Iran rebuilds nuclear sites as leadership debates NPT exit — SkimNews
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- President Masoud Pezeshkian told Fox News Tehran is prepared to dilute its 60% enriched uranium stockpile and submit to IAEA inspections if a comprehensive deal is reached within the NPT framework — a diplomatic opening that contrasts sharply with hardline rhetoric from Iran's security establishment.
- Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said US and Israeli actions created grounds for Iran to withdraw from the NPT, though he stressed no formal decision had yet been made.
- Iran is constructing new nuclear facilities and rebuilding damaged ones — including "Taleghan 2" at the Parchin complex and a site burrowed under Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz — per satellite imagery reported by The Daily Telegraph on September 19; both were previously targeted in Operation Epic Fury airstrikes.
- Trump declared at the UN General Assembly on September 22: "I will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," maintaining a firm US stance as the IAEA Board of Governors referred Iran to the UN Security Council on September 9 over alleged non-proliferation breaches.
- Mojtaba Khamenei, who became supreme leader after his father Ali Khamenei was killed in a 2026 Israeli air strike, has not reaffirmed his father's fatwa banning nuclear weapons — a silence former AIVD officer Tim Bosch told DW carries "significant weight" regarding potential shifts in nuclear doctrine.
- Former US national security adviser John Bolton told DW that Iran's weapons program was "never" truly halted and that "the only long-term path to achieving peace and security in the Middle East is the overthrow of the regime in Tehran."
- The IAEA assessed in December 2024 that Iran was the only non-nuclear-weapon state to possess uranium enriched to 60%; 90% purity is required for a weapon, but with inspectors barred, analyst Damon Golriz argued a nuclear-armed Iran would prove "the greatest foreign policy legacy of Donald Trump's presidency."
Why it matters: With the IAEA barred from inspections and Iran actively rebuilding bombed facilities, the world cannot verify how close Tehran is to a weapon — and the competing signals (Pezeshkian's diplomatic offer alongside NPT exit talk) mean no one knows which direction Iran is actually moving. The death of Ali Khamenei and his successor's silence on the anti-weapons fatwa remove the religious constraint that long restrained Iran's program.
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