You should know this because one of the reasons Trump’s been trying to use to justify this war is that Iran never said they wouldn’t pursue nuclear weapons.
You could say the fatwa is just talk but there’s a strategic argument for Iran to not get nuclear weapons besides the moral case. Iran doesn’t want to get nukes and become a pariah state like North Korea and cut itself off from global trade, they’re a Petro state they need trade. At the same time they don’t want Israel and the US to be able to bomb them with impunity. So their best strategy is to remain close to building a bomb, that way they can get sanctions relief while being able to dash for a bomb and nuclear deterrence in the case of a war.
You think a religious dude that just gunned down tens of thousands of his own people is honest?
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2026/feb/06/rasht-massacre-protests-iran-timeline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
Iran has repeatedly denied access to International Nuclear Inspectors:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mg7kx2d45o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3v6w2qr12o
I don’t like Trump. I don’t like Netanyahu. I don’t like this stupid war.
But this idea that Iran just isn’t interested in nukes is a joke. They have been absorbing crippling sanctions to enrich uranium far-above civilian grade.
Yes the Ayatollah massacred his own people, but that sadly is the logical move for an authoritarian regime. Building nukes and making the sanctions that cripple the economy which created the unrest permanent is not the best strategic move, as mentioned above. They want to get a deal done, it’s just trump / neta yahu will take nothing but complete capitulation.
They’re enriching uranium and denying inspectors because the US dropped out of the deal and they’re trying to bring them to the table. If the US is going to impose sanctions and put pressure on them they have to put pressure back on the US . Otherwise the US can just sit back and wait for the regime to collapse under the weight of crippling sanctions.
Under the JCPOA Iran never failed an inspection, it wasn’t until Trump dropped out of the deal that they stopped allowing them in, and if another deal is reached there’s no reason to believe that they’ll violate it.
If you look at the iranian regime as rational actors instead of crazy religious fanatics then all this starts to make sense. They can’t afford to be crazy religious fanatics, they have to make the best strategic moves because their regime is teetering under the weight of both external and internal pressures. The fact they’ve managed to survive this long is a testament to their capabilities. This is not to say their regime is good in a moralistic sense, it’s not, only that it’s good at keeping power.