Iran could build a nuclear bomb, but religious zealots believe mass murder is wrong

By James J. Devine

The war launched against Iran is a strategic and political blunder of immense proportions. It is a war shaped more by bluster than by strategy—a conflict in which the president declared victory almost immediately, only to demonstrate that he had no clearly defined objective.

The principal justification for the war, however, is contradicted by a legally binding religious decree: the fatwa issued by Iran’s supreme leader.

In August 2005, the Iranian government formally presented the fatwa from the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, declaring that “the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam.”

This was not a casual remark. It was an official, documented statement of Iranian policy.

The prohibition extends to all weapons of mass destruction and is rooted in the religious and moral principles of the Islamic Republic. To dismiss it is, critics argue, an exercise in willful ignorance.

Supporters of this view note that the fatwa prohibits all weapons of mass destruction and, unlike the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is not subject to unilateral withdrawal.

That raises an obvious question: Why would a government intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon issue a formal, internationally documented religious decree forbidding such weapons? The answer, they contend, is that it likely would not.

In that respect, they argue, Iran’s commitment under the fatwa is broader and potentially more enduring than its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Critics argue that this inconvenient fact is routinely ignored by advocates of military confrontation in Washington and Jerusalem.

They contend that such hostility is rooted in a broader belief that the United States has a unique mission and right to oversee the international order. They further argue that this approach has produced a profound strategic failure.

Rather than eliminating a perceived threat, they say, the United States and Israel have strengthened Iran’s ability to disrupt global commerce, fueled regional instability and inflicted civilian suffering while failing to achieve objectives that diplomacy might have secured.

Like the doomed protagonists of a Greek tragedy, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, critics contend, have led their nations toward an avoidable conflict while overlooking what they regard as a central fact: Iran has formally and religiously declared nuclear weapons to be forbidden.

The repeated warnings that Iran is only weeks, months, or a few years away from developing a nuclear weapon have remained a cornerstone of Netanyahu’s foreign policy rhetoric for over 30 years.

Is it so difficult to believe that a religious zealot like Khamenei believes that the mass murder of all living creatures would be an affront to the deity responsible for all creation?

From that perspective, the war stands as a monument to strategic miscalculation, flawed intelligence and the dangerous consequences of political hubris.