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

Below rigidity from U.S. President Donald Trump to abandon its nuclear programme, Iran has “vowed” to offer protection to its nuclear stockpile. On the identical time, passe supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disapproved of the use of nuclear weapons on non secular grounds. How does Iran reconcile the 2 positions?

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — NPT for transient — discourages countries from surroundings up nuclear weapons, nonetheless would no longer cease them from surroundings up the skill to create these weapons. Here is ostensibly on yarn of one of the most most identical technologies and processes are well-known in a civilian nuclear programme, desire to generate nuclear vitality and to create nuclear isotopes for medical use. However the NPT would no longer turn a blind respect altogether: it expects the civilian programme to embrace some safeguards that withstand the skill to originate from turning into the possession of a nuclear weapon. Examples of such safeguards embrace closely monitoring the use of technologies worship uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.