Why Did Shamkhani Speak of Building an Atomic Bomb?
WANA (Oct 13) – Amid Tehran’s cautious silence about the future of the nuclear talks, a single sentence from Ali Shamkhani — a former defence minister and now a political adviser to the Supreme Leader — suddenly caught everyone off guard:
“If I returned to the defence portfolio, I would move toward building an atomic bomb.”
Although framed hypothetically, the remark carries significance for regional analysts beyond a mere “historical reminder.” Shamkhani is not an ordinary politician; he was one of the architects of the Islamic Republic’s defence structure and remains close to the inner circles of the leadership. He was reportedly a target for assassination during the recent Israeli campaign against Iran. For that reason, every word he utters carries strategic weight.
Shamkhani’s comment comes at a moment when, following Israeli strikes on its territory, reduced cooperation with the IAEA, and the initiation of snap-back measures by a European troika, Iran finds itself in a state of “nuclear ambiguity.” That ambiguity — neither a confirmation nor a denial of a weapons path — is itself treated in Tehran as part of a deterrence doctrine. Security-affiliated analysts say the remark is an effort to “revive calculative fear” in adversaries’ minds: a message to Israel and the West that “the era of voluntary nuclear transparency is over.”
Gen. Shamkhani: If I Could Go Back a Decade, I Would Definitely Build an Atomic Bomb
WANA (Oct 12) – Ali Shamkhani, former Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—who was reportedly one of Israel’s assassination targets during the recent twelve-day imposed war between Israel and Iran—made a controversial remark in his latest interview for an Iranian documentary program. He stated that if he could go back in time to the […]
Shamkhani, who served as defence minister in the 1990s, evoked the period when, according to Abdul Qadeer Khan (a Pakistani nuclear physicist and metallurgical engineer who is known as a father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program), Tehran sought bomb technology from Islamabad. That historical reference is less an exposé than a reminder of an unfinished trajectory: a programme Iran halted for religious and political reasons while preserving technical capacity. By returning to that memory, Shamkhani implicitly asserts that “Iran could have — and perhaps still can.”
In the recent twelve-day conflict between Iran and Israel, Tehran moved beyond merely symbolic retaliation and entered a phase of operational deterrence. The missiles that fell over Haifa and Bat Yam are precisely what Shamkhani was alluding to: an emphasis on absolute deterrence, even if that requires crossing previously observed red lines.
Shamkhani recalled that during the reformist period when he was minister, the political atmosphere favored a “dialogue of civilizations.” He added, however, “If I were in that position today, I would have chosen a different path.” The sentence contains an implicit critique of that era’s optimism. In his view, regional developments and the failure of collective security mechanisms have shown that survival is secured not by dialogue but by strength.
People walk past a billboard with a picture of nuclear scientists killed in Israeli strikes and Iranian centrifuges, on a street in Tehran, Iran August 29, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)
Iranian analysts believe Shamkhani’s hypothetical — “if I went back, I would build a bomb” — amounts to a reverse deterrence: a warning to Israel that, in the post-JCPOA environment, any attack could legitimate a weapons pathway for Iran.
On the surface, Shamkhani’s words may read as a military warning; at depth, however, they reflect a strategic reappraisal within Iran’s national security establishment: a shift from reactive defence toward asymmetric deterrence. This is the notion some foreign analysts call “Iran’s latent deterrence” — deterrence not by deployed weapons but by the capacity to build them.
Revisiting the Nuclear Fatwa of Iran’s Supreme Leader: Change or Adaptation?
WANA (Nov 09) – The issue of nuclear weapons and the stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran on this subject remains one of the most contentious topics in international politics. A key element of Iran’s policy is rooted in a fatwa (religious decree) by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, which prohibits the use and development […]
Within this framework, Shamkhani’s statement should be read not as an invitation to armament per se but as a declaration of a new phase in Iranian security logic: a logic of survival under perpetual threat.
The key question remains: is this rhetorical turn a prelude to a real change in Iran’s behaviour, or a calibrated play of “ambiguity” intended to contain the Israeli threat and send a message to the West? That very ambiguity may be Tehran’s most effective weapon.
