Striking Iran — response to Cheryl

More than one year ago, on 25 October 2003, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Hojatoleslam Hassan Rohani told students at Shahrud Industrial University that Khamenei believes nuclear weapons are religiously illegal, IRNA reported.

One can have reservations about Khamenei’s ability to legitimately issue a religious decree, given his questionable theological standing. Nevertheless, as Supreme Leader and commander-in-chief of the armed forces he can ban or permit anything he wants.

4.

Juan Cole addressed the matter of Khamenei’s “ability to legitimately issue a religious decree” in his October 2009 Salon piece, Does Iran really want the bomb?

I was on an email list where someone expressed suspicion of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s 2005 fatwa against the possession and use of nuclear weapons by an Islamic state.

One suggestion was that Khamenei is not a real Shiite jurisprudent and has eschewed having followers inside Iran. But, no, Khamenei is a mujtahid or independent jurist and has the standing to issue a fatwa or considered ruling on the law.. A mujtahid may always decline to accept muqallidun or followers, which Khamenei appears to have done for Iranian nationals, without that affecting his legitimate right to issue fatwas. The theory of ijtihad or independent jurisprudential reasoning holds that the law inheres in the reasoning processes of the jurisprudent; whether the jurisprudent has followers or not is irrelevant to the discovery of the law in a particular instance. Moreover, as rahbar or supreme leader,, Khamenei’s pronouncements on such matters might even be seen as a hukm or standing command. Finally, since he sets policy on such matters, what difference, in any case, would it make what exact jurisprudential standing his fatwas enjoy?

The only real question is whether he is lying and insincere.

5.

As to whether it is strange that no published text of a fatwa under his name exists, Mehdi Khalaji writes (in Michael Eisenstadt and Mehdi Khalaji, Nuclear Fatwa: Religion and Politics in Iran’s Proliferation Strategy, a very detailed MERIP Policy Focus offering from this September):

Interestingly, no written texts exist for the Supreme Leader’s fatwas, though Shiite juridical tradition grants equal weight to an oral and written legal opinions-a phenomenon to be discussed further in the next section.

and again:

As such, even though Ayatollah Khamenei has produced no written record on the religious prohibitions pertaining to nuclear weapons, his verbal statements on the subject are considered his religious opinions, or fatwas, and therefore binding on believers.

[ see also Cole above on hukm ]

6.

Khalaji also suggests that Khamenei’s more recent statements have been more flexible, and indeed that it is not uncommon for jurisprudents to change their minds (and “opinions”):

Supreme Leader Khamenei has stated that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam. But his recent language on the subject has become more equivocal, emphasizing only the prohibition on their use and not on their production or stockpiling. And should the needs of the Islamic Republic or the Muslim umma change, requiring the use of nuclear weapons, the Supreme Leader could just as well alter his position in response. This means that, ultimately, the Islamic Republic is unconstrained — even by religious doctrine — as it moves toward the possible production and storing of nuclear weapons.

7.

An example of a more recent statement of this sort would be the one reported in this VOA piece from February 2011:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei christened a new, Iranian-built warship, as a military band honored him on the ship’s deck. Addressing a crowd of military commanders after the ceremony, he told them that “Islam is opposed to nuclear weapons and that Tehran is not working to build them.”

8.

Putting this in context, Cole in the Salon piece I quoted above suggests that Khamenei may be going for “latency” rather than “possession” – latency having the power of a threat, but not trespassing the limits of actual development allowed under treaty:

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