U.S. is in the dark on Mojtaba Khamenei’s views on the bomb

WASHINGTON- Days after being named Iran’s next supreme leader, and more than a week after U.S. and Israeli bombings wiped out much of her family, Mojtaba Khamenei issued her first statement Thursday demanding vengeance against the alliance for the war it started.

He called on Iranian forces to continue thwarting vital maritime traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz. He pledged to open new fronts against the United States and Israel. And he warned that Gulf states hosting US bases would remain targets of Iranian attacks.

Yet what concerned the White House most was what the new supreme leader didn’t say.

Khamenei made no mention of a strategic effort that had led the Islamic Republic to war: its nuclear program, suspected for decades of having military dimensions.

The omission was not lost on Trump administration officials, who told the Times they were largely unaware of the new supreme leader’s position on whether Iran should pursue building a nuclear weapon.

Khamenei’s deep alliance with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has advocated militarization in the past, has raised fears that the new leader will stray from his father’s long-standing stance against building a bomb.

U.S. intelligence assessments have long maintained that the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei adopted a strategy of remaining on the threshold of developing a nuclear weapon while avoiding the costs and risks of making it. In 2003, as the United States invaded Iraq following false allegations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, Khamenei issued a religious edict – a fatwa – declaring that nuclear weapons were prohibited by Islam.

That doctrine is now in doubt, with the new supreme leader injured and living in hiding following the U.S. attack that devastated the Iranian military and killed his father, mother and sister, among other family members.

The concern among US officials comes as Trump has expressed interest in ending the war “very soon”, even if a stockpile of uranium – a key ingredient in building nuclear weapons – remains buried but accessible to Iranian authorities.

Defense officials are skeptical that the nuclear program can be completely dismantled without sending a substantial U.S. ground force, an escalation that Trump has sought to avoid. But ending the war with Iran’s nuclear infrastructure partially intact could have devastating repercussions. The U.S.-Israeli campaign could force Iran’s new leader to conclude that the regime’s survival requires a nuclear deterrent, an official said.

“Even if President Trump declares victory tomorrow and highlights the damage to Iran’s conventional military, the fact is you have a tougher regime in place with the key ingredients for a nuclear weapon,” said Eric Brewer, assistant vice president for the nuclear materials security program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, who noted that Tehran still has a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent — close to weapons-grade — and advanced centrifuges to get across the finish line.

“What is the plan for the next day,” Brewer added, “as Iran begins to rebuild and potentially seeks nuclear weapons?”

Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Mojtaba Khamenei’s position on the nuclear program remains a stubborn mystery. Reports on social media that he opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear deal negotiated between world powers and Iran under the Obama administration, were baseless, he said.

“Although Mojtaba often advised his father on domestic issues, there is much less information about his position on foreign affairs, aside from his opposition to Israel,” Clawson said. “I have never seen any indication that he took a position on the JCPOA.”

President Trump has presented the destruction of Iran’s nuclear capabilities as a major goal. But in closed-door briefings to Congress, defense officials were less definitive, according to Democratic lawmakers.

On Tuesday, shortly after Khamenei was named to succeed his father, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned him to disavow continued nuclear work in an exchange with reporters.

“It would be wise to heed the words of our president not to pursue nuclear weapons,” Hegseth said, “and state that clearly.”