Nuclear Weapons 122 - Some Analysts Have Doubts That Iran Has a Fatwa Against Nuclear Weapons
I have blogged about Iran's nuclear program and the negotiations that are going on with the U.S. and other Western powers. Israel is very concerned that Iran is working on an atomic bomb which the U.S. discounts. The U.S. is willing to allow Iran to have the ability to make a bomb as long as they don't make one. Israel is adamant that they will not allow Iran to have the ability to make a bomb. Our President has said that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced that the use of nuclear weapons would be against their religion. It had been reported that Khamenei issued a fatwa or religious edict stating that nuclear weapons are "haram" which means that they are forbidden under Islamic law. Now the existence of such a fatwa is being called into doubt. Although Iran has often referred to such a fatwa since 2003, so far, a search for a published record has not found it.
There is an official statement on the web page of Iran's Permanent Mission to the U.N. from February 19, 2012 which declares “The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons, because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.” However official this statement is from the government of Iran, it is not a fatwa which would have to invoke some Islamic text or tradition.
Pakistan, a Muslim nation, started working on nuclear weapons in 1972 but only detonated its first test devices in 1998 shortly after the second nuclear bomb test by India. Pakistan has never expressed any concern or reservations about a Muslim nation possessing or using nuclear weapons. Following Pakistan's first nuclear weapons test, Iran congratulated Pakistan and raised no issues of nuclear weapons being haram. In 1992, the vice-President of Iran said at a conference that since Israel possessed nuclear weapons, Muslim nations must cooperate to obtain nuclear weapons.
Critics of Iran's nuclear program say that Iran only began talking about such a fatwa because of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by Western forces searching for weapons of mass destruction. With U.S. and other troops on both its eastern and western border, it would have been wise of Iran to discount the idea that it wanted to possess nuclear weapons. These critics say that Iran is only claiming to have a fatwa outlawing nuclear weapons to encourage Western powers to accept their word on the matter and ease sanctions. They say that Iran will have no problem in changing their stated policy if and when they get nuclear weapons.
