The Iranian hardliners running Tehran since Donald Trump killed the ayatollah are now ramping up calls to build a nuclear bomb as the regime claims it has one million fighters on stand-by for a US ground invasion.
Intense debate among leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps about whether to seek a nuclear weapon in defiance of US-Israeli strikes is becoming more popular in Iranian leadership, according to Reuters.
Following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war, the IRGC hardliners have become a dominant force in the country.
The regime has long denied it would pursue a nuclear bomb, with Khamenei banning nuclear weapons as forbidden under Islam. However, Western intelligence agencies have publicly stated that Iran has been secretly enriching and stockpiling uranium in pursuit of a weapon.
Tehran’s leaders are now considering quitting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and scrapping their posturing on nuclear weapons altogether.
Sources told Reuters the relentless U.S.-Israeli strikes have persuaded the regime it has nothing to gain by holding back from building a bomb.
Iranian state media, meanwhile, has claimed that over million troops have been mobilized in preparation for a US ground invasion to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Pentagon chiefs ordered around 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East last night to join some 4,500 Marines already en route to the region, as Trump’s peace push shows signs of collapse.
Israel is engaging in a wide range of military strikes across the Middle East, including in Gaza and Lebanon, where Iran’s proxies are active against Netanyahu’s forces (pictured: a fireball erupts following an Israeli strike near a tent encampment sheltering people displaced by war in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on March 25)
Hardline politician Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of senior official Ali Larijani who was killed in a strike this month, was quoted by state media this week urging Iran to suspend its membership of the NPT.
‘The NPT should be suspended. We should form a committee to assess whether the NPT is of any use to us at all. If it proves useful, we will return to it. If not, they can keep it,’ he said.
Earlier in the month, state television aired a segment with conservative commentator Nasser Torabi in which he said the Iranian public demanded: ‘We need to act in order to build a nuclear weapon. Either we build it or we acquire it.’
The President has said he is prepared to pull the trigger on a full-scale invasion if Tehran continues to rebuff his diplomatic overtures, according to members of his inner circle.
‘Trump has a hand open for a deal, and the other is a fist, waiting to punch you in the f***ing face,’ a Trump aide told Axios.
The 15-point plan, modeled on Trump’s Gaza deal, would require Iran to dismantle all nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, open the Strait of Hormuz, and abandon proxy terror groups.
But Iranian state TV on Wednesday said that the regime had rejected the ceasefire proposal. Instead, Tehran is demanding the closure of all US bases in the Gulf, reparations, and an end to Israeli military strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Tehran is also seeking to bring the strait – a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil – under its control, allowing it to charge transit fees on passing vessels, much like Egypt does with the Suez Canal.
