Iran hardliners ramp up calls for a nuclear bomb, sources say

By Parisa Hafezi and Angus McDowall

March 26 (Reuters) - The debate among Iranian hardliners over whether Tehran should seek a nuclear bomb in defiance of an escalating U.S.-Israeli attack is getting louder, more public and more insistent, sources in the country say.

With the Revolutionary Guards now dominant following the killing of veteran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war on February 28, hardline views on Iran's nuclear approach are in the ascendant, two senior Iranian sources said.

While Western countries have long believed that Iran wants the bomb - or at least the ability to make one very quickly - it has always denied that, saying Khamenei had banned nuclear arms as forbidden in Islam and citing its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

There was no plan to change Iran's nuclear doctrine yet and Iran had not decided to seek a bomb, one of the sources said, but serious voices in the establishment were questioning the existing policy and demanding a change.

The U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, which came midway through talks on Tehran's nuclear programme, may have changed the equation, convincing Iranian strategists that they have little to gain by forswearing a bomb or staying in the NPT.

HARDLINER STANCE

The idea of quitting the NPT - something hardliners have previously threatened - has been increasingly aired on state media along with the idea - once taboo in public - that Iran should go outright for the bomb.

Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the Guards, on Thursday published an article saying Iran should withdraw from the NPT as soon as possible while sticking with a civilian nuclear programme.

Hardline politician Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of senior official Ali Larijani who was killed in a strike this month, was quoted by state media this week urging Iran to suspend its membership of the NPT.

"The NPT should be suspended. We should form a committee to assess whether the NPT is of any use to us at all. If it proves useful, we will return to it. If not, they can keep it," he said.

Earlier in the month, state television aired a segment with conservative commentator Nasser Torabi in which he said the Iranian public demanded: "We need to act in order to build a nuclear weapon. Either we build it or we acquire it."

Nuclear policy has also been a subject of private discussion in ruling circles, said the two sources, adding that there was divergence between harder line elements including the Guards and those in the political hierarchy over the wisdom of such a move.

To be sure, Iranian officials have threatened in the past to reconsider membership of the NPT as a negotiating tactic during more than two decades of talks with the West over Iran's nuclear programme without ever having done so.

The more public debate may represent just such a tactic.

It is also far from clear how quickly Iran might be able to push for a bomb after suffering weeks of air strikes on its nuclear, ballistic and other scientific facilities and after a shorter air campaign by Israel and the United States last year.

Israel had repeatedly warned over many years that Iran was only months away from being able to make a nuclear bomb, citing intelligence reports, Tehran's enrichment of uranium needed for a warhead almost to weapons grade, and its ballistics programme.

NO CHANGE TO NUCLEAR POLICY YET

Analysts have said the Islamic Republic's goal has been to attain the status of a "threshold state" - able to produce a bomb quickly if needed but without incurring the pariah status that could come with the weapon itself.

Guards commanders and other senior figures had in the past warned that Iran would have to go straight for a bomb if the Islamic Republic's survival was threatened - a condition that the present war may meet.

Khamenei's fatwa, or religious opinion, that nuclear weapons were not permissible in Islam, was made in the early 2000s, though never issued in written form. Khamenei reiterated it in 2019.

One of the two senior Iranian sources said that with Khamenei's death and that of Ali Larijani, who the source said had also pushed back against hardliners, it was becoming more difficult to counter the more hawkish arguments.

It wasalso not clear whether the obligation to obey Khamenei's unwritten fatwa survived his death, though it would likely remain valid unless revoked by the new supreme leader - his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the death of his father.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi, writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Sharon Singleton)