The Nuclear Fatwa That Never Was
The “fatwa” against Iranian nukes is one of the most successful disinformation campaigns of the 21st century.
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Joe Kent, who was serving as the Trump Administration’s counterterrorism director before abruptly resigning this week, sprinted to Tucker Carlson’s show the day after he left his post to argue that Iran was never really weeks away from a nuclear weapon. His key evidence? A “longstanding religious fatwa” prohibiting the Islamic Republic from developing one.
You can watch the clip here some 30 mins into the show:
There’s one small problem with Kent’s analysis: that fatwa doesn’t exist, and it never did. What does exist is one of the most cynically effective pieces of Iranian propaganda ever deployed against the West, and the fact that American officials and media figures are still citing it in 2026 is a testament to just how badly our foreign policy establishment has failed at basic due diligence on Iran.
Let’s start with the fundamental issue. There is no formal text of the fatwa that has ever been made publicly available. What eventually became something of a fraudulent diplomatic staple, cited by everyone from Barack Obama to European negotiators during the JCPOA talks, was in reality a mere paragraph of the late Ayatollah Khamenei’s message to the first International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, which Tehran hosted in 2010.
The segment of the message marketed by the Iranian diplomatic missions as a “fatwa” reads: “We believe that adding to nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons and biological weapons, are a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation, which itself is a victim of the use of chemical weapons, feels more than other nations the danger of the production and accumulation of such weapons and is ready to put all its resources in the way of dealing with it. We consider the use of these weapons to be haram (forbidden), and the effort to protect mankind from this great disaster is everyone’s duty.”
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That’s it. A conference statement. Typically, heads of state issue statements or messages to conferences, not fatwas. Yet this single paragraph, in which Khamenei expressed a general opinion that weapons of mass destruction were “haram,” was packaged, branded, and sold to Western governments as a binding religious prohibition. Framing this opinion as a fatwa aimed to alleviate international pressure by invoking religious beliefs that would persuade a global audience of its credibility.
The timing alone is revealing. Between 2006 and 2010, six UN Security Council sanctions resolutions targeting Tehran’s nuclear program were enacted, and Khamenei’s purported fatwa was released squarely amid this backdrop. It wasn’t a sincere religious ruling, but a strategic maneuver.
Even some Tehran officials have admitted as much. Perhaps the clearest proof that the “fatwa” was always a political instrument rather than a genuine religious constraint is how openly Iranian officials have discussed discarding it whenever convenient.
In a January 2024 interview, former Iranian diplomat and IRGC brigadier-general Amir Mousavi stated flatly that “a fatwa is not permanent, according to Jaafari Shia jurisprudence” and that “if the Americans and Zionists act in a dangerous manner, the fatwa might be changed.” This wasn’t some rogue statement. His comment confirms that Tehran’s national security decisionmaking is dictated by the principle of “regime expediency.”
And as recently as February 2025, IRGC commanders were actively declaring that Khamenei could at any moment rescind the supposed fatwa on nuclear weapons altogether.
Even if it were real, it wouldn’t matter.
There is one final consideration that renders the entire debate essentially moot, and it is a point that Kent and others who traffic in this narrative studiously avoid. Even assuming, against all evidence, that a genuine and binding fatwa existed, it would provide cold comfort against a regime whose Shia theological framework explicitly permits the practice of taqiyya, or the use of deliberate deception to protect and advance Islamic interests against enemies. When your adversary’s own doctrinal tradition enshrines strategic deception as a legitimate tool of statecraft, citing their public religious statements as a reliable constraint on behavior is not strategic analysis, to put it mildly.
The nuclear fatwa narrative was a sophisticated information operation executed by Tehran and its allies, and it was absorbed wholesale by Western governments and analysts desperate to believe that diplomacy was working. It provided cover for Iran to advance its nuclear capabilities while maintaining the appearance of religious restraint. Tracking Khamenei’s statements over two decades demonstrates he never formally issued a fatwa against building a nuclear weapon, and only tentatively and revocably spoke against the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Joe Kent went on one of the most-watched political programs in America and repeated Iranian regime talking points as if they were established fact. The country may indeed be lucky he resigned. It is considerably less lucky that the foreign policy worldview he represents remains alive and well in the discourse.
On the other hand the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was real and was acted on.
Excellent piece on the alleged Islamic-Republic fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.