All posts tagged "nuclear weapons"

Trump holds all the cards — yet he just got played

The U.S. Massive Ordnance Penetrator (“MOP”), weighing in at 30,000 pounds, was designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction buried in mountains or deep below the earth’s surface. The MOP is so heavy it can only be lifted by a B-2 bomber, which can perform attack missions at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet.

Israel does not own an MOP bomb or the B-2 bombers needed to carry it — both were developed and are owned exclusively by the United States Air Force. Although Trump claims credit for it, the MOP was developed in 2004 under the Bush administration, and U.S. weapons engineers have tested and refined it ever since.

Israel has been asking the U.S. for an Ordnance Penetrator for years, and lobbied for it hard in 2004. Until now, no administration would commit. But this week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — either seeking to prolong his own rule, or because he found evidence of an “imminent” threat, depending on what media sources you consume, forced Trump’s hand by unilaterally attacking the sites of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities.

Ending Iran’s nuclear program

Without the MOP, Israel’s laudable goal of ending Iran’s nuclear weapons proliferation — if, indeed, that is what Iran is up to —cannot succeed. There is no disagreement among military experts about the necessity of the bomber. It’s use is the only way to effectuate Israel’s goal of disabling Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

Netanyahu, however, started the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without consulting, conferring or strategizing with Trump, while Trump was still trying to get Iran to negotiate an end to its uranium enrichment.

In March, Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khameini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” Just last week, Trump was still trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran, and “remained hopeful that his Middle East peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, who had been scheduled to conduct another round of peace talks in the region Sunday, could soon get an agreement over the line.”

But earlier this week, lacking any hint of strategy, and without any evidence to support an about-face, Trump posted that everyone in Tehran, a city of 10 million, should “immediately evacuate,” and demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”

So much for Trump’s oft-repeated promise to pull America out of endless wars.

Bibi played Trump’s hand

The Fordow enrichment lab, under the control of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, is a uranium enrichment facility buried deep in the mountains outside the Iranian city of Qom. It’s size, secrecy, and location led analysts to doubt Iran’s proffered non-military purpose of the facility, despite Gabbard’s assessment. Many experts agree that Iran built the Fordow lab for the covert production of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU), making it a key target in Israel’s strikes.

Brett McGurk, who worked under four American presidents of both parties on Middle East issues, told the New York Times that Fordow has “been the crux” of Iran’s weapons development all along. McGurk, along with other weapons experts, agree that if Israel’s newest bombing campaign against Iran ends with Fordow still enriching uranium, Israel’s campaign will have failed.

U.S. military strategists have been testing the MOP bomb in simulation labs enough to know that one bomb won’t do it. To successfully wreck Fordow, the attack will have to come in waves, with B-2s firing one bomb after another down the same hole into the mountain. The operation can only be executed by an American pilot and crew.

A reality TV president

The timing, in terms of U.S. national security, could not be worse. Trump is fresh off the heels of a globally embarrassing military parade that cost taxpayers $45 million. Hundreds of thousands of spectators were expected to attend but most media outlets, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, reported sparse attendance, extremely low energy, and mostly empty bleachers. The optics were painful. Trump’s Kim Jong-un style parade quickly became an international joke, with the most viral social media clip showing a tank rolling by empty spectator benches accompanied only by the lonely sound of creaking metal.

Fox News, of course, fawned over tanks in the street, and praised the parade with uninterrupted coverage. But the rest of the world saw the real spectacle happening at the same time: over 5 million people turned out to protest against Trump in over 2,100 cities across the nation. The anti-Trump No Kings Day demonstration was hailed as the largest protest in U.S. history.

Following this embarrassing split screen, publicized around the world, Trump likely appreciates that Israel, by bombing Iran and pulling the U.S. into its war, changed the channel.

Trump brought us here

It can’t be forgotten that Trump led us to this precarious path when he withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, after it had been painstakingly hammered out among several nations including the U.S., Iran, France, Germany, Great Britain, China and Russia.

At the time he withdrew from the agreement, Trump’s move was expected to embolden hard-line forces in Iran, supercharging a Middle East arms race. If Netanyahu is to be believed, that is exactly what happened. President Barack Obama, whose team negotiated the agreement, predicted that Trump’s withdrawal would “leave the world less safe,” and confronted with “a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.”

And that losing choice is exactly where we are.

As of this writing, nothing is certain, but my money is on Trump deploying the MOP.

For one thing, Trump’s parade flop denied him the spectacle of military lethality he so desperately craves. Deploying the bomber will allow 24/7 Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax coverage of Trump beating his chest. For another thing, Trump is demanding a $1 trillion dollar defense budget while purporting to keep the U.S. out of foreign entanglements. It’s only a matter of time before senators put two and two together and figure out that Trump wants that $1 trillion to morph the military into a domestic attack force to be deployed on American soil, against American citizens who live in Democratic-run cities.

Deploying the MOP against Iran will help delay that moment of realization and provide Republicans with some diverting optics — cue Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in aviator glasses, manning a fighter jet. It could even help Trump’s budget negotiations.

It's too much to expect an effective Israel strategy from Trump, given that Netanyahu and his advisors are operating well above the second-grade level of intellect parading in the White House. Afghanistan should have taught us — even Trump — that it is far easier to topple a hostile foreign regime than it is to replace it with a functioning government acceptable to its people. Israel, if it topples the Khamenei regime, could end up leaving Iran in the hands of violent factions even more dangerous than they are now.

Netanyahu will likely get his way with Trump and the MOP, and he knows it. Fox News will re-write the narrative and sell it as proof of Trump’s genius, which 45% of the country will buy, and the U.S. will find itself in another Neanderthal war that will never end.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

'She's wrong': Trump snaps as he takes another shot at spy chief

President Donald Trump doubled-down on his claim that he knows better than his national intelligence team.

During a tarmac press gaggle, Trump was asked about his administration's intelligence.

"It looked like I'm right about the material that they've gathered already," Trump said. "It's a tremendous amount of material, and I think within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months, they're going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. We can't let that happen."

One reporter asked, "What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point."

"Well, then, my intelligence community is wrong," Trump snapped. "Who in the intelligence community said that?" he asked.

The reporter answered, "Your director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard."

"She's wrong," Trump said dismissively.

Watch the clip below via CNN.

'Disastrous': Top Dems marvel at 'irony' of Trump dragging US into war

A senior Democratic senator marveled at the “irony” of President Donald Trump seeming set to lead the United States into another Middle Eastern war, as he mulls joining Israel in striking Iran despite having won two elections with promises of an isolationist, “America First” foreign policy.

“What an irony it would be if Donald Trump dragged us into another Middle East war,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told reporters at the Capitol.

“That's clearly not anything the American people want.”

Widely held to harbor presidential ambitions, Murphy is a prominent Democratic voice on Capitol Hill, sitting on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Common sense would tell us there is a significant and perhaps certain risk of escalation, including targets on U.S. forces in the region that would be a … potentially disastrous outcome for the United States,” Murphy said.

“So I still don't believe the United States should get involved here, and I don't think I would be supporting Congress to authorize it. The president doesn't have the ability to authorize a strike without congressional authorization — [that] is probably the most important thing here.”

Another prominent Democrat, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), has introduced a resolution to force Trump to seek congressional approval for strikes on Iran.

Kaine, who sits on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees and was his party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2016, pointed to polling showing scant support for military action.

“I saw yesterday, 60% of Americans do not think we should be at war with Iran, 16% say yes, 24% say they're not sure,” Kaine told reporters.

“That is consistent with what I'm hearing in Virginia, a very pro-military state, that it would be a very bad idea for us to be in another war in the Middle East.”

‘I may do it, I may not’

Five days after Israel launched strikes on Iran, killing top leaders, and Tehran answered with strikes of its own, the conflict shows no sign of slowing.

Trump is still mulling what to do.

On Wednesday, with Congress abuzz with talk of his intentions, the president did not make things clear.

“I may do it, I may not do it,” he told reporters at the White House, when asked if he would order an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

“I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble. And they want to negotiate. And I say, why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction.”

Trump also attacked a CNN reporter who noted, “some of your supporters are split on the U.S. response”.

Kaine told reporters his speech introducing his resolution prompted “a lot of military members and military families” to reach out to his office.

According to Kaine, such callers said: “Thank God somebody is trying to make Congress think about this, and do you really want to go back into another war in the Middle East?”

Kaine brushed off questions about Trump’s apparent split from his director of national intelligence, the former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who has said Iran is not close to a nuclear weapon.

“He can say whatever he wants about his own staff,” Kaine said.

But he added: “I will say, and this has been publicly reported again and again and again, that Iran's nuclear enrichment activities were under control during the JCPOA,” the Iran nuclear deal signed under President Barack Obama in 2015.

“When Donald Trump tore it up [in 2018], they started to move ahead on centrifuges and enrichment.

“However, the intel community has consistently said they see no evidence that there's been a decision to turn that into a nuclear weapon. And that's basically what [Gabbard] was saying. That's been consistent for years.”

‘Bamboozled’

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. James Risch (R-ID), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the Intelligence Committee, disagreed with Kaine.

“I've sat across the table from [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu off and on for the last 17 years, and he has been incredibly frustrated with Iran refusing to give up its nuclear ambitions,” Risch said.

“The Obama administration tried, they got bamboozled. They wound up with a really bad deal, and we're in a worse place now than if we hadn't had that deal in the first place.

“I think that the Israelis have finally had it and said, ‘Look, this is an existential question for us. We're going to do something about it. That's their decision.’

Risch indicated an expectation that all Iran’s nuclear sites will be destroyed, whether by Israel or the U.S., despite widespread analysis that only the U.S. can do so.

“I sit on the Intelligence Committee so I have to be careful what I say here,” Risch told a reporter.

“But I am not willing to accept your proposition or your premise that you ask that question on, that [Israel’s] not going to be able to finish the job on the three nuclear sites that Iran has.”

Referring to an Iranian facility hidden under a mountain, the reporter asked: “Including Fordow?”

“You heard my answer to your question,” Risch said.

There is Republican opposition to Iran strikes — including from the populist conservative Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — but there are plenty of hawks.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-SD), a member of the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs committees, said he would back Trump.

“One of the things I've been trying to resist is speculating what Donald Trump is thinking,” Cramer told reporters, before flirting with speculation over “the movement of tankers and Navy ships and … fleets,” then saying again he did not want to “speculate in terms of an offensive attack.”

“That said,” Cramer added, “I will support whatever he decides to include, if he decides to drop bunker-busters on Fordow and finish, once and for all, the getting rid of any nuclear capability by this regime.”

'That's a big headline': CNN anchor surprised by pundit's claim about Trump

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, who served as an intelligence officer with the Israeli Defense Forces, told CNN Wednesday that Israel fully expects President Donald Trump to involve the U.S. in its bombing campaign against Iran.

Ravid told anchor Sara Sidner that Israel was "pretty close" to having identified all of the targets they need to hit.

"I think they need another 2 or 3 days, tops, before they exhaust all the targets that they had," Ravid said. "Obviously there are new targets coming in all the time, but I think that the major things have already been done."

Ravid said that Trump's phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the final step before announcing U.S. involvement.

"Now, I think everyone are waiting to see not if, but when President Trump will order a military strike," Ravid said. "That's at least what I hear from Israeli officials. They are certain that Trump is going to join this war."

Sidner was struck by Ravid's prediction.

"Yeah, that's a big headline there, that your officials in Israel are saying they are certain that President Donald Trump is going to enter this war militarily," Sidner said.

Ravid explained that Israel "just does not have the bombs to penetrate" Iran's heavily fortified facility in Fordow.

"In order to destroy it, it needs the 30,000 pound bombs that the U.S. has and the B-2 bombers that the U.S. has in order to drop those bombs in Iran," Ravid said.

He added that the "number one thing Israel wants from the U.S." is to "take out this nuclear facility in Fordow." Everything else, Ravid said, the Israelis "can manage on their own."

Watch the clip below via CNN or click the link here.

'Don't care what she said': Trump disses his own national intelligence director

President Donald Trump dismissed an assessment on Iran's nuclear capabilities made by his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, when asked about the situation on his way back to Washington from the G7 summit in Alberta, Canada.

Trump left the summit early on Monday, citing the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran that's raged for five days over Iran's development of nuclear weapons.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was seeking "a real end" to the conflict, "not a ceasefire."

"So, something that will be permanent?" a reporter asked Trump.

"Yeah, or giving up entirely, that's okay, too," Trump answered. "A complete 'give up.' That's possible, yeah."

CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Trump about DNI Gabbard's testimony in March about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear threat.

"You've always said that you don't believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon, but how close do you personally think that they were to getting one?" Collins asked.

Trump answered, "Very close."

"Because Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon," Collins continued.

"I don't care what she said," Trump snapped. "I think they were very close to having one."

CNN's Zachary Cohen noted Trump '"appearing to dismiss the testimony from his own top intelligence chief."

Cohen continued, "A senior U.S. official, also telling me that Iran is, quote, 'As close as you can get before building a nuclear weapon.' Saying further, 'They have all the things you need in order to do so.'"

Cohen said the timeline was important in determining the potential for U.S. involvement in the conflict, saying, "It seems Donald Trump has made up his mind, though."

Cohen said it remains to be seen what steps Trump would take to prevent Iran from fully developing nuclear capabilities.

"Yeah, ultimately, that's what's important here, probably in terms of U.S. action," said anchor John Berman. "What Donald Trump thinks the truth is."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

All out war could ensue if 'revenge-obsessed' Trump can't 'rise to the occasion': expert

The escalating conflict between India and Pakistan — one that has the real possibility of becoming nuclear — could turn out to be the first true test of the Trump administration's foreign policy mettle, according to a new piece in The Atlantic.

On Wednesday, Pakistan claimed to have downed several Indian fighter jets in response to India's attack on Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir earlier this week. Pakistan claimed 21 people were killed in the strikes, including two children, and vowed further retaliation. India claimed it was striking back after a terror attack on India-controlled Kashmir killed more than 20 tourists in April.

The Atlantic writer Tom Nichols claimed that it's in America's best interest "to prevent a larger conflict, which would be a diplomatic and humanitarian disaster on multiple levels even without the introduction of nuclear weapons."

He wrote, "We must hope that the [Trump] administration, which so far seems obsessed only with political revenge, culture wars, and indulging the president’s pet economic theories, can rise to this occasion."

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Nichols postulated, "Perhaps President Donald Trump is meeting with National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, who in turn is handling meetings and contributions from administration leaders such as…well, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And maybe Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are working hand in glove with other top National Security Council members to provide Trump with solid options for approaching the nations (as well as other interested parties) and de-escalating a potentially existential crisis."

"It would be pretty to think so," Nichols wrote, paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway.

Nichols gave an example of Trump's ignorance of the situation in South Asia when the president commented, "They’ve been fighting for many, many decades, and centuries, actually, if you really think about it." Except they didn't start fighting until they became two independent nations in 1947.

Nichols wrote that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, "for his part, seems engaged" in lessening the conflict, having "reached out to the Pakistani prime minister and the Indian external affairs minister in an effort to lessen tensions; he has also engaged with both countries’ national security advisers."

Nichols encouraged the rest of the administration to "focus far less on its internal grievances (and insulting our allies), and more on keeping the nuclear peace."

Read The Atlantic article here.

Nuclear arms grow more prominent amid geopolitical tensions: researchers

The role of atomic weapons has become more prominent and nuclear states are modernizing arsenals as geopolitical relations deteriorate, researchers said Monday, urging world leaders to “step back and reflect”.

Diplomatic efforts to control nuclear arms also suffered major setbacks amid strained international relations over the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual yearbook.

“We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War,” Wilfred Wan, director of SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said in a statement.

The research institute noted that in February 2023 Russia announced it was suspending participation in the 2010 New START treaty — “the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty limiting Russian and US strategic nuclear forces."

SIPRI also noted that Russia carried out tactical nuclear weapon drills close to the Ukrainian border in May. Russian President Vladimir Putin has upped his nuclear rhetoric since the Ukraine conflict began, warning in his address to the nation in February there was a “real” risk of nuclear war.

In addition, an informal agreement between the United States and Iran reached in June 2023 was upended after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, SIPRI said.

‘Extremely concerning’

According to SIPRI, the world’s nine nuclear-armed states also “continued to modernize their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023”.

The nine countries are the United States, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. In January, of the estimated 12,121 nuclear warheads around the world about 9,585 were in stockpiles for potential use, according to SIPRI. Around 2,100 were kept in a state of “high operational alert” on ballistic missiles.

Nearly all of these warheads belong to Russia and the United States — which together possess almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons — but China was for the first time believed to have some warheads on high operational alert.

“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” SIPRI director Dan Smith said.

He added that this trend would likely continue and “probably accelerate” in the coming years, describing it as “extremely concerning.”

Researchers also stressed the “continuing deterioration of global security over the past year”, as the impact from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza could be seen in “almost every aspect” of issues relating to armaments and international security.“

We are now in one of the most dangerous periods in human history,” Smith said, urging the world’s great powers to “step back and reflect. Preferably together.”

President Duda says Poland ready to host nuclear weapons

Poland is open to hosting nuclear weapons from NATO allies, President Andrzej Duda said on Monday. Duda made the comments in an interview published Monday in the Polish tabloid Fakt.

"If there were a decision by our allies to deploy nuclear weapons within the nuclear sharing also on our territory in order to strengthen the security of NATO's eastern flank, we are ready," Duda said.

However, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called for further details from Duda. "This idea is absolutely massive, I would say, and very serious."

'Sick to my stomach': Ex-Pence aide aghast Trump shared nuclear info with foreign national

A bombshell report on Thursday revealed that shortly after leaving office, former President Donald Trump discussed U.S. nuclear submarine secrets with an Australian billionaire who happened to be a member of Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club.

Former Mike Pence national security aide Olivia Troye, a frequent critic of Trump's conduct, expressed her horror at the news during a CNN interview that evening.

"Olivia ... it was always a question about what Trump was doing with these highly classified documents that he stored over there at Mar-a-Lago," said anchor Wolf Blitzer. "This potentially shed some serious light on that, right?"

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"Yes, and it takes it to a whole new level of understanding of the negligence of his behavior with such sacred information that, look, people put their lives at risk for," said Troye. "I mean, I have to tell you, Wolf, I'm sick to my stomach just reading and learning this news exactly of what they believe it was that he shared, because, look, it's the silent service, the submariners, who spend months at sea."

Trump's actions jeopardized some of the most vital people in service to government, Troye continued.

"I think about just what a betrayal to have a former president of the United States sharing this information that could be easily given to foreign adversaries who are eagerly — like, eagerly seeking this type of information that could put all of our national security at risk," added Troye. "It is beyond disgraceful. This is awful."

Watch the video below or at the link.

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Putin says Moscow to station nuclear weapons in Belarus, first time since 1990s

(Reuters) — Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, marking the first time since the mid-1990s that Moscow will have based such arms outside the country.

Putin made the announcement at a time of growing tensions with the West over the Ukraine war and as some Russian commentators speculate about possible nuclear strikes. Putin told state television that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in his country, which borders NATO member Poland.