The commander of the Iranian terrorist designated Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Hossein Salami, contradicting the recent remarks of a former lawmaker, has said that weapons of mass destruction or nuclear bombs (WMDs) have no place in Iran due to Islamic teachings.
Only last month a prominent former member of Iran’s parliament, Ali Motahari said in an interview that Iran had always intended to build a nuclear bomb that would have been used as a “means of intimidation.”
The senior IRGC commander even added that nuclear bombs, as a type of weapons of mass destruction, do not have any status in the Islamic system, noting that the true religion does not support resorting to this approach in confronting the enemy.
Meanwhile Motahari noted that the objective of building a bomb was pursued and supported by “the entire regime, or at least, the people who started this activity.”
Asked by the interviewer if the people behind Iran’s nuclear program intended to use the nuclear bombs, Motahari said, “No, we wanted to build it as a means of intimidation,” citing a verse from the Quran: “Strike fear in the hearts of the enemy of Allah.”
“If we could secretly produce and test a [nuclear] bomb like Pakistan [did], it would be a great deterrent,” he said, and went on to argue that “I believe if we started something, we should have finished it.”
Motahari, who is a social and religious conservative, has been an outspoken critic of certain policies of the Islamic Republic in recent years, including restricting fair competition within the system and political freedoms.
Officials of the Islamic Republic have repeatedly cited a fatwa, or ruling, issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declaring the use of chemical and nuclear bombs “haram,” or forbidden.
Also read: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ coup d’état in Iran; Ebrahim Raisi