Iranians and the Bomb: Religion and Support for or Opposition to the Development of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

This essay examines the Iranian public‘s beliefs about Iran‘s development of nuclear weapons. To some extent, it also explains how and why Iranians have differing opinions on this important policy issue. In order to understand these views, we develop an argument about the role that religion can play in mitigating and shaping views on foreign policy issues. We next test this hypothesis in an effort to explain observed variation in Iranian individual-level attitudes toward developing nuclear weapons. We find that approximately 25% of surveyed Iranians are in favor of their government‘s development of nuclear weapons. Our regression analyses indicate that respondents‘ views on whether Islam tolerates the development of nuclear weapons explain, in some measure, the observed variation in support for a weapons program. These findings suggest that Iranians, as do other publics, use core values to determine their position on foreign policy issues and their country‘s nuclear posture rather than relying on detailed information about Iran‘s national security concerns.