The Case of the Phony Fatwa
It’s common knowledge that Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Khamenei, has issued a fatwa banning the possession of nuclear weapons.
This “fact” has recently been cited by President Obama and by Secretary of State Kerry. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, the President said
the Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.
This month, Secretary Kerry said “The supreme leader...says he has issued a fatwa, the highest form of Islamic prohibition against some activity, and he said that is to prohibit Iran from ever seeking a nuclear weapon. ”
Moreover, in April, 2012 then Secretary of State Clinton said this: “The other interesting development which you may have followed was the repetition by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei that they would – that he had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, against weapons of mass destruction. Prime Minister Erdogan and I discussed this at some length, and I’ve discussed with a number of experts and religious scholars.”
The existence of this fatwa is being used to suggest that Iran my well not be seeking nuclear weapons after all, and this fact would make a successful negotiation with Iran more likely.
The problem is, there is no such fatwa. At least, no one has ever seen it or produced it. A study by the web site MEMRI (full disclosure: I serve on its board) has found that no text of this alleged fatwa exists, nor is it present in any compilation of Khamenei’s fatwas. Khamenei has discussed possession of nuclear weapons in his speeches, especially in a 2004 sermon where he called production, possession, or use “problematic.” But a speech is not a fatwa, which is a jurisprudential ruling-- and “problematic” is hardly a strong term announcing a prohibition. And the MEMRI analysis continues, “It should further be clarified that in the regime’s records of sermons by Khamenei, there is a clear differentiation between the jurisprudential ones – that is, the fatwas – and the political ones; the regime has placed this particular sermon in the political section, not the jurisprudential section, of the records.”
An August report from MEMRI covers this topic again: