Archive: A June 2025 nuclear-energy press conference, not today’s gathering. Erfan Bagheri / SNN via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0; cropped.
A post published Thursday by the X account @nabaviantwt, which identifies itself as Iranian parliament member Seyed Mahmoud Nabavian, says its author called for permission from the Supreme Leader to build an atomic bomb during a gathering in Qom.
The request puts nuclear-weapons advocacy alongside a longstanding religious prohibition documented in former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s own published statements. The post does not announce that permission was granted or that the prohibition has been reversed.
JBizNews directly reviewed the original Persian-language post. The account’s ownership has not been independently confirmed by JBizNews.
Translated from Persian, its central statement reads: “Tonight, at a gathering of the honorable people of Qom, I raised a request to the Supreme Leader for permission to build an atomic bomb.” The author says the request drew takbir, chants of “God is greatest,” and approval from those gathered.
The post was published October 29 at 19:21 UTC, equivalent to 3:21 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and 10:51 p.m. in Tehran.
The religious ban behind the request
Ali Khamenei’s official website’s compilation of his statements describes building and using nuclear weapons as a sin prohibited on religious grounds. It quotes his February 2012 remarks saying that, “from an ideological and jurisprudential perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons to be unlawful.”
A separate official account of his October 9, 2019 remarks says: “Both making and stockpiling atomic bombs are wrongful because using them is forbidden based on religion (haram).”
Those historical statements establish the religious objection at issue. Thursday’s X post seeks permission for a bomb but does not explicitly use the word “fatwa,” identify a new religious ruling or provide a response from the Supreme Leader.
Nor does the post independently establish whether a bomb-building decision has been made or whether the account author’s description of the gathering’s reaction is accurate.
Iran’s parliamentary news service, Khaneh Mellat, has identified Nabavian as a parliament member and deputy chairman of its National Security and Foreign Policy Commission in a July 2025 report. That report does not authenticate the ownership of the X account.
JBizNews Desk | World
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