By John LaForge
The president says Iran must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. In his February 24 speech to Congress, he said of Iran’s leaders, “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”
This is untrue, as we have heard “those secret words” many times.
For decades Iran has declared that nuclear weapons production would violate principles of the Quran, the government’s holy book, that it is not pursuing a nuclear arsenal, and that its uranium enrichment is strictly for civilian uses. The enrichment of uranium for civil nuclear reactor fuel is permitted by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran is a party to this treaty while the openly genocidal government of Israel, which possesses an arsenal of several hundred nuclear weapons, is not.
Speaking in Tehran on January 21, 2025, Ahmadreza Pourkhaghan, the head of Iran’s Armed Forces Judiciary, said, “The late Imam Khomeini did not allow the use of chemical weapons or any illegal and unconventional weapons, even against enemy forces,” and therefore, “it is based on this doctrine that the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] does not permit the armed forces of the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons.”
Dr. Saeid Golkar, at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, reported Feb. 11, 2025 that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and cited a religious decree, known as a fatwa, by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which bans weapons of mass destruction as evidence of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”
In October 2003, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued an oral fatwa, or a religious order, declaring that nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islamic law, and condemning nuclear weapons as “haram” (forbidden), and banning the production and use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in any form.
Ever since, Khamenei and other officials have repeatedly declared that Iran does not wish to produce nuclear weapons because Islamic law prohibits WMD.
For example, in 2021, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported that:
“Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s years-old fatwa banning nuclear weapons is again making headlines. The regime and its supporters, including former nuclear spokesman Hossein Mousavian, have long claimed that the fatwa is permanent and adduced it as proof that Iran is religiously forbidden from acquiring such weapons.”
In 2019, the radio broadcast The World reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “said that Iran was not looking to acquire nuclear weapons for a surprising reason — that they were illegal under Islamic law.”
In 2012, Farhad Shahabi Sirjani reported that:
“[A]longside the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, special media attention was paid to a Fatwa (religious decree) issued by Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, banning all weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons in particular.”
With a vast armada of U.S. Navy warships now menacing Iran, the memory of undeclared, unlawful, and unconstitutional U.S. forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ought to echo in the minds of Pentagon brass and White House advisors. The world knows Iran has no WMD, and no propaganda campaign or ginned-up White Papers have even been unveiled as a pretext for another unprovoked U.S. war of aggression. The bombing of Iran last June, the bombing of Venezuela last January, the ongoing bombing of civilian speed boats may not yet have habituated the public to blindly gratuitous militarism.
John LaForge, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Co-director of Nukewatch a nuclear power and weapons watchdog group.
