Iran hardliners ramp up calls for nuclear bomb, sources say

The debate among Iranian hardliners over whether Tehran should seek a nuclear bomb in defiance of an escalating U.S.-Israeli attack is getting louder, more public and more insistent, sources in the country say. With the Revolutionary Guards now dominant following the killing of veteran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war on February 28, hardline views on Iran's nuclear approach are in the ascendant, two senior Iranian sources said. While Western countries have long believed that Iran wants the bomb — or at least the ability to make one very quickly — it has always denied that, saying Khamenei had banned nuclear arms as forbidden in Islam and citing its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There was no plan to change Iran's nuclear doctrine yet and Iran had not decided to seek a bomb, one of the sources said, but serious voices in the establishment were questioning the existing policy and demanding a change. The U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, which came midway through talks on Tehran's nuclear programme, may have changed the equation, convincing

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