The debate among Iranian hardliners over whether Tehran should seek a nuclear bomb in defiance of United States-Israeli pressure is getting louder, more public, and more insistent, sources in the country say.
With the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) now dominant following the killing of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war on February 28, hardline views on Iran's nuclear approach are in the ascendant, two senior Iranian sources said.
While Western countries have long asserted that Iran wants the bomb - or at least the ability to make one very quickly - it has always denied that, claiming Khamenei had banned nuclear arms as forbidden in Islam and citing its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
One of the sources alleged there was no plan to change Iran's nuclear doctrine yet, and Iran had not decided to seek a bomb, but serious voices in the establishment were questioning the existing policy and demanding a change.
The US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which came midway through talks on Tehran's nuclear program, may have changed the equation, convincing Iranian strategists that they have little to gain by forswearing a bomb or staying in the NPT.
Hardliners urge IRGC to quit NPT
The idea of quitting the NPT - something hardliners have previously threatened - has been increasingly aired on state media along with the idea that Iran should go outright for the bomb.
IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency on Thursday published an article urging Iran to withdraw from the NPT as soon as possible while sticking with a civilian nuclear program.
Hardline politician Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of senior official Ali Larijani, who was killed in a strike this month, was quoted by state media this week as urging Iran to suspend its membership in the NPT.
"The NPT should be suspended. We should form a committee to assess whether the NPT is of any use to us at all. If it proves useful, we will return to it. If not, they can keep it," he said.
Earlier in the month, state television aired a segment with conservative commentator Nasser Torabi in which he said the Iranian public demanded: "We need to act in order to build a nuclear weapon. Either we build it, or we acquire it."
Nuclear policy has also been a subject of private discussion in ruling circles, said the two sources, adding that there was divergence between harder-line elements, including the IRGC, and those in the political hierarchy over the wisdom of such a move.
It is also far from clear how quickly Iran might be able to develop nuclear weapons after weeks of air strikes on its nuclear and ballistic missile facilities and after the 12-day war last June, during which Israel and the US severely damaged Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Israel had repeatedly warned over many years that Iran was only months away from being able to make a nuclear bomb, citing intelligence reports, Tehran's enrichment of uranium needed for a warhead almost to weapons grade, and its ballistic program.
No change to nuclear policy yet
Analysts have said the Islamic Republic's goal has been to attain the status of a "threshold state" - able to produce a bomb quickly if needed but without incurring the pariah status that could come with the weapon itself.
IRGC commanders and other senior figures had in the past warned that Iran would have to go straight for a bomb if the Iranian regime's survival was threatened - a condition that the present war may meet.
Khamenei's religious opinion that nuclear weapons were not permissible in Islam was verbally made in the early 2000s, though never issued in written form. Khamenei reiterated it in 2019.
One of the two senior Iranian sources said that with Khamenei's death and that of Ali Larijani, who the source said had also pushed back against hardliners, it was becoming more difficult to counter the more hawkish arguments.
It was also not clear whether the obligation to obey Khamenei's unwritten opinion survived his death, though it would likely remain valid unless revoked by the new supreme leader - his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the death of his father.