New Delhi: Tehran’s interim Friday prayer leader, Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, called on Friday for a review of Iran’s nuclear doctrine, describing it as a national demand. His intervention adds to public pressure for a policy shift, although no decision to develop nuclear weapons has been announced.
According to the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency, in his sermon, Haj Ali Akbari sought expert proposals for the supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. He cited unspecified surveys showing support above 70 per cent, but the report supplied no methodology to assess that claim.
The remarks followed a separate appeal by the Iranian lawmaker, Mahmoud Nabavian, for Khamenei to permit atomic bomb development. Nabavian said he had raised the request at a gathering in Qom, according to reports published on October 30.
Other lawmakers have advanced similar arguments, presenting nuclear weapons as a means of preventing further American and Israeli attacks. On October 18, Ahmad Naderi publicly supported acquiring a bomb and suggested that Khamenei might adopt a different position from his father, although that was the lawmaker’s interpretation rather than an announcement from the leadership.
The campaign has also gained visibility in establishment-linked media, with Fars circulating selected street interviews supporting nuclear armament. Those interviews demonstrate the promotion of that argument but cannot establish how widely it is shared across Iranian society.
The renewed debate coincides with another diplomatic effort to end the conflict between Iran and the United States. On Friday, Qatari mediators had returned to Tehran, with Washington seeking nuclear discussions from the outset and Iran demanding that the United States first end its port blockade and lift restrictions on Iranian oil exports.
What we know about Iran’s nuclear doctrine, capabilities
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme serves peaceful purposes, citing both its international commitments and the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s religious ruling against nuclear weapons. His son’s succession has prompted speculation about whether that prohibition could change, but public advocacy by clerics and parliamentarians does not itself establish a new state policy.
The secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, explicitly said in September that the country remained committed to the late leader’s ruling and had not changed its nuclear doctrine. He nevertheless left open the possibility of a future reassessment, according to the Iranian state broadcaster’s account of his interview.
The European Council on Foreign Relations’ nuclear monitor, updated on Wednesday, assessed that Mojtaba Khamenei had neither publicly endorsed nor abandoned his father’s prohibition. The available evidence therefore establishes an intensifying debate over policy, while leaving the leadership’s ultimate intentions uncertain.
The more immediate concern is the lack of reliable verification of Iran’s nuclear material and facilities. In its September 1 safeguards report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it could not provide current information on the size, composition or whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile because it lacked the necessary information and access.
The agency estimated that Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to as much as 60 per cent on June 13, 2025, when Israel’s attacks began. That is a historical estimate of the stockpile before the strikes, rather than a verified measurement of the material currently available to Tehran.
Addressing the United Nations security council on Tuesday, the IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, again sought access to verify the material. He said Iran had not provided the required information and access at affected and unaffected facilities, with the Bushehr nuclear power plant remaining an exception where inspectors were undertaking verification work.
Grossi also reported that the agency had identified no activity to repair or reconstruct nuclear facilities damaged in the military attacks of 2025 and 2026. That finding concerns what monitoring has detected; it does not resolve the unanswered questions about nuclear material or replace inspections inside the facilities.
The distinction matters because an inability to verify that material remains in peaceful use does not, by itself, demonstrate that it has been made into weapons. Equally, the absence of visible reconstruction cannot provide the assurances that inspectors would obtain through access, measurements and nuclear material accounting.
Iran also remains bound by obligations separate from any religious ruling or national doctrine. Under Article II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a non-nuclear-weapon state party undertakes not to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons, while Article III requires safeguards to verify compliance.
Some Iranian lawmakers have advocated leaving the treaty, and a group submitted a withdrawal bill following the IAEA board’s September referral of Iran to the security council. The proposal had not advanced into an announced withdrawal in the assessments reviewed, and Rezaei’s September position was that no withdrawal decision had been taken.
The treaty’s withdrawal provision requires three months’ notice to other parties and the Security Council, accompanied by an explanation of the extraordinary events said to have jeopardized the country’s supreme interests. A domestic change in doctrine or religious interpretation would therefore leave a separate international legal question to be addressed.
The current dispute also reflects the breakdown of earlier restraints and monitoring arrangements surrounding Iran’s programme. The IAEA’s September report records that a June understanding between Washington and Tehran envisaged resolving the enriched uranium stockpile through dilution under agency supervision, but the agreement subsequently unravelled and its initial 60-day period expired in August.
For now, the established developments are a more open campaign for nuclear armament, continued uncertainty over the stockpile and renewed mediation. Evidence of an actual strategic shift would require an authoritative policy announcement or verified developments in the programme – neither can be inferred from the cleric’s appeal alone.