Iran’s Regime Pushes For Nuclear Weapons As It Faces Existential Crisis – OpEd

In astatementon October 15, the Defense and Strategic Research Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) announced that Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has ordered the acceleration and completion of the production of nuclear weapons to ensure the regime’s survival. According to the statement, “Ali Khamenei, simultaneously withMassoud Pezeshkiantaking office, has ordered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to complete and accelerate the project of building nuclear bombs. Preparations in the parliament, Friday prayers, and the positions of experts and officials of the dominant faction of the regime are all in this direction.”

The “preparation” referred to in the statement includes:

– A statement of Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini, who emphasized on October 5 that “our military deterrence must rise to a higher level.”

– A letter from 39 regime Majlis (parliament) members on October 9, urging the regime’s Supreme National Security Council to “change the defense doctrine” and incorporate nuclear weapons into it.

– An October 11 interview by Al Jazeera with Kamal Kharrazi, the head of the regime’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, in which he said, “If the Zionist regime dares to harm Iran’s nuclear facilities… we will be forced to change our nuclear doctrine.”

– And a dozen other similar statements and positions within a specific timeframe, clearly showing they are neither coincidental nor personal, but rather part of a top-down directive.

The Iranian Resistance was the first to expose Khamenei’s nuclear bomb program three decades ago. At that time, U.S. President George Bush acknowledged that it was due to the revelations of the Iranian Resistance group that the world became suspicious of the Iranian regime’s nuclear program.

On December 6, 2003, BBC quoted a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency as saying that Iran was conducting various experiments. For example, they had obtained just under a gram of plutonium and were using several centrifuges. The spokesperson said that for the inspectors, without having information on this, discovering these experiments wasn’t easy because Iran is a very large country, and no matter how thorough the inspections were, it wasn’t necessarily expected that these findings would be discovered. They needed information, and in the end, they got it from the revelations of the NCRI, which provided details about Natanz and Arak facilities. This spurred the International Atomic Energy Agency to follow this information step by step, ask Iran’s regime for explanations about the findings, and gradually solve the puzzle.

In 2022, Olli Heinonen, the former Deputy Director-General of the IAEA, also said that the nuclear revelations by the Iranian Resistance suddenly changed everything and shocked everyone regarding the intentions of the Iranian regime.

Even former regime President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his presidential tenure said: “The PMOI published reports (about the nuclear program), created sensitivity, and then resolutions [against the regime] were issued one after another.”

The exposure of Khamenei’s “order” by the Iranian Resistance and the related “preparation” shows how desperate the regime is and views its situation as critically dangerous and fearing the prospect of strategic failure.

On October 12, Mehdi Mohammadi, advisor to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, acknowledged the dangerous situation on state television, expressing “concerns” and admitting: “We have entered a period of high tension, a period in which more surprising events are likely to occur in the future.”

Now the question is whether the regime’s efforts to ensure its survival and the public threats regarding its “nuclear doctrine” are beneficial for a regime struggling in the quagmire of defeat. The answer comes from within the regime itself. For instance, in an X post, so-called “reformist” figure Ahmad Zaidabadi expressed great fear, particularly of a well-equipped military coalition, and wrote to the 39 regime parliament members who demanded a change in doctrine and the building of nuclear weapons:

“Talk of changing the nuclear doctrine not only does not provide the slightest deterrence but even discussing it in this situation is, in a way, an invitation for a military attack on the country by a well-equipped and powerful military coalition. Is this what they want?”