With the prospect of Israeli retaliation for Iran’s missile attack looming, some Iranian hardliners want their government to revise its nuclear doctrine to pursue atomic weapons, AFP reports.

More than three dozen hardline lawmakers have submitted a letter to Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, urging it to revisit the Islamic Republic’s nuclear doctrine, according to local media.

The parliamentarians also called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his long-standing religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.

“Today, neither the international organisations nor … European countries or America can control the Zionist regime which commits crimes at will,” lawmaker Hassan Ali Akhalghi Amiri said, citing this as his reason for supporting the call.

Another lawmaker, Mohammad Reza Sabaghian, said that “building nuclear weapons is Iran’s option to create deterrence”, according to the Ham Mihan daily.

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