Washington, DC – Jamal Abdi, President of the National Iranian American Council, issued the following statement amid renewed speculation that the Trump administration is contemplating using nuclear weapons against Iran in its ongoing war:
“We must shut the Pandora’s box of the Iran war before more horrors are unleashed – including the possible use of nuclear weapons. The longer this catastrophic war of choice continues, the more horrors we risk unleashing that many of us would have previously found unthinkable.
“It is deeply alarming that we are once again seeing reports that U.S. officials are contemplating using nuclear weapons inside Iran. The taboo against the use of nuclear weapons has lasted for 81 years thanks to tremendous global efforts to contain a threat that could wipe out all life on earth. That the taboo would be broken for a ‘tactical purpose’ in a war that was illegal under U.S. and international law, threatening countless lives and risking a renewed nuclear arms race, is almost too horrifying to imagine.
“A NUKEMAP simulation of a 15-megaton surface detonation in Isfahan Province, the area of Pickaxe Mountain, estimates nearly 1.9 million people killed and more than 523,000 injured from the immediate effects alone, and those estimates deliberately exclude casualties from radioactive fallout. Even entertaining this option takes us farther than any government should ever be willing to go.
“This war is already eviscerating any notion of America’s moral standing in the world and, like the Israeli genocide in Gaza, is systematically disintegrating the international norms over the use of state violence that we take for granted. Already, we have the US president constantly threatening to destroy Iranian civilization and boasting about conducting war crimes like attacking civilian bridges and water plants and civilian infrastructure. His Pentagon is stonewalling the American people regarding its use of AI to conduct strikes like the double tap bombings of the Minab girls school that killed 165.
“Now, amidst increasing advocacy from pro-war voices hyping ‘Pickaxe mountain’ as a necessary target in the war, Trump has vowed to target it and hit it hard. Additional commentary has suggested that nuclear weapons might be the most likely to damage or destroy the underground facility, which is deeper than the facilities President Trump severely damaged in June 2025 military operations, and Trump could drop the bomb and then declare victory. The Defense Department has also recently begun drafting a new nuclear doctrine that envisions the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in a war with Russia or China.
“If nuclear use against Iran is being discussed inside this administration, our lawmakers must demand answers immediately and every policymaker must unequivocally reject it. There can be no hedging and no debate over circumstances in which this could become ‘necessary.’ Nuclear weapons must never be used. This war must end before its architects drag millions more people, and potentially the entire world, into an even greater catastrophe.”
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