Thijs

Erosion of the nuclear taboo in Iran: For decades, Iran's nuclear policy was constrained by a religious edict issued by the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, prohibiting the development and use of nuclear weapons. Today, however, voices from Friday prayer pulpits to street demonstrations are calling on the leadership to abandon its longstanding commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. Millions of Iranians, alongside lawmakers and political figures, are increasingly demanding a decisive and timely shift in the country's defense and nuclear doctrine. At the highest political level, the shift is becoming explicit. Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, said in a state television interview that the leadership was debating whether to maintain its pre-war nuclear doctrine. "No new decision has been made yet," he said. "But, of course, the debate now is whether we want to keep the same doctrine we had before the war." Calls for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), once confined to the political margins, are also becoming increasingly prominent in national media. In parliament, prominent figures have joined the debate, arguing that if Iran possessed nuclear weapons, its adversaries would not dare attack the country or target its leaders and ordinary citizens, including schoolchildren. Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, in his recent remarks said that even before the war was imposed on Iran, 70 percent of Iranians supported acquiring nuclear weapons as a means of securing deterrence. The underlying perception is increasingly clear: without the ultimate deterrent, Iran could remain vulnerable to attacks by the United States and Israel at any moment. Trump himself reinforced this perception when he said at a Republican convention in September that if Iran possessed a nuclear weapon, he would be "calling the leader politely."