Iran's nuclear program history and shifting rhetoric

For decades, Western governments have questioned whether Iran's leadership has issued direct orders to develop nuclear weapons. Officially, Tehran maintains that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa in the early 2000s declaring nuclear weapons forbidden under Islam. While no written version of this religious ruling exists, its authority has been presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 and reiterated in 2019.

Despite these religious declarations, Iran operated a clandestine weapons development program known as the Amad Plan, led by physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This program utilized scientists who worked across civilian companies, research institutes, and the SPND organization. Although Iran denied the program's existence to the IAEA in 2015, a cache of documents and CDs smuggled from a Tehran warehouse by Mossad operatives in 2018 provided evidence that Iran pursued nuclear weapons in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

While Western intelligence suggested the program was halted in 2003 following the US invasion of Iraq, seized documents indicate that certain decentralized cells continued to operate. Furthermore, the diplomatic utility of the religious fatwa has been questioned, as former Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi suggested in 2021 that the ruling's application could change depending on circumstances.