Iran’s Take On Russia-Ukraine: Nuclear Arms Are Our Best Defense

–Analysis-

So Iran stands with Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, China and Nicaragua in not condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Instead, it is voicing support for the conflict’s instigator, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One thing this war has done for Iran was to swiftly reveal elements in the political establishment who favor arming the country with nuclear weapons, which is against the regime’s official line on non-proliferation. They include officials, media analysts and even individuals usually tagged as reformists, but they mostly consist of regime zealots closer to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Reactions in Tehran to the Russian invasion have been enthusiastic, if not at times gleeful. Regime hardliners think Putin attacked to protect Russian-speaking separatists, and naively imagine he is a leader who stands by his allies, even risking a showdown with the West to that end. Hardliners have also reminded moderates or supporters of an entente with the Biden administration — or their “boss” as they sarcastically call President Joe Biden — that the West effectively abandoned Ukraine.

Not “ending up like Ukraine”

An American plot

Hardliners have blamed an “American plot” for the attack on Ukraine, then concluded that under such conditions, the Islamic Republic needs its ballistic missiles and a nuclear deterrent to defend itself. It must be the first time they have revealed what they concealed for years: the desire for Iran to have atomic bombs. Ukraine has brought them out of the closet and inspired them to make their analyses.

On the second day of the invasion, Mehr agency, tied to the state-run Islamic Development Organization, carried out an interview (on Feb. 24) with the Ukrainian ambassador in Tehran, entitled “we should not have lost our nuclear weapons”.

Ukraine lacked the means and technology to maintain and use a nuclear arsenal.

This seemed to justify more declarations on the need to build a nuclear bomb, regardless of Khamenei’s edict that such weapons are entirely illicit. Hardliners have claimed that with an arsenal, the country would not “end up like Ukraine.” They forget that Ukraine was never a nuclear state with an arsenal! That belonged to the Soviet Union, and Ukraine lacked the means and technology to maintain and use a nuclear arsenal.

The Qazvin congregational prayer leader, Ayatollah Abdolkarim Abedini, said on Feb. 25 that “westerners unjustly disarmed the Ukrainians and gradually brought the country to a state of crisis. They changed the fate of its people and today, have left the country… on fire.” By disarmament, he meant the 1994 Budapest agreements to hand the Soviet Union’s weaponry to the Russian Federation.

The cleric claimed the Americans want “in vain” to impose this fate on Iran, though it “will never abandon its defense and resistance.” No congregational prayer of note in Iran has condemned the invasion.

Khamenei speaks

Sovereignty is a lie

Danial Me’mar, the editor of the Tehran paper Hamshahri, wrote on Feb. 26 that if Ukraine was helpless now it was because for years it counted on “NATO and Westerners” for protection “instead of… creating a defensive shield for itself.” That, he thinks, is why the ambassador was warning “countries like Iran” to take note of Ukraine’s “plight, and not to put aside their nuclear shield.”

He wrote that if the Americans were talking to Iran “around a table” it was because they understood this was “the only way to face Iran… it is as clear as the day that if they had another solution left… they would seek it out.”

This propaganda line is even being peddled by reformist mouthpieces. The website Ensaf News has effectively distorted the ambassador’s comments with its headline, “Ukraine Regrets Returning Its Nuclear Warheads!”

Another website, Jamaran, run by Hasan Khomeini, grandson of the late revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini, says the ambassador merely confirmed that the idea of an international system protecting sovereignty “is just a lie” and states “will be defeated” if they cannot assure their own security. The reformist activist and former hostage-taker at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Abbas Abdi, tweeted that Ukraine did indeed illustrate “the need for armaments” but, he added, these were less important than public support for a regime and an “independent policy.”

The regime’s media readily denounce the West’s “hostility,” but says nothing about Russia’s naked aggression. Its propagandists previously tried to scare Iranians about Iran becoming “another Syria” and now warn it could become “another Ukraine.” Yet they never warn of the threat of another Chernobyl disaster in quake-prone Iran. And they seem to forget — oblivious to the likes of Saddam or Gaddafi — that the fate of aggressors can also be wretched.