A report from the former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson and journalist Pepe Escobar claims to have seen an “intelligence report … produced by a knowledgeable source with access”, which claims that “Iran now has, or soon will have a nuke”.

According to the article by Johnson and Escobar, the intelligence report stated that:

The public narrative surrounding the events of May 25, 2026, has fundamentally misdiagnosed the operational reality. We are witnessing an irreversible shift in the regional power structure, driven by a sequence of highly calibrated escalations that have exposed the limits of American coercive power and the fragility of the post-1991 Gulf security paradigm.

The structural reality is clear: The United States is operating from an eroding basing infrastructure, with a compromised executive, against an adversary that has mastered asymmetric escalation. . . .

Following Trump’s maximalist public response, the Supreme National Security Council deployed its ultimate deterrent. Through Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—currently the only trusted back-channel between Washington and Tehran—Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian communicated a formally structured, three-step strategic ultimatum if US strikes continued:

1. Immediate Withdrawal from the ongoing nuclear peace talks.

2. Total Abandonment of the prospective Nuclear Treaty framework.

3. The Detonation of a Nuclear Device on Iranian soil—executed not as a weapon of war, but as an undeniable demonstration of sovereign capability and ultimate control over the escalation ladder.

Transmitted by Pakistani FM Ishaq Dar to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, this was not rhetoric; it was a binary geopolitical shock warning. Rubio recognized the gravity, immediately moving to suppress the White House’s escalatory posturing.

The article claimed that “the source of this information was involved in the decision making process that culminated in the warning delivered to Rubio.”

The purported Iranian Nuclear weapon, according to the source, would deal a major blow to the U.S. empire. The article quoted the source saying:

The secondary effects of this standoff are rewiring the global strategic and financial architecture in real time:

The Collapse of the Abraham Accords: The political infrastructure sustaining Israeli-Arab normalization is functionally dead. Pakistan has publicly rejected it, Saudi Arabia has frozen all back-channel discussions, and Qatar and Oman are actively preparing a six-to-nine-month timeline for U.S. forces to vacate their military installations.

The Emerging Security Axis: A new Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey-Egypt security architecture is being constructed, completely detached from U.S. backing. Pakistan has elevated itself from a peripheral player to the indispensable operational pivot, leveraging an Islamic cultural proximity that neither Washington nor Beijing can replicate.

Systemic Risk to the Global Order: An Iranian nuclear demonstration would obliterate the global non-proliferation framework and hand Beijing an unearned, definitive proof-of-concept regarding the limits of American hegemony.

The report is based entirely on anonymous sources, and while it does contain quotes from the intelligence report, it does not contain any screenshots or way to verify.

No knock on Larry C. Johnson or Pepe Escobar (I agree with most of the commentary I have seen from both of them), but I am of the opinion that any article based entirely on anonymous sources should be taken with a grain of salt, whether it is written by a reporter one politically agrees with or not.

With that said, the article raises a real point: the fact that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon before the U.S/Israeli war on Iran, and is now more likely to do so for defensive purposes.

Much of the reason Iran never developed a Nuclear Weapon before the U.S/Israeli war on Iran was that the former Ayatollah of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa banning nuclear or chemical weapons, which was continued by his successor Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated by the U.S. and Israel.

Gareth Porter in Foreign Policy Magazine reported that during the CIA-backed Iraqi invasion of Iran, Mohsen Rafighdoost, then minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), proposed that Iran develop chemical or Nuclear weapons, but this was forbidden by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini.

The report noted that, “Mohsen Rafighdoost, who served as minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) throughout the eight-year war, revealed that he had proposed to Khomeini that Iran begin working on both nuclear and chemical weapons — but was told in two separate meetings that weapons of mass destruction are forbidden by Islam”.

“Rafighdoost understood Khomeini’s prohibition on the use or production of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons as a fatwa — a judgment on Islamic jurisprudence by a qualified Islamic scholar. It was never written down or formalized, but that didn’t matter, because it was issued by the ‘guardian jurist’ of the Islamic state — and was therefore legally binding on the entire government,” Porter added.

This fatwa was continued by Ruhollah Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei. Porter reported that “Khomeini’s Islamic ruling against all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, was continued by Ali Khamenei, who had served as president under Khomeini and succeeded him as supreme leader in 1989” adding that, “Khamenei had actually issued the anti-nuclear fatwa without any fanfare in the mid-1990s in response to a request from an official for his religious opinion on nuclear weapons.”

According to the U.S. DNI report from March of last year , Khamenei stuck to this Fatwa, even when pressure was building on him to reverse it. The report wrote, “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so.”

Mojtaba Khamenei, the successor to Ali Khamenei after the U.S. assassination, according to analysts, may not continue the fatwa, especially after the U.S./Israeli aggression towards Iran.

The mainstream Washington Institute For Near East Policy noted that , under Mojtaba Khamenei, “he and the IRGC may decide that Iran must move quickly to obtain nuclear weapons in order to forestall future U.S. and Israeli attacks”.

I have no idea if the report by Larry C. Johnson and Pepe Escobar is correct (other experts such as John Mearsheimer have been skeptical ).

However, what is true is that Iran has no intention of developing a Nuclear weapon before the U.S./Israeli attack, with Ali Khamenei committing to the fatwa issued by his predecessor against them.

However, Mojtaba Khamenei may not continue this, and the possibility of Iran developing or Acquiring Nuclear weapons became a reality, which would be a major deterrent to further U.S./Israeli aggression in Iran, and the Greater Israel Project.

Note to readers: The Dissident is a reader-supported outlet. If you liked this article, consider becoming a paid subscriber.