Between a fatwa and war: how Iran makes sense of its nuclear capability

Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to abandon its nuclear programme, Iran has “vowed” to protect its nuclear stockpile. At the same time, former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disapproved of the use of nuclear weapons on religious grounds. How does Iran reconcile the two positions?

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — NPT for short — discourages countries from developing nuclear weapons, but does not prevent them from developing the ability to make these weapons. This is ostensibly because some of the same technologies and processes are necessary in a civilian nuclear programme, like to generate nuclear power and to make nuclear isotopes for medical use. But the NPT does not turn a blind eye altogether: it expects the civilian programme to include some safeguards that resist the ability to develop from becoming the possession of a nuclear weapon. Examples of such safeguards include closely monitoring the use of technologies like uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.