Influential voice in atomic programme

Washington The history of Iran's nuclear programme offers evidence that can be used for several interpretations of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's statements and behaviour.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution that overthrew the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, originally believed that it was anti-Islamic to build nuclear weapons, and he ended the secret nuclear weapons programme the shah had begun.

But the brutal Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988 changed the Iranian regime's thinking about nuclear weapons. Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussain used chemical weapons against ill-prepared Iranian troops, and there was no outcry from the United States, which supported Iraq at the time. In 1984, Khomeini secretly decided to restart the nuclear weapons programme. At the time, Khamenei was serving as president of Iran, and he became supreme leader in 1989, when Khomeini died.

In 2003, probably in response to the US invasion of Iraq, which was originally justified by the Bush administration on the grounds that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Khamenei ordered a suspension of Iran's nuclear weapons programme, although he has allowed uranium enrichment efforts to continue.

At an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005, Iran's nuclear negotiator described how Khamenei had issued a fatwa declaring that "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are all forbidden in Islam" and noted that he had said that "Iran shall never acquire these weapons".