Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of the National Security Committee in the Iranian parliament, said on Wednesday that some of his fellow lawmakers are urging the Iranian regime to rapidly develop nuclear weapons to halt President Donald Trump’s agenda for the Middle East.
“A few months before Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, several experts said that Iran needed to build a nuclear bomb,” Ardestani told an Iranian news website.
“In this context, several members of the Majles wrote to the Supreme National Security Council, and also a number of clergy and government members appealed to the supreme leader to cancel the fatwa banning the creation of nuclear weapons,” he continued.
“I partly share the opinion of these people,” he said.
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The Majles is Iran’s name for its parliament, also known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly or ICA.
The fatwa or religious edict Ardestani referred to is an absurd fiction created by the Iranians to pretend their frantic enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade levels could not possibly be for nuclear weapons production, because Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supposedly determined that building nuclear bombs would violate Islamic law.
According to Ardestani, Iranian lawmakers are suddenly interested in canceling its religious edict against nukes because they recalled former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying President Donald Trump showed respect to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un because Kim had nuclear weapons.
Ayatollah Khamenei said on Wednesday that his regime showed the world it is here to stay when it celebrated the 46th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“This was a message of unity from the Iranian people. Despite the constant, idiotic threats against us, the people of Iran showed the world their identity, their strength, and their unwavering resolve,” the aging Supreme Leader declared.
Khamenei claimed both the revolution, and the celebration held to commemorate it, represented a “popular uprising” and “grand national movement.”
“Despite ongoing media bombardments, psychological warfare, and unfounded threats from adversaries against the historic development, the Iranian people stood strong in their commitment to the values of the Revolution with their indication of strong support for the event during this year’s marches and jubilations,” he said.
Khamenei addressed military officials and the families of “martyred” Iranian soldiers on Wednesday, and also visited an exhibition of new military technology.
“The issue of defending the nation, defending security, is not a small matter. Today, Iran’s defensive power is renowned and well-known. Iran’s friends take pride in this defensive power, and Iran’s enemies fear it. This is very important for a nation, for a country,” he said.
In truth, many observers have wondered if the stability of Khamenei’s regime might be in danger after most of Iran’s terrorist proxies across the Middle East were crushed in the Gaza war with Israel.
Tehran invested a great deal of money and time in building up the proxy forces that were shredded by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the Iranian public — which, contrary to Khamenei’s boasts, has been restless for quite some time — might not be happy about the money splurged on those ruined investments.
The Iranian economy is collapsing, with 45 percent inflation and a nearly 50 percent poverty rate. After years of railing against foreign governments and corporations, Khamenei’s regime is lifting import bans to mollify its angry subjects by letting them purchase desirable products — which they unfortunately cannot afford, because the Iranian currency has fallen to 928,000 rials against the dollar. Rent and real-estate prices have increased by thousands of percent each over the past decade.
Tougher economic pressure from President Donald Trump is bound to weaken Iran even further. Oil furnishes 40 percent of the revenue for the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Trump has threatened to cut off Iran’s oil sales if the regime does not abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“Iran’s economy is battered. It faces dire energy shortages, owing mainly to its own mismanagement and corruption, but also due to sanctions,” Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies senior fellow Afshin Molavi told Newsweek on Tuesday.
As for Iran’s defensive capabilities, Khamenei’s fairy tales cannot obscure the shocking embarrassment of Iran’s weapons failing completely against Israel during two missile strikes and the Israeli response. Iran’s reputation as a regional military power suffered enormously from these failures.
Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, on Tuesday condemned President Trump’s comments about thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions by any means necessary.
“These reckless and inflammatory statements flagrantly violate international law and the UN Charter, particularly Article 2(4), which prohibits threats or use of force against sovereign states,” Iravani wrote in a letter to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC).
“Any act of aggression will have severe consequences, for which the United States will bear full responsibility,” he added.
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