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President Obama stopped Israel from launching an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities a year ago, according to the then head of Israel’s National Security Council, Gen. Giora Eiland. Gen. Eiland spoke with Israeli journalist Rotem Sella, a former former senior writer for the daily Ma’ariv, at the Daily Capitalist blog on the “Mida” online news site. Some quickly-translated extracts from Sella’s report are below: Exclusive: Prime – Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to order an attack on Iran in September 2012, but canceled the operation in response to U.S. pressure, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council said last...

Weaponry: As the commander in chief calls for a one-third reduction in our nuclear arsenal, Russia builds new midrange missile banned under a 1987 arms treaty. How's that "reset" button working out, Mr. President? Trust but verify, said the president who won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" philosophy has been replaced with the "peace through parchment" strategy of Barack Obama. It emphasizes flexibility, not resolve, and relies on pacts such as the New Start Treaty and the pressing of imaginary reset buttons. Russia's playing host to Edward Snowden, arguably a traitor with secrets to share with Moscow...

The photo of President Obama and Russian boss Vladimir Putin sitting glum-faced at the G8 summit sparked talk of a new Cold War. Let’s hope not, because we would lose this time. Looking at them, I had one thought: In a showdown, my money is on Putin. In fact, whether negotiating over Syria or arm-wrestling, I want a Putin on our side. He knows his country’s national interests and is prepared to pursue them. We, on the other hand, have a president who increasingly lives over the rainbow. World disorder is growing by the day, and Obama seems not to...

In four months as secretary of state, John Kerry has certainly promised great things. Now he has to deliver. In the Middle East, he has raised hopes his solo diplomatic effort can produce a historic breakthrough ending six decades of Arab-Israeli conflict.(continued)

Several A-listers are banding together to beg President Barack Obama to keep his word about seeking a world [free] of nuclear weapons. Apparently, they've been cycling through the Superman movies to ready themselves for Man of Steel and stumbled upon Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Actors Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Naomi Watts, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin, among others, appear in a new video for Global Zero urging the president to address the issue at next week’s G-8 summit.... Freeman and Sheen conclude, “For if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is...

The administration hard-sells reactor exports while shrugging off proliferation concerns.In Washington, learning comes hard. Officials may know when to back off when they’ve crossed wires with Congress, but in most cases, and in less time than you’d think, they’re back at it again. Take the State Department’s rush three years ago to seal a civilian nuclear deal with Vietnam. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. had initialed a draft agreement in July of 2010. It featured nuclear-nonproliferation provisions far looser than what Congress wanted. When the Hill found out, it threw a fit, the White House withdrew...

A BBC Persian journalist wrote Tuesday on the Twitter social media website that three explosions had been heard in western Tehran, in an area where Iran carries out missile research and storage. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries or damage in the incident. In January, both Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency denied reports that a blast had hit the Fordow underground uranium enrichment center near Qom. A mysterious and massive explosion rocked a military arms depot near Tehran in November 2011, killing 17 Revolutionary Guards Corps officers and wounding 17 others. Iranian officials said the...

I was watching TV this evening and started to flip cable channels when I saw a streaming on MSNBC on our forces finding castor beans. The following is a part of what their website said about it. NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski that within just the past week, U.S. investigators had found two shipping containers filled with millions of much more recent documents relating to chemical and biological weapons. One of the documents, from 2001, was titled “Document burial and U.N. activities in Iraq,” the sources said. It gave detailed instructions on how to hide materials and deceive U.N. weapons inspectors,...

IF KIM JONG UN thinks he can shake down Washington by threatening nuclear apocalypse, President Obama says, the belligerent North Korean dictator has another think coming. "Since I came into office, the one thing I was clear about was: We're not going to reward this provocative behavior," Obama told NBC's Savannah Guthrie in an interview last week. "You don't get to bang your spoon on the table and somehow you get your way." No rewards for Pyongyang's criminal regime or its bloody-minded young tyrant. Everyone clear on that? Well, maybe not everyone. Speaking to reporters in Tokyo the day before...

We may not agree with Kim Jong-un, but caricaturing him as a little dancing fool with the crazy hairstyle is plain prejudice. It's a happy truism. Scratch a politically correct liberal, and you'll find a human being. And it appears that racism is the default state of being for humans. Don't ask me why. Perhaps when the Catholics tell us we are all born in sin, this is the sin they mean? Take North Korea, and the current hoo-ha about its threat to launch missiles against the US. It seems that some people think it's okay to caricature Kim Jong-un...

"The puppet group of south Korea is resorting to smear propaganda campaign to seek its comfort by forcing others into death like itself," KCNA said today. Warning of impending nuclear war, the chilling rant by the state run news agency continued: "The arrows indicating the merciless retaliatory strikes have already been drawn directing at the U.S. mainland, U.S. military bases in the Pacific and all other bases where the U.S. imperialist aggression forces station. "The powerful strike means of the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK have been put in their places and the coordinates of targets put into the...

Calling international efforts to stop North Korea from building atomic weapons a “miserable failure,” a prominent South Korean lawmaker today called for the deployment of tactical US nuclear weapons in the South and suggested that his country think about developing their own nuclear deterrent. The call by M.J. Chung, a seven-term member of the Korean National Assembly and former presidential candidate, comes amid the biggest spike of tensions on the Korean peninsula in recent years. Among other threats, the new young leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, has threated to target Guam and Hawaii, and turn Seoul, South Korea’s capital,...

THERE ARE MANY MORE IMAGES AT THE SITE Full Title: Ultra-Fast Nuclear Detonation Picture While the image above is the stereotypical picture of a nuclear explosion, in reality by the time the classic mushroom cloud has formed all the interesting detail is long over. The following images, borrowed from several sources, show the eerie and complex patterns atomic detonations create immediately after they are triggered. Most of the following images were taken using Rapatronic cameras, ultra-high speed, single-frame cameras developed in the 1940s by Dr. Harold Edgerton. The duration of the exposure is typically 10 nanoseconds (0.00000001 of a second....

SEOUL — The North Korean army said Thursday it had final approval to launch "merciless" military strikes on the United States, involving the possible use of "cutting-edge" nuclear weapons. In a statement published by the official KCNA news agency, the General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) said it was formally informing Washington that reckless US threats would be "smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means". "The merciless operation of (our) revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified," the statement said.

According to a new Pew poll, 64 percent of Americans believe that it’s “more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons than to avoid a military conflict.” They point out that “majorities across nearly all demographic groups” agree — 80 percent of Republicans prioritized preventing a nuclear Iran over avoiding military conflict, but a majority of Democrats, 62 percent, did too.....

Is Zbigniew Brzezinski OK with Iran developing nuclear weapons? Sounds that way. On Morning Joe today, Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser had some advice for President Obama: tell Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that America will not go to war against Iran. Attacking Iran's nuclear facilities would surely be an act of war. Yet doing so might well be the only way to prevent the ayatollahs from getting the A-bomb. Unfortunately, neither Joe Scarborough nor anyone else on the panel including daughter Mika asked Brzezinski flat out whether he would encourage America to stand by while Iran got nukes. But...

“I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack.” That was White House spokesman Jay Carney, reacting to the third nuclear test this year by the self-styled “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” as well as a brash threat from Pyongyang to, well, nuke the United States. Carney’s words are certainly reassuring, but the real question is why they were even necessary in the first place. There are two problems, basically. One is the administration’s nuclear-weapon policy. The other is the laggardly pace of our missile defenses. Begin with the...

As most of you have read or seen by now, a journalist and NBC/MSNBC media consultant named William “Bill” Arkin has created quite a stir by viciously insulting American soldiers in Iraq. He wrote at his Washington Post blog, “Early Warning: William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security” column (1/30/07), that “… this NBC (Nightly News) report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer force that thinks it is doing the dirty work” re Iraq. The “report,” according to Arkin, featured “a number of soldiers (who) expressed frustration with...

WASHINGTON -- Senior Obama administration officials have agreed that the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. military deploys could be cut by at least a third without harming national security, according to those involved in the deliberations. Such a reduction would open the door to billions of dollars in military savings, which might ease the federal budget deficit. It also would improve prospects for a new arms deal with Russia before President Barack Obama leaves office, those involved said, but it’s likely to draw fire from conservatives, if previous debate on the issue is any guide.

WASHINGTON — Last year, the Obama administration announced to the world that it was planning to pursue a new Asia/Pacific-oriented national security strategy. Since then, North Korea has countered with a strategy of its own. In December, Pyongyang successfully launched a multistage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a warhead-sized payload to the U.S. mainland. On Feb. 12, the North Koreans tested an improved-design nuclear weapon. After the test, Pyongyang announced that despite tightened United Nations sanctions that theoretically went into force last month, its latest nuclear test bolstered its defenses against U.S. "hostility." In a lengthy broadcast on the...