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Six US Air Force personnel were fired for failing to ensure the safety and security of the country’s nuclear stockpile. Two commanders and four subordinates were relieved of duty at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota after their units failed an inspection, according to CNN. The base houses strategic bombers and missile silos, two branches of America’s “nuclear triad” military structure. Both Commanders were part of the 5th Mission Support Group and the 5th Logistics Readiness Squadron. The news organisation says that the security inspection is a pass/fail test and that the results are classified. There is no suggestion...

The United Nations has decided that Israel needs to get rid of its nuclear weapons — if indeed it has any. But the organization has nothing to say about Iran.In a 152-5 vote on Friday, the UN’s General Assembly voted to have Israel dispose of its nuclear weapons and place any nuclear sites within its borders under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The dissenting votes were from the United States, Canada, Israel, Micronesia, and Palau. Twenty-three nations and the European Union abstained.Fox News reports that it has never been confirmed that Israel has any nuclear weapons,...

Paywalled.

How the Situation in Ukraine Could Get Far More Dangerous: After days of a withering Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian defense ministry announced that it was withdrawing its forces from two areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. In a video statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky quipped, “The Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.” Ukrainians celebrated, and rightly so. While Russian spokesmen said that Russian forces were “repositioning” ahead of a new offensive, reporters on the ground cast doubt on such pronouncements both because they mirror Russian statements as it abandoned its...

On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted approving the search warrant that resulted in the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, but aside from that, gave virtually no new information, sticking to DOJ boilerplate. During the brief statement that we waited three days for, Garland not only doubled down on the raid, but gave us no details about why he did so, or the justification for it. Instead, he put the onus on Trump “The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,” Garland said. “The property receipt is a document that federal law requires...

Since the early 2000s, Tehran’s construction of gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities has been the main source of proliferation concern. Gas centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at high speeds to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 (u-235) isotope. Such centrifuges can produce both low-enriched uranium (LEU), which can be used in nuclear power reactors, and highly enriched uranium (HEU), which is one of the two types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons. Tehran asserts that its enrichment program is meant to produce fuel for peaceful nuclear reactors.

(Translation) North Korea warned that it is ready for any military conflict and has threatened neighboring South Korea with "annihilation" in case of any attempt to overthrow the regime led by Kim Jong-un. In a speech marking the celebration of "Victory Day" and reported by the EFE news agency, the [North] Korean leader warned Washington that "our armed forces are completely ready to respond to any crisis, and our nation's nuclear deterrent is also ready to mobilize its absolute force in a reliable, precise, and rapid manner." July 27 is celebrated in the territory as a holiday in which Pyongyang...

Americans, like the planet's other 7.5 billion people, are not prone to talk or think much about nuclear weapons. Of course, some of us are old enough to remember how "mutually assured destruction," or MAD, was supposed to ensure the general peace. Some recall the eerie Cold War-era nuclear bomb movies like "Dr. Strangelove" or "Fail Safe" or the more recent post-nuclear Armageddon films like "The Book of Eli." Millions have grown up referring to the scary "doomsday clock" of atomic scientists that usually ticks closer to a midnight nuclear holocaust in times of crisis. So the planet is not...

The Kremlin again raised the spectre of the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine as Russian forces struggled to hold a key city in the south of the country. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said Moscow could strike against an enemy that only used conventional weapons while Vladimir Putin’s defence minster claimed nuclear “readiness” was a priority. The comments on Saturday prompted Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an appearance by video link at Qatar’s Doha Forum to warn that Moscow was a direct threat to the world.

A profoundly alarming thread has surfaced this evening on Twitter. It is written by Gabriel Noronha, a former Iran official at the US State Department. The thread is about the activities of America’s Iran envoy Robert Malley in the current Vienna talks with Iran about a renewed nuclear deal. This is a lightly edited version of what Naronha writes: 1. My former career @StateDept, NSC, and EU colleagues are so concerned with the concessions being made by @RobMalley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to...

It’s a new year, but the news about Iran is not new. The timing of recent rhetoric throughout the Middle East is directly related to renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran. Nobody thinks the Iranians are honest players or can be trusted. But there are world leaders who think that continuing to negotiate, even if the same outcome is likely, is a goal in and of itself. Included in the rhetoric recently was a blunt statement from Israel’s otherwise diplomatic president that Israel reserves the right to do whatever is needed to keep the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons, and that...

While much of the international focus has remained on Iran's nuclear program, Tehran has steadily advanced another major instrument of instability, i.e., drones. For over a decade, the regime has sunk billions of dollars into the effort as part of its regional destabilization policy. To avoid more crises in hotspots like Lebanon and Syria, the international community must act now to curb Tehran's massive drone initiative. Let’s start with the facts. Despite crippling economic misfortune, Tehran has invested billions in drone production, in a bid to compensate for its failing Air Force. On October 6, 2021, a sweeping expositionon the...

Nuclear Weapons!! In the mid-1970s Pakistan embarked upon the uranium enrichment route to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, shortly after India's nuclear tests, declaring itself a nuclear weapon state. Pakistan currently possesses a growing nuclear arsenal, and remains outside both the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It also is the sole country blocking negotiations of the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT). Capabilities Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris characterize Pakistan as having, "the world's fastest-growing nuclear stockpile." [1] According to the SIPRI 2018...

The remarks by United States President Joseph Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week (July 27) made a strong but ambivalent impression in Moscow. His warning regarding Russian misinformation and interference in the 2022 mid-term elections in the US was countered with the usual denials (RIA Novosti, July 28). Instead, the most emotional protests came in response to Biden’s assertion that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was dangerous because he presides over a weak economy. Russia boasts “nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else,” he argued (Izvestia, July 28). This was certainly a deliberate...

Recently released satellite imagery reveals that China has embarked on what the Washington Post termed “a building spree that could signal a major expansion of Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.” Nuclear analyst Jeffrey Lewis revealed that China is building what appears to be 119 missile silos across more than 700 square miles in the Gansu desert. Construction began in February. The silos suggest Beijing no longer seeks to maintain only a “minimal deterrent.” The Chinese military may even be building a nuclear “war-fighting” capability. Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, has...

In a May 24 tweet Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Palestinians to “purify the Holy Land from the contamination of the usurpers.” The following day, Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Iran is “enriching at 60%...only countries making bombs are reaching that level.” Both statements are screaming testimony to Iran’s intentions. Nonetheless, Biden administration officials are working very hard to re-join the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), a deal which supposedly limited Iran’s race to nuclear weapons while simultaneously both releasing tons of money to Iran and eliminating harsh economic...

#Iran appears to have falsified the RED NOTICE profile of the person wanted by it as someone who sabotaged #Natanz uranium enrichment plant. There is no such profile in Interpol's search system.

In case you missed the explosion, no worry. You may still be hearing its echoes and reverberations for a long time. This past week, reports within and outside Iran have confirmed a massive explosion deep underground at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility. Iran claims that Natanz and other facilities like it are just for civilian, nuclear energy use, which they declare is their right. But successful foreign intelligence operations, as well as their own announcement that they will begin enriching uranium to 60%, leave no doubt that their intent is militaristic, and malicious. All this comes in context of a...

What does it take to get a U.S. House member to...very publicly threaten to nuke American citizens who want to defend their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment? Nothing more than pushing back on Twitter against that congressman, Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)'s proposal from earlier this year to fully ban and buy back every one of what he wants to designate as "assault weapons" with the added bonus of "criminally prosecut[ing] any who choose to defy it." Rep. Swalwell, willing to make sure the war against any possible American citizen resistance over gun confiscation doesn't fall into the endless quagmire of...

The bits they were not able to recover. A B 52 with two MK 39 nuclear weapons has the engine catch fire, which ends up with the plane exploding, in mid air, but no before the pilot had ejected the two nuclear weapons. In addition 5 crew members ejected and survived and another 3 crew members perished. Of the two nuclear weapons, one landed safely after its parachute deployed. The other one's parachute did not deploy , hit the ground at 700 MPH and sank into a swamp in North Carolina. After digging for 40 feet and not finding the...