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By Khosro Isfahani
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In the supreme leader’s name, Tehran has started scrapping the self-imposed limits of Ali Khamenei’s security doctrine. The policy had two constraints: a missile-range cap of 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) and a narrowly defined ban on the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which was falsely sold as the “nuclear fatwa” prohibiting the bomb. The range cap has all but been tossed out, and the fatwa is in play. Read together, these moves reveal a bloodied adversary racing toward what it now sees as essential: a nuclear weapon and the long-range missiles to carry it.
On October 31, the official website of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaced the old ayatollah after his killing in February, reported a meeting with Iran’s military chiefs—Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ali Abdollahi, army chief Amir Hatami and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Ahmad Vahidi—during which he issued a directive to meet “any threat with an immediate and effective response with no geographical limit,” while treating all Israeli and American assets as targets. To leave no doubt, the website carried two AI-generated posters: a missile blasting off with “no geographical limit” emblazoned on its nose, and a burning nuclear facility that evokes Israel’s Dimona reactor, captioned “Within range, without limit.”
It is the only publicized meeting between Mojtaba and his commanders, and the readout is notable for what it lacks: no date, no location, no image. In fact, no independently verified photograph, audio or video of Mojtaba has surfaced since the February strike that killed his father. What can be confirmed is the message issued in his name.
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Whoever its author, the message carries more weight than Iran’s earlier breach of the range cap. Twelve days after Mojtaba succeeded his father, on March 20, Iran fired two ballistic missiles toward the U.S.-British base on Diego Garcia, some 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) away, double the cap. But Tehran denied that launch even as its state media reported it. The launch also came at the height of the war, while Mojtaba—assuming he was alive and able to communicate—was in hiding, and the country was run by the IRGC in everything but name. That was a wartime Hail Mary by commanders acting for an absent leader. And the directive does not stand alone: it comes amid calls, amplified by IRGC media, to ditch the so-called nuclear fatwa.
On October 30, the day before the readout, one of Tehran’s Friday prayer leaders, Mohammad Javad Haj-Aliakbari, proclaimed, “Revising the nuclear doctrine is a national demand.” Haj-Ali Akbari was not speaking out of turn. The supreme leader appoints Friday prayer leaders, and Haj-Ali Akbari chairs the council that nominates them and scripts their sermons. He urged the authorities to present a proposal on “changing the nuclear doctrine” to the new supreme leader for the final say. Such a proposal would come from none other than the military chiefs with whom Mojtaba reportedly met. The readout does not mention nuclear weapons, but it has Mojtaba ordering “deepening indigenous defense in the two domains of doctrine and tactics.”
All this unfolds amid stalled talks and signals from Washington that renewed strikes on Iran are imminent. Against that backdrop, Persian wisdom offers three ways to read the new ayatollah’s latest gambit.
The first is to dismiss the threat as classic saber-rattling or, in Persian, “picking up too heavy a stone to signal a lack of intention to strike.” But the past 12 months have shown how far this regime will go to keep its grip on power: wreak havoc across the Middle East, upend the world economy and kill tens of thousands of its own citizens. Betting it won’t take the next step toward a long-range missile topped with a WMD is a wager that could be lost in an instant.
The second is to see Tehran scrapping an old restriction and offering it back as a concession in stalled negotiations or, in Persian, “painting the crow and selling it as a singing bird.” But the regime reaffirmed the 2,000-kilometer cap days before the war, months after a lawmaker claimed Ali Khamenei had lifted it, and breached it within weeks. A limit that can be dropped and reinstated at will is no limit at all.
The third is the most likely read: no one blurts out a policy change of this kind. It is rolled out in stages. The nightly rallies chanting for a new nuclear doctrine, the MPs petitioning for the bomb, the state-scripted sermon, state media mapping U.S. bases abroad as targets, and the supreme leader’s own order to strike with “no geographical limit” are not a coincidence but a sequence. As one Persian saying goes, “the grumble comes before the curse”—in this case, the bomb.
The Islamic Republic is built on a sharply dualistic worldview, a constant battle between the “downtrodden” and the “empire,” designed not only to absorb conflict but to thrive on war. This doctrine is encapsulated in a September 1980 sermon by Ali Khamenei, delivered at the first Friday prayer after Iraq invaded Iran and widely circulated over the past year: “God has closed the road of defeat to us…. O infidels, can you see more than two roads before us? Both are an honor: one is the road of martyrdom, whose honor is eternal…. the other is the road of victory in this world. Both are victory for us.”
To this regime, there is no losing. Dying is as much of a triumph as surviving, and the fear of destruction that deters other adversaries means little. Hesitating in the face of a death cult bent on going out with a bang, not a whimper, will only increase the human cost. Acting decisively will lower it: we should finish the job, decimate the regime and give its leaders the “martyrdom” they yearn for.
Khosro Isfahani is the research director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran with 17 years of experience in Iran’s information space. His work spans from human rights documentation to security and military developments in and related to Iran.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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