From the pulpits of Friday prayers to street rallies, Iranian clerics and officials are increasingly urging the country’s leaders to reverse their long-standing pledge not to pursue nuclear weapons.
The demand, once seen as a fringe position for hardliners, is now entering mainstream public debate, a shift that could have huge consequences for Iran, whose government has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
“We must be equipped with nuclear weapons so that we can fight the criminal United States with force, God willing,” Ali Sepahvand, a Friday prayer leader in the western Iranian city of Kudasht, said last week, according to a widely circulated video.
As his voice echoed through the prayer hall, which was lined with photos of commanders killed in last year’s war with the United States and Israel, the congregation chanted: “Nuclear deterrence is our inalienable right!”
Calls for Iran to develop nuclear weapons are growing and the country’s leaders are using diplomacy to avoid a renewed war with the United States and Israel, an outcome widely seen as possible after Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections.
For decades, Iranian officials have publicly supported a religious edict issued by its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banning the development and use of nuclear weapons. He issued the decree in his capacity as Iran’s theocratic head of state, banning Iranian institutions, including the military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, from developing nuclear bombs.
But at the same time, Western intelligence agencies have reported over the past few years that there are signs that Iran is enriching uranium to levels approaching those that could be used to develop bombs. Some Israeli and U.S. officials have accused Iran of preparing to build one despite the fatwa.
To curb the threat, the United States and other world powers reached an agreement with Iran in 2015 to limit its nuclear activities. Three years later, President Trump withdrew from the agreement.
Regional analysts say Ayatollah Khamenei’s strategy is to keep Iran’s nuclear intentions vague in the hope of deterring an attack on Iran without actually allowing Iran to become a nuclear power.
But this approach has failed to prevent Israel and the United States from launching two wars against Iran since June 2025, including the one in February in which Khamenei himself was killed.
“He created this situation both internally and externally, spending money to buy bombs they didn’t have,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran analyst and editor of the independent regional news website Amwaj.media. “Now, there’s a sense that unless you have this ultimate weapon, you might end up being at the mercy of not only the United States but Israel at any time.”
Analysts said comments from President Trump himself could reinforce that assessment.
“If they had nuclear weapons, I would call the Supreme Leader and I would say, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? What can we do for you?’ instead of bombing him,” Trump said at the Republican midterm conventions in September.
Since attacks on Israel and the United States in 2025, there have been growing calls in Iran to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which bans the development of nuclear weapons.
In recent weeks, a growing number of Iranian political and religious figures have joined the chorus, suggesting to some Iranian analysts that this is an effort orchestrated or at least facilitated by the country’s leadership.
It is unclear whether new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has engaged in a serious debate on Iran’s nuclear doctrine. But Iran’s top national security official, Mohsen Rezaei, said in an interview on state television on Saturday that Iranian leaders were discussing the matter.
“No new decisions have been made,” he said. “The debate now, of course, is whether we want to retain the pre-war principles if war breaks out again.”
Mohammad Gadri, a foreign affairs expert in Tehran, said that advocating withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was once a minority position among the Iranian leadership.
He believes this is now becoming the majority view. “They believe that withdrawing from the NPT is a critical step in building deterrence if the military threat from the United States and Israel persists,” he said.
Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based Middle East research group, said raising the nuclear outlook is a strategy in itself at a time when Iran is on the cusp of another possible attack by the United States or Israel.
Memarian said Rezaei’s entry into the debate may be an attempt to push the U.S. into a deal at a time when Qatar has been engaged in intensive mediation efforts between Washington and Tehran.
“They are playing this card: If negotiations fail, we will pursue a different path, which will be very costly for you,” he said.
Of particular note is the number of Friday prayer leaders who have joined the call and effectively challenged the late Ayatollah’s fatwa.
“The taboo has disappeared,” Mr. Shabani said. “The religious basis for this shift is here. The question is whether a strategic or political shift will follow.”
Some reformist Iranian leaders, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and former President Hassan Rouhani, continue to support Iran’s peaceful nuclear doctrine.
Former diplomat Kourosh Ahmadi Shargh warned this week in Iran’s main reformist newspaper that abandoning the doctrine would carry serious risks. He said too many pro-weapons statements by prominent figures “is dangerous because it makes it harder for officials to do their job of trying to prevent another war.”
He believes that until Iran can build a bomb, the likelihood of an attack will actually increase.
Sina Tusi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank, said it would be harder for critics of the nuclear option to make their case after U.S. and Israeli attacks took out much of Iran’s top leadership and destroyed its infrastructure.
“The central issue for restraint advocates is to explain the benefits that Iran derives from remaining below the nuclear threshold,” he said.
At the same time, he said a new wave of U.S. attacks “could strengthen the argument for nuclear weapons that Washington says it wants to prevent.”
During a public prayer in Tehran on Friday, prayer leader Mohammad Javad Haji Ali Akbari declared that changing Iran’s nuclear doctrine was a “national demand,” according to videos posted on social media.
His congregants immediately echoed a common refrain at government-sponsored rallies decades ago: “Nuclear energy is our inalienable right!”
“That’s an old slogan,” he told them with a smile, “and we’ve exceeded that goal by a long way.”
Riley Nikunazar and Sanam Mahouz Contribution report