Iran debating whether to keep nuclear-weapons ban if war resumes, security chief says, claiming Saudi minister warned of wider Israeli targets
Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei said on Saturday that Tehran is debating whether to maintain its longstanding ban on nuclear weapons if hostilities resume, and claimed Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman told him Israel would target Turkiye and then Saudi Arabia after Iran.
Iran’s top security official said on Saturday that Tehran is debating whether to keep its longstanding ban on nuclear weapons in place if war returns, while insisting that no decision to change the country’s nuclear doctrine has yet been taken. The remarks, by Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei on Iranian state television, add a new and sensitive dimension to a week in which diplomacy and threats of renewed strikes have run in parallel.
Rezaei said the discussion inside Iran is being driven by public feeling after the country’s nuclear facilities came under attack earlier in the war. Watching an adversary strike those sites, he argued, naturally leads people to ask why Iran should remain bound by a doctrine adopted under very different circumstances. He was careful, however, to frame the point as a debate rather than a policy shift, saying the doctrine has not changed.
The claim carries weight because of who made it and where. Rezaei is a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and now sits at the centre of Iran’s security decision-making, and his interview was carried by the state broadcaster IRIB. His words were reported in detail by Dawn and by Al Mayadeen, both drawing on the same state-television appearance, which makes the account of what he said solid even though the underlying policy question remains open.
Rezaei also disclosed a striking detail from this week’s quadrilateral meeting in Tehran, where officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye — the Makkah Alliance countries — discussed regional security. He claimed that Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman told him Israel would set its sights on Turkiye and then on Saudi Arabia after Iran. The claim is Rezaei’s account of a private conversation, and it has not been independently confirmed by Riyadh; it should be read as Tehran’s version of what was said, not as a verified Saudi statement.
According to Rezaei, the four-way talks were aimed at defining the shape of a new regional security framework, one in which countries of the region take responsibility for their own security and outside powers step back. He said the participants spoke firmly against Israel, but that neither the Makkah Agreement itself nor Yemen came up in the discussions, which instead focused on the future shape of regional arrangements.
Rezaei also touched on the diplomatic channel with Washington, revealing that he has read a message from US Vice President JD Vance but has not yet replied to it. He declined to say what the message contains, explaining that since the American side has said nothing publicly about it, he would also stay silent at this stage. He did, however, describe a change in Washington’s tone as a positive sign, which he linked to what he called the Iranian people’s consolidation of their victory and strength.
The interview came on the same day that Iran’s supreme leader issued an order for what was described as a geographically unrestricted response to any new American or Israeli attack, and as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump had not yet decided on fresh strikes against Iran. The contrast between those two messages — a military warning from Tehran and a diplomatic opening left ajar by Washington — captures the uncertainty of the moment.
Qatari mediators have meanwhile been active, with Iranian envoys holding talks in Doha on Saturday, and Tehran has set out its conditions for any de-escalation, including the lifting of the American blockade of its ports, the easing of sanctions and access to frozen assets. The diplomatic track and the military warnings are therefore advancing side by side, each shaping the other’s calculations.
What Rezaei’s remarks do not do is settle the central question. A debate about nuclear doctrine is not a decision, and a claim about what a Saudi minister said in private is not a Saudi policy statement. But both elements matter: the first signals how the experience of war is reshaping arguments inside Tehran, and the second shows how Iran is trying to frame its confrontation with Israel as a shared regional danger rather than a bilateral one.
What happens next will depend on whether the diplomatic channel produces anything concrete before the military warnings harden into action. If the Vance letter leads to a substantive exchange, the nuclear-doctrine debate may stay a debate. If talks stall and strikes resume, Rezaei’s interview will be remembered as an early public sign that Tehran was already reconsidering the limits it had set for itself.
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