 1, Iran launched some 180 missiles against Israeli territory—in response to the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Lebanon—the country has been awaiting the announced revenge of his Israeli nemesis. This horizon and the possibility of the extension of the war in the Middle East, with Washington’s foreseeable support for its Israeli ally, has put an end to the hand that the Iranian president, the moderate Masud Pezeshkian, had extended to the West on the issue. nuclear upon taking office in July.
On September 16, Pezeshkian declared his willingness to establish direct talks with the United States to revive the 2015 agreement that allowed international oversight of his country’s atomic program to ensure that Tehran did not build nuclear weapons. The relief of the sanctions that are suffocating the Iranian economy depends on this pact or another similar one, something that its authorities consider essential to reduce discontent with the regime, which was evident in the protests unleashed in 2022. Tens of thousands of citizens They were then thrown onto the street after a young woman who had been arrested for wearing her veil incorrectly, Yina Mahsa Amini, died at the hands of the police.
The 39 signatories of the letter calling for a change in military doctrine belong to the Coalition Council of the Forces of the Islamic Revolution, an ultra-conservative faction, very loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on the nuclear issue. They embody the hardline, whose proposals usually reflect the orientations of the regime’s leadership, especially Khamenei.
These hawks have traditionally opposed any agreement with the West, but their voices are not the only ones heard these days in Iran in favor of the country acquiring atomic weapons. “In Tehran there is an increasingly loud chorus [que reclama] the achievement” of this weaponry, Naysan Rafati, principal analyst for Iran at the International Crisis Group think tank, highlights by email from the United States. Another expert – who resides in Iran and who spoke to this newspaper on condition of anonymity – adds: “A growing number of Iranians are calling for a review of defense doctrine in the face of threats from Israel. “This public debate means that something is moving.”
Even the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, has participated in that controversy. The moderate cleric Hassan Khomeini, who supports Pezeshkian, “alluded a few days ago in an interview to the need to increase Iran’s deterrent sources, which the whole world saw as a clear reference to a modification in the Iranian nuclear program.” , emphasizes the analyst from Tehran, who maintains that right now “the idea of a nuclear or any type agreement with the United States is ruled out.”
In less than a month, events have precipitated in the Middle East—with the assassination of Nasrallah, the Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon, and the missile attack against Israel. In this context, the Iranian president has gone from reaching out to the United States on the nuclear issue to harshly criticizing Washington and, more significantly, the European Union, even if Brussels tried to save the nuclear pact after the United States The US broke it in 2018. Also to stage its closeness with Russia. On Friday, before his first meeting with President Vladimir Putin at a regional forum in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Pezeshkian asserted that Israel violates international law because it has “the support of the US and the EU.”
A “political” question
The Iranian Embassy in Madrid has assured this newspaper that the country’s official position on the nuclear issue has not changed. Tehran has always denied that its atomic program has military purposes and a fatwa Khamenei’s (dictum) prohibits this weaponry because he considers it contrary to Islam. The agreement signed by the country in 2015 – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the US, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Germany and the EU – obliged it not to enrich uranium above 3.75% purity undergo a tough inspection regime. The counterpart was the lifting of international sanctions. In 2018, when Iran was strictly complying with what was stipulated, Donald Trump unilaterally broke the pact and reimposed sanctions on Tehran. Ali, the nurse cited by Tehran Times This Wednesday, he assured: “I don’t understand why we don’t just develop nuclear weapons, since we are already paying the price for it.”
After the breakdown of the agreement, Iran no longer considered itself obliged to respect what was agreed. In 2021, it began enriching uranium to 60% purity. A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicated in February that the country accumulates more than five tons of enriched uranium, enough to manufacture two nuclear bombs if it reached a purity of 90%. Several Western intelligence services estimate that Tehran would need “between six months and a year” to manufacture atomic weapons.
Whether Iran obtains this weaponry is “more of a political issue than a technical one,” highlights the analyst speaking from Tehran, who believes that this debate could be “a probe balloon” aimed at the Iranians and the international community. This “warning to contain Israel’s almost certain retaliation” is one of the factors that could be behind these pressures from the hard wing of the regime, says Naysan Rafati. Israel – which is assumed to have nuclear weapons, although it does not admit it – considers that an Iran with atomic weapons is a threat to its existence.
Another reason Rafati cites is “the degradation of Hamas and Hezbollah,” members of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, the alliance led by Tehran against Israel and the United States. Especially Hezbollah, which served Iran to “deter attacks from being launched.” against Iranian territory.” With those groups “decimated” by the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, agrees Barbara Slavin, a researcher at the Stimson Center, Iran “feels increasing pressure to find another way to deter Israel from attacking it.”
“Iran has made it clear that if Israel, with or without the United States, attacks its nuclear facilities, it will abandon the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and build atomic weapons.” If Israel “refrains from attacking these facilities, Tehran will probably try to make its response proportional,” Slavin emphasizes.
The demand from the hardline of the Islamic Republic has another reading, says analyst Daniel Bashandeh. Nuclear policy “has always been used to condition internal dynamics and create cohesion within the regime.” The authorities are now trying to “close ranks and recover their credibility by maintaining that they can provide themselves with this weaponry.” The recipient of that message is not only Israel, nor the United States, nor Iran’s allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Also “the Iranian population itself.”