Fakhrizadeh’s Son Says Iran’s Knowledge Makes a Nuclear Bomb a ‘Joke’

The remarks were delivered Sunday at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, at a session organized by the university’s Basij student organization, Tasnim News Agency reported.

Hamed Fakhrizadeh said he once asked his father whether Iran had an atomic bomb.

“My son, we have reached a level of knowledge compared to which a nuclear bomb is a joke,” he quoted Mohsen Fakhrizadeh as replying, according to Tasnim.

A video of the appearance was later circulated by Iranian outlets, including Khabar Online.

A Broader Idea of Deterrence

The son said adversaries’ concerns go beyond whether Iran possesses a nuclear bomb. What creates deterrence, he argued, is “the flow of science and knowledge,” and the deterrence provided by scientists of that kind is “far beyond the deterrence of an atomic bomb.”

He said his father believed the future war would not be a nuclear war, and that new fields of science and technology would play a role in military and defense equations.

In the circulated video of his remarks, he also said any nuclear-related work was defensive and focused on what Iran should do if it ever came under nuclear attack.

Hamed Fakhrizadeh said his father’s thinking, and the work of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known as SPND, was not limited to the nuclear field. Many of those later killed while working for the organization, he said, had been engaged in biology, lasers and other scientific and technological fields.

Scientist Killed Near Tehran

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear physicist and a senior official in Iran’s Defense Ministry, was killed on Nov. 27, 2020, near Absard, outside Tehran.

Iranian officials blamed Israel for the attack, which Tehran said was carried out with a remotely controlled weapon. Israel has not officially confirmed responsibility.

A later Israeli campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists, known as Operation Narnia, was compared with that 2020 killing.

Western governments and the IAEA have long said Fakhrizadeh played a central role in work relevant to nuclear weapons. Tehran has consistently described its nuclear program as peaceful and has cited a religious ruling against nuclear arms.

Tehran’s Nuclear Debate

The son’s remarks land amid a renewed debate in Tehran over nuclear doctrine and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Iran’s Assembly of Experts said this month that reviewing an NPT withdrawal and revising the defense doctrine had become an “unavoidable necessity.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said it will make preparations if Iran’s leaders revise the nuclear doctrine, while officials have also said no final decision has been taken.

Hamed Fakhrizadeh’s account is a son’s recollection of a private conversation, not an official statement of policy, and it does not confirm that Iran possesses a nuclear weapon.