“If threatened…”. The Warning – The Time

Iran will change its nuclear policy, which imposes exclusively civilian use, if there are threats to its existence. This is the warning launched by Kamal Kharrazi, advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We have not decided to produce a nuclear bomb, but if Iran’s existence is threatened we will change our nuclear doctrine,” he said, adding that “if the Zionist regime dares to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities, our level of deterrence will be different.” “Two years ago I said that Iran has the potential to produce a nuclear bomb, and today we still have this capability,” warned Kharrazi, underlining that in any case Tehran “has not decided at all” to produce one.

Already last April, a commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had reported that Israeli threats might push Tehran to change its nuclear doctrine. In 2022, Kharrazi himself explained that Iran was technically capable of building a nuclear bomb but had not yet decided whether to do so or not. Israel “will continue to fight Hamas until its destruction.” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that “there is no more just war than this one”. Israeli defense, meanwhile, fears that the United States’ decision to delay arms shipments to Israel might affect the IDF’s preparation for potential conflicts on other fronts. Haaretz writes this, according to which defense officials are worried regarding a deterioration in relations between the Israeli government and the Biden administration.