On the last day of February, as reports emerged that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed in an Israeli bombardment, it was also announced that a meeting of the Defense Council had been struck.
Several senior figures were killed in the strike, the Israeli military confirmed on March 16.
Among those killed were Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Khamenei and secretary of the Defense Council; Abdolrahim Mousavi, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces; and Aziz Nasirzadeh, the defense minister.
Also killed were two figures associated with Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known by its Persian acronym SPND, the direct successor organization to Iran’s pre-2004 nuclear weapons program.
The two figures were former SPND chief Brigadier General Reza Mozaffarinia and the organization’s new head Brigadier General Hossein Jabal Ameli.
Washington has sanctioned more than 30 SPND scientists and multiple affiliated entities, accusing the organization of overseeing “dual-use research and development activities applicable to nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons delivery systems.”
While Tehran denies pursuing a nuclear weapon, the UN nuclear watchdog and Western powers including the US and its European allies maintain that Iran’s high-level uranium enrichment (up to 60%) has no credible civilian justification.
Iran currently possesses some 400 kg of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium. The US and Israel have in recent days discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure the stockpile at a later stage of the war, according to a report by Axios.
US War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that President Trump saw Iran advancing ever closer to nuclear capability and viewed it as unacceptable, prompting his decision to launch the war against Tehran.
Why A-bomb was focus of Defense Council meeting
There are four reasons suggesting the meeting of the Defense Council was likely related to the final stage of decision-making on constructing a nuclear weapon.
First, the composition of the gathering is a key indicator. The simultaneous presence of two former and current SPND chiefs alongside the defense minister — their superior — suggests the meeting concerned nuclear matters rather than battlefield operations. If the session had been focused on the war itself, senior operational or battlefield commanders would have been expected to attend instead of officials tied to the nuclear weapons industry.
Second, Ali Shamkhani had publicly spoken about nuclear weapons months earlier. Four months before his reported death, he said in an interview that if he could go back in time during his tenure as defense minister, he would build an atomic bomb.
Third, Shamkhani’s roles placed him at the center of coordination between multiple institutions. As Khamenei’s senior adviser and secretary of the Defense Council, as well as a former defense minister, he maintained extensive ties with officials within the ministry, including the department responsible for special weapons development, SPND.
He was also described as a senior commander overseeing Revolutionary Guard officers involved in nuclear weapons development and as the link between these networks and Khamenei himself.
Fourth, in one of his final public remarks, Shamkhani told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television that a war with the United States and Israel was inevitable and that the Islamic Republic needed to prepare for it.
Taken together, these elements may indicate that the meeting struck in the bombardment may have been connected to the final stage of decision-making regarding nuclear weapons development.
It is unknown whether Israel was aware that the gathering concerned possible deliberations over building a nuclear weapon, or whether it targeted the meeting simply because senior Iranian officials were known to be present.