US intelligence agencies believe Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is more willing to develop a nuclear weapon than his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, according to media reports.
The New York Times, citing US officials, reported the assessment. Ali Khamenei maintained that nuclear weapons were forbidden under a religious fatwa, Iran International reported — a decree that served as the last theological guardrail on the program.
US officials believe Iran has not resumed nuclear enrichment despite moving some equipment to the heavily fortified underground facility known as Pickaxe Mountain, the Times reported. Officials noted that much of the nuclear assessment predates the recent war.
Mojtaba Khamenei is also shaping war strategy despite not being publicly seen since sustaining injuries in the strike that killed his father, officials said.
The question now is whether Mojtaba Khamenei acts on the nuclear opening his father never would — or whether the fatwa's shadow outlasts the man who issued it.
The intelligence finding lands as the regional conflict still burns. Saudi air defense systems intercepted more ballistic missiles from Yemen on Saturday (July 25), per a Reuters report citing Greek security sources, after Iran-backed Houthis struck two Saudi-flagged oil tankers in the Red Sea earlier in the week. The Houthis said they were enforcing a blockade on the country, further constricting oil exports as the Strait of Hormuz faces similar wartime constraints.
Saudi Major General Turki Al-Malki said Riyadh responded with "a firm, resolute, and proportionate military response" against what he called legitimate military targets used by "the terrorist Houthi militia" to threaten commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The last guardrail on Iran's bomb was a decree from a man now dead. Whether his son honors it is the question nobody can answer yet.