On 1 August, at a business forum in Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto told a room of executives that Iran already has nuclear weapons, and that a chain reaction had begun across the region. His exact words, as reported, were: “It is said that Iran already has nuclear weapons. Now Saudi Arabia wants one too. If Saudi Arabia wants nuclear weapons, it’s possible the UAE will also want them, Qatar will also want them, Egypt will also want them.” No source, no evidence — neither for the bomb nor for the domino effect.
The core of the claim is false, but its sharpest edge is the guest list. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar are three of Indonesia's most important partners in the Gulf, and all three have spent two years carefully stepping back from confrontation with Tehran. In March 2023, Riyadh and Tehran agreed in Beijing — under Chinese mediation — to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year rupture, reopening embassies within months; as recently as February this year, both sides reaffirmed the agreement. Since then, Gulf governments have largely avoided endorsing the idea that Iran is on the verge of a bomb, even while staying wary of Tehran generally. A president of a friendly state publicly drafting them into a nuclear arms race reads as someone who has not studied a file they manage with precision.
The stakes are material, too. Indonesia's comprehensive economic partnership with the UAE, signed in July 2022 and in force since September 2023, is meant to lift bilateral trade toward ten billion dollars a year, and Jakarta has been negotiating a free trade agreement with the entire Gulf Cooperation Council. Those are relationships that reward precision — and they are unlikely to be strengthened by improvisation about a nuclear arms race.
The improvisation itself fails every available check. Iran belongs to a treaty that bans it from building nuclear weapons and allows only peaceful uses of the atom. IAEA inspectors have checked its facilities many times and always reported a civilian programme. Even during the twelve-day war with the US and Israel earlier this year, the agency's head said again there was no sign of a weapon being built. Decades ago, Iran's founding religious leader banned weapons of mass destruction under Islamic law; that ban still stands. What Prabowo repeated was not the product of Indonesian intelligence but an echo of a claim the US and Israel have pushed for years to isolate Iran — a narrative that outlasted the failed 2018 nuclear deal and hardened after this year's war.
At home, the remark cuts against a carefully built identity. Jakarta has spent years as a sympathetic voice on Middle East affairs — outspoken on Gaza, critical of Israel, a bridge between the Muslim-majority world and international forums. Iran has been one of the more committed state backers of the Palestinian cause Jakarta champions. A false claim about its nuclear programme tells the region that Prabowo's grasp of its politics may be thinner than his rhetoric on Palestine suggests — and gives Tehran reason to doubt that solidarity. In the Gulf, it will not go unnoticed either that Israel's own undeclared arsenal never draws this kind of urgent attention.
Tehran did not let it pass. A day after the speech, Iran's embassy in Jakarta stated publicly that it has never pursued nuclear weapons and never will, and Ambassador Mohammad Boroujerdi added that Iran's resilience during this year's war had already answered the question without needing a warhead to do it. Ten minutes with the IAEA's public reports would have spared everyone the exchange. Instead, every future statement Prabowo makes on Iran, Saudi Arabia or the wider Middle East will now be read against this one — in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha most of all.