Does Tehran want the bomb?

May 25, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational, Linda Pentz Gunter
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/05/25/does-tehran-want-the-bomb/

Is Iran’s nuclear power program a tactical threat or purely commercial, asks Linda Pentz Gunter

“As a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on its religious and ethical principles, has never sought nuclear weapons and remains committed to the principle of non-production and non-use of weapons of mass destruction.”

That was the reassurance given by Iran’s foreign minister, Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, during the Tehran Dialogue Forum hosted earlier this month by the Center for Political and International Studies of Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

It’s a familiar refrain. Iran has consistently argued that it is exercising its “inalienable right” as a signatory to the NPT “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes” as allowed under Article IV of the treaty.

But is it?

Iran has freely admitted that it has enriched uranium-235 up to 60% — considered at least “weapons usable” (higher than 90% is considered weapons-grade.) Why would it choose to — or need to — do this if it has no intention of seeking nuclear weapons production, as Araghchi and others before him have claimed?

The answer to that question seems obvious and one we have repeated ad infinitum when exposing the flaw in the NPT which, in granting the development of civilian nuclear programs to signatories, ensures the pathway to the bomb is left permanently clear.

Even should Iran never actually develop nuclear weapons, it can use its civil program as a threat to do so. It is no idle threat. The possession of a civilian nuclear program affords Iran the materials, equipment, personnel and know-how to transition to nuclear weapons should it so choose.

What might push Iran to make that choice depends a lot on how the current talks go. Keeping Israel at bay — which wanted to start bombing Iran’s nuclear installations immediately — was one of the few sensible decisions the Trump administration has made.

However, in the view of Mohsen Milani, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies and Professor of Politics at the University of South Florida, developing nuclear weapons has always been on Iran’s agenda. Milani was speaking during a May 20 webinar on the Iran nuclear talks hosted by the Quincy Institute. You can watch the full webinar below.

“I have always believed and I continue to believe that Iran’s nuclear program was based on turning Iran into a potential nuclear power,” Milani said. “That is a power that has the infrastructure, the expertise, to develop a bomb should they decide to develop a bomb.”

How close Iran might be to that achievement is also much debated. In July 2024, then Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, suggested Iran “is now probably one or two weeks” away from producing enough weapons grade material to make a nuclear weapon. Milani thinks Iran “is much closer than it has ever been,” but doubts the timeline is one or two weeks.

But the key is that “Iran’s nuclear program has never been the central part of Iran’s defense posture, nor has the axis of resistance,” Milani said, referring to the informal coalition of Iranian-supported organizations across the region united to counter the influence of Israel and the US. What Iran is doing is ensuring it can keep the nuclear option, “should there be a need for it,” Milani said. The Trump administration’s approach in these negotiations, in Milani’s view, “is they want to make sure that Iran is incapable of doing what it has tried to do for the past twenty years.”

The whole issue of Iran’s nuclear aspirations is squarely in the news again as the Trump administration continues talks with Tehran about its nuclear program. Confusion and uncertainty has been created by the US side, principally Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, who has told Iran it can enrich uranium to commercial grade (below 5%), then changed his tune and insisted Iran can have no nuclear program at all.

After four rounds of largely fruitless talks, the Iranians began to lose patience, laying down their red line. “To say that ‘we will not allow Iran to enrich uranium’ is a huge mistake,” warned Ayatollah Khamenei of the American threat. “No one is waiting for permission from anyone. The Islamic Republic has its own policies, its own methods, and it pursues its own agenda,” he added.

Pushing Iran around on this might lead to another negative outcome. Iran could leave the NPT. “As a founding advocate for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in West Asia and a long-time NPT member, Iran has shown good faith by engaging in indirect talks with the United States,” Araghchi said at the conference. “But the Iranian nation cannot forfeit its legitimate right to peaceful nuclear technology, including enrichment, which is enshrined in the NPT.”

The speakers on the Quincy webinar agreed that this public back-and-forth by both sides was a mistake and that Iran should deal directly with the United States instead of through an intermediary, and behind closed doors.

By last Wednesday, the Iranian parliament had also made its views known, declaring it would not be held to any uranium enrichments level caps.

By Friday, a fifth round of talks had taken place, again with the Omanis as intermediaries at least some of the time. It was unclear what, if any, progress had been made, with both sides sounding cautiously optimistic. However, a red line for Iran remains the prospect of shipping its entire stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, as the Americans have suggested. Iran still insists it is happy to renounce any future nuclear weapons production, but not uranium enrichment. Further talks are planned.

But at the end of the day a larger question looms, which is whether nuclear nations like the US, which claims might and influence due to the possession of its nuclear weapons, has a right to tell another country it cannot have them?

Rather than perpetually wrestling with the nuclear hydra, the US could lead by a very different example and show the world that all of these extreme threats would be eliminated by disarming from nuclear weapons altogether. And given the template of flaws that Iran has laid out for us regarding our current disarmament treaties, that means abolishing nuclear power as well.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Opinions are her own.