For two decades, one document stood between Iran and the bomb — at least in diplomatic terms. Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons was cited in international negotiations, referenced by Western analysts, and treated by some governments as genuine evidence that Iran would not pursue nuclear arms. On February 28, 2026, Khamenei was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike. The fatwa died with him. And 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — enough, if further enriched, for ten nuclear weapons — sit in an underground tunnel complex in Isfahan, beyond the reach of international inspectors.

The question is no longer whether Iran has the technical capacity to build a nuclear weapon. The question is whether anything still prevents it from doing so.

The Fatwa: Diplomatic Shield, Not Religious Conviction

For years, Iran’s nuclear fatwa served as a centerpiece of its diplomatic defense. Iranian officials cited it at the United Nations, in negotiations with the P5+1, and in public statements intended to reassure the international community. Some Western analysts accepted it as a meaningful constraint.

But the Washington Institute for Near East Policy documented that fatwas in the Islamic Republic are governed by the principle of maslahat — regime expediency. They can be issued, modified, or reversed when strategic circumstances require it. The Atlantic Council went further, noting that Khamenei himself described Iran’s entry into the JCPOA as taqiyya — religiously sanctioned deception. If the agreement that supposedly operationalized the fatwa was itself an act of deception, the fatwa was never a permanent theological prohibition. It was a tool — deployed when useful, retractable when not.

In February 2025, according to The Telegraph via the Jerusalem Post, senior IRGC commanders pressured Khamenei to rescind the fatwa, arguing that Iran faced existential threats from the West. One official reportedly stated: “We have never been this vulnerable, and it may be our last chance to obtain one before it’s too late.” Khamenei resisted. One month later, he was dead. And with his death, as IranWire’s legal analysis detailed, the fatwa’s binding authority effectively ended — in Shia jurisprudence, a fatwa is tied to the life of the issuing marja, and since Khamenei never codified his ruling as a governmental decree (hukm-e hukumati), no branch of the Islamic Republic is any longer bound by it. Mojtaba Khamenei, chosen as supreme leader on the explicit criterion that he should “be hated by the enemy,” has neither reaffirmed nor rejected his father’s fatwa.

The diplomatic shield is gone.

What Remains: 440 Kilograms in the Dark

As of the IAEA’s last verified inspection on June 13, 2025 — the day Israeli strikes began — Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. This is the largest stockpile of highly enriched uranium held by any non-nuclear-weapon state in history.

The majority — over 200 kilograms — was stored in an underground tunnel complex at Isfahan. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi confirmed in March 2026 that the material is “probably still there.” Satellite imagery shows the tunnel complex sustained minimal damage from the June 2025 strikes, with regular vehicular activity continuing around its entrance. Additional quantities were stored at Natanz and possibly Fordow.

Since June 13, 2025, the IAEA has had no access to any of Iran’s four declared enrichment facilities. It cannot verify the size, location, or status of the stockpile. It cannot confirm whether enrichment has resumed. And it cannot confirm the status of a fourth enrichment facility — the Isfahan Fuel Enrichment Plant (IFEP) — that Iran declared just before the strikes but that the IAEA has never visited and whose precise location remains unknown.

In its March 2026 statement, the E3 (Britain, France, Germany) warned that the IAEA “reports increasing risk of diversion” and noted that the agency “clearly does not discount the possibility that this enrichment plant was already operational.”

Nine months without international monitoring. A stockpile sufficient for ten weapons. A declared enrichment facility that no inspector has ever seen. And a regime that, according to U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, openly boasted during negotiations about having enough enriched uranium for eleven bombs.

Breakout: Days, Not Months

The technical threshold is alarmingly thin. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, Iran could produce its first 25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium (enriched to 90 percent) at Fordow in as little as two to three days. The full conversion of its 60 percent stockpile to weapons-grade material could yield enough for nine weapons within three weeks.

But enrichment is only the first step. A functioning nuclear weapon requires conversion of uranium hexafluoride to uranium metal, precision metallurgy to shape the core, a conventional explosive implosion system, a neutron initiator, successful testing, and miniaturization into a deliverable warhead.

Iran has made documented progress on each of these stages. The IAEA confirmed in its May 2025 assessment that Iran conducted four full-scale hemispherical implosion tests and was preparing for cold tests — one of the final steps before a live weapon. At the Lavisan-Shian facility in Tehran, undeclared uranium metal was used to produce explosively driven neutron sources (EDNS) — the initiator at the core of an implosion-type nuclear weapon. At Parchin, the IAEA found traces of uranium particles consistent with hydrodynamic testing using natural uranium as a surrogate for weapons-grade material.

More troubling still: the Institute for Science and International Security reported that at Taleghan 2 — a former weapons development site within the Parchin complex that Israel destroyed in October 2024 — Iran has built a new facility on the same foundations, containing what appear to be high-explosive containment chambers capable of testing nuclear weapon components. The site has been extensively hardened and buried, indicating its strategic importance. Despite its documented ties to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the IAEA has never visited Taleghan 2.

In late 2024, according to The New York Times, U.S. and Israeli intelligence detected a secret team of Iranian weapons engineers exploring how to build a crude nuclear weapon — a gun-type fission device so simple it does not require testing and could be produced in as little as six months. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists confirmed that such a device is feasible even with 60 percent enriched uranium — without further enrichment to weapons-grade.

The question of whether Iran “can” build a bomb has been answered. The remaining question is whether it already has.

On March 3, 2026 — three days after Khamenei’s death — Iran’s Institute of Geophysics at the University of Tehran reported a 4.3-magnitude earthquake near Fin, in Hormozgan Province, at a depth of 22 kilometers. The USGS did not register any seismic event at that location. What the USGS did record that day was a 4.4-magnitude event at 06:54 UTC — but 52 kilometers northwest of Gerash, in Fars Province, at a depth of 10 kilometers. The location, magnitude, and depth all differ from what Iran reported. Gerash and Fin are approximately 100–150 kilometers apart.

The discrepancy raises questions. Why did Iran report a seismic event that does not match what international monitoring networks recorded? Why do the location, magnitude, and depth differ? And why did the event occur precisely when the last institutional barrier to weaponization — the fatwa — had just been removed?

This article does not claim that the March 3 event was a nuclear test. The available evidence is insufficient for such a conclusion. But in a context where 440 kilograms of near-weapons-grade uranium have been beyond international monitoring for nine months, where a new supreme leader has been chosen explicitly for confrontation rather than negotiation, and where Iran’s own negotiators have boasted of their nuclear capability — unexplained seismic discrepancies deserve investigation, not dismissal.

In the weeks since the current conflict began, Iran has launched waves of missiles and drones at targets across the Gulf — energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, airports, shipping lanes. With its ballistic missile capacity reduced by an estimated 86 to 90 percent according to CENTCOM and IDF assessments, these strikes appear militarily irrational. Iran is expending its remaining conventional arsenal against targets that do not change the strategic balance.

Unless the purpose is not military but temporal. If the real objective is to buy time — to keep international attention focused on the missile threat while something else is being prepared — then the strikes are not irrational at all. They are a distraction.

As I argued in my previous analysis, the Islamic Republic’s behavior becomes coherent when viewed through the lens of an operation in its terminal phase. An operation executing a scorched earth extraction does not need to win the conventional war. It needs to keep the adversary looking in one direction while it acts in another.

The international community should not assess Iran’s threat solely through the lens of missiles and drones. The greater danger may be the one that is not visible — unfolding in tunnels beneath Isfahan, in a facility no inspector has ever visited, and in a program that has been in the dark for nine months.

The Operational Logic of the nuclear weapon

Western deterrence theory assumes that nuclear weapons serve a defensive function: a state acquires the bomb to prevent attack, not to invite destruction. Under this logic, a nuclear-armed Iran would be dangerous but ultimately deterrable.

But this logic applies to regimes — states that prioritize survival. As I explored in “Why Mojtaba Khamenei?”, if the Islamic Republic functions not as a regime but as an operation, the calculus changes fundamentally. An operation in its scorched earth phase does not acquire the bomb for deterrence. It acquires it for use. Not to protect the state, but to ensure that if the operation ends, maximum damage is inflicted on the operational environment.

Hassan Ahmadian, a professor at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera after Khamenei’s killing: “The decision has been made. If attacked, Iran will burn everything.” Foreign Minister Araghchi declared: “I am certain we will celebrate victory in the coming days.” These are not the statements of a regime seeking to survive. They are the statements of an operation preparing its endgame.

The fatwa is dead. The stockpile is intact and unmonitored. The enrichment facilities include at least one that no international inspector has ever seen. The weaponization research — implosion tests, neutron initiators, uranium metallurgy — was more advanced than publicly acknowledged. The breakout timeline is measured in days. The new supreme leader was chosen not for governance but for confrontation. And the conventional missile barrages may be buying time for something far more dangerous.

The international community continues to frame Iran’s nuclear program as a proliferation risk to be managed through diplomacy. But diplomacy requires a partner that seeks survival. An operation executing its final phase does not seek survival. It seeks completion.

The question is no longer whether Iran can build a nuclear weapon. The question is whether the world will recognize what is happening before it is too late.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)