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A new nuclear arms race is accelerating. There’s only one way to stop it

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

April 27, 2026 , Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, https://theconversation.com/a-new-nuclear-arms-race-is-accelerating-theres-only-one-way-to-stop-it-281130?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202026%20-%203750638401&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202026%20-%203750638401+CID_b464943fe1c89ff64a2ce9bfba273fa3&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=A%20new%20nuclear%20arms%20race%20is%20accelerating%20Theres%20only%20one%20way%20to%20stop%20it

This week in New York, diplomats from almost every nation will convene for a four-week review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the most comprehensive nuclear arms agreement in the world.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Russia, Israel and the United States, all nuclear-armed, are conducting illegal wars of aggression against countries without nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan engaged in conflict last year across their disputed border, raising the spectre of nuclear escalation.

In February, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons lapsed, with nothing to replace it. The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

And all nine nuclear-armed states are investing vast sums in modernising their arsenals with more capable and dangerous weapons. Deployed nuclear weapons and those on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes, are also rising.

All these developments have brought the Doomsday Clock, which assesses how close the world is to existential catastrophe, closer to midnight than it has ever been since 1947.

What is the NPT?

The NPT is considered a cornerstone of international law in relation to nuclear weapons and disarmament. It has the widest membership of any arms control agreement, with 190 states. These include five countries that manufactured and exploded nuclear weapons before 1967 – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. All other members do not have nuclear weapons.

North Korea is the only state to have joined the NPT and then renounced it. India, Israel and Pakistan, all nuclear-armed, along with South Sudan, are the only countries that have never joined.

The NPT is essentially a bargain struck in the late 1960s between the states that had nuclear weapons and those that did not. The first five nuclear-armed states – also permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights – committed to end the nuclear arms race and eliminate their arsenals.

In exchange, states without nuclear weapons agreed to forego acquiring them, with the sweetener of assistance in developing peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established to ensure non-nuclear states did not acquire weapons. However, the treaty did not establish any timeframes, defined processes, or verification or enforcement mechanisms for nuclear-armed nations to disarm.

The NPT entered into legal force in 1970, initially for 25 years. It was hoped the task of nuclear disarmament would be accomplished by then.

When this was clearly not the case in 1995, the treaty was indefinitely extended, thereby removing an important source of pressure on nuclear-armed states to fulfil their side of the bargain. Since then, there have been reviews every five years to debate implementation of the treaty.

Rarely consensus

These conferences, however, have been fraught.

In 2015, for example, Canada, the UK and US blocked adoption of a painstakingly negotiated text at the behest of Israel, a non-member of the treaty. And in 2022, Russia blocked adoption of the final text, mainly due to references to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which it attacked and occupied.

Since 1995, only two review conferences have produced an agreed outcome document.

In 2000, the members agreed to 13 practical steps to progress nuclear disarmament, but these remain almost completely unimplemented. And in 2010, the members agreed to a 64-point action plan, but implementation has been variable and weak, particularly for the 22 actions relating to disarmament.

The NPT has been moderately effective, though, in discouraging additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons. A number of countries, such as Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and Australia, gave up nuclear weapons programs or ambitions after joining.

But when it comes to disarmament, the treaty has failed dismally.

The head of this year’s conference, Do Hung Viet, has stressed the risk of failing to find consensus again at this year’s review.

It may not put an end to the NPT itself but […] it may hollow out the NPT. We may lose the credibility of the NPT itself

Two main challenges ahead

In the current dysfunctional international environment, expectations for this year’s conference are low.

Nuclear-armed states have not only failed to disarm, they are growing, modernising and threatening to use their arsenals in an accelerating arms race. And two recent developments are likely to cast further shadows over the debate.

The first is Russia’s unprecedented weaponisation of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including operating nuclear power plants with huge quantities of radioactive materials in the reactor cores and in spent fuel ponds. Russian forces have engaged in a number of reckless actions, including:


  • attacking and damaging the facilities
  • interfering with their operation and terrorising staff
  • using some as military bases
  • and jeopardising the power and water supplies critical to the essential cooling of reactors and spent fuel.

These actions risk a radiological disaster extending far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

The second major issue confronting this year’s review: the US–Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Both countries have cited Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons as a pretext for their attacks, despite the fact US intelligence officials and the head of the IAEA said this wasn’t the case.

The might-is-right attacks by the US and Israel raise profound questions for the world’s non-nuclear nations in the value of adhering to the NPT. Why should they comply with the treaty’s stringent requirements when nuclear-armed states can use illegal force against them, at their will?

Non-proliferation cannot be secured by war. In fact, for the surviving members of Iran’s regime (and leaders of other nations), the war likely reinforces the opposite lesson: preventing military aggression is best assured by having nuclear weapons.

The risk of other states now following the North Korean model – leaving the NPT and developing an initially clandestine nuclear weapons program – is much higher.

In the nuclear age, security is either shared or non-existent. The only safe and sustainable future is predicated on eliminating nuclear weapons. This can only be achieved through cooperation, negotiation and international law, backed up by equitable verification.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Nuclear Abolition. A Scenario

Wallis also bats away the patently absurd notion, nevertheless advanced by those same politicians, that somehow having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, something he declares as “nonsense” while reminding us that “Nuclear weapons are the biggest racket of all time — billions of dollars going from taxpayers to giant corporations to produce things everyone hopes will never be used!”

    by beyondnuclearinternational, Linda Pentz Gunter, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/04/26/nuclear-abolition-a-scenario/

Tim Wallis’s book provides an optimistic view, but it’s also a methodical journey toward the nuclear-free world we all want, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

The Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is about to begin in New York City. There is no reason to be particularly optimistic about any positive outcome. Meanwhile, signatories to the treaty itself continue to defy it, most specifically the United States.

The US is a signatory to the NPT, which in its Article VI states: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

It is the second shortest clause in the entire treaty. And yet, what we are seeing instead is a clear intent by the major nuclear powers, especially the US, Russia and China, to arm up rather than down.

Meanwhile, two nuclear armed states — the US and the undeclared nuclear weapon nation Israel — are busy attacking a non-nuclear armed state, Iran, that is also a signatory to the NPT. (Israel cannot join because it officially neither confirms nor denies whether it has the upwards of 200 nuclear weapons that everyone knows it does have.)

Iran has long declared that it is abiding by the terms of the NPT and enriching uranium for a civil nuclear power program, not to build nuclear weapons. This “inalienable” right is granted to any NPT signatory that forswears nuclear weapons in Article IV that says: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”

Article IV is arguably the fatal flaw of the NPT — and, regrettably, of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which repeats the clause verbatim — since it effectively leaves the back door open to transition to nuclear weapons via access to materials, technology and know-how. This is precisely the suspicion harbored by the US, Israel and Iran’s other enemies about Iran’s nuclear program. It was also used as the pretext for the current attack, almost certainly a cover story given both US intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency have consistently insisted that Iran is not moving toward nuclear weapons production.

The ramping up of nuclear weapons arsenals by the existing nuclear weapon nations, and the aspirations by other countries to acquire them — now potentially made more keen by the attack on Iran — moves us ever closer to the nuclear abyss. 

It is a frightening scenario, and one brought vividly alive by Annie Jacobsen’s chilling book, Nuclear War. A Scenario.

But, says Timmon Wallis, founder of NuclearBan.US, let’s not abandon our optimism too quickly. Surely there is a different way to think about this, and even a possibility that we can, after all, achieve our global nuclear disarmament goals?

Wallis’s book, Nuclear Abolition. A Scenario, takes a very different tack, and approaches the process through a form of mathematical calculation by subtraction, by moving the arms of the Doomsday Clock — currently at 85 seconds to midnight — gradually further away from that grim moment of Armageddon. (Wallis’s book was published when the clock sat at 89 seconds to midnight, still dire enough.)

Wallis begins by asking the question aspired to by his book — “What if there were no nuclear weapons in the world?” —then asks us to savor the joy of that feeling for a while. It’s what most of us want, after all, but somehow we have elected a rash of megalomaniacs who don’t seem to share that worldview.

Wallis also bats away the patently absurd notion, nevertheless advanced by those same politicians, that somehow having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, something he declares as “nonsense” while reminding us that “Nuclear weapons are the biggest racket of all time — billions of dollars going from taxpayers to giant corporations to produce things everyone hopes will never be used!”

To ensure they are never used, Wallis argues, we must do away with them altogether. But can we really arrive at that moment, when we can turn the Doomsday Clock off altogether? Unlike many of us, Wallis has not lost that hope. His book provides the pathway to get there. The central obstacle, however, is the world’s arms manufacturers, who profit from the existence of nuclear weapons — and of course from the manufacture and unending use of conventional weapons.

Wallis’s central thesis, therefore, is that pressure must be exerted on the nuclear weapons companies to turn them into advocates for nuclear abolition. And that pressure, Wallis asserts, can come first and foremost from the now 99 countries that have signed the TPNW, 74 of which have also ratified it.

And so, Wallis takes us on a trip around the world, showing how countries both large and small can exert that pressure and move us out of the nuclear age. Wallis provides a check box of tactics per chapter, ending with “US bombs out of Europe,” an imperative that has become even more urgent now it is clear that US bombs have likely returned to British soil — at RAF Lakenheath, in reality a US Air Force base — for the first time since 2008. Ironically, this also comes at a time when US President Trump’s rhetoric has threatened a lifting or even folding up of the so-called “nuclear umbrella” with which the US, still a member of NATO, suggests it is protecting its European allies.


Pressure needs to come from within the US, too, Wallis writes. Wallis was an essential ally as we fought here in Takoma Park, Maryland, to maintain our nuclear-free status (we have, but the city has largely abandoned any efforts to promote perhaps its most famous achievement, having been one of the first US cities to become a Nuclear-Free Zone back in 1983.) What if every US city and town declared itself a nuclear-free zone, we had asked our city council? Wallis does not expect every city and state to do so, but he makes a strong case in his book for the power of local activism, especially in boycott and divestment, a proven tactic.

Finally, Wallis expresses the hope that Trump himself could denuclearize. This notion emanated from early, less irrational declarations from the White House at the beginning of Trump’s second term. Trump has indeed said one or two slightly sensible things here and there, denuclearizing being an example. But the ride has become considerably wilder since then.

I wonder if Wallis would feel as optimistic today? We are undoubtedly in an “alternate universe” as he states late in the book. Is it one in which Trump leads the world to nuclear weapons abolition? That’s an optimistic leap that most of us probably aren’t willing to take. But Wallis takes it, because optimism is what drives his writing and his activism, and because it’s an essential fuel if we are to persist in our mission to achieve global nuclear abolition. That work may seem hard to impossible. But what’s the alternative?

The hands of the Doomsday Clock cannot and must not inch any closer to midnight. Wallis’s book gives us a detailed guide to moving the clock — and the world that is watching its inexorable and ominous progress toward zero hour — slowly back to a time when no one had to worry about nuclear weapons. After all, as Wallis points out, that wasn’t really so long ago. Everyone alive before 1945 slept much better at night than we do.

Order the book.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the Executive Director of Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. She is the author of the book, No To Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress And Provokes War, published by Pluto Press.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Starmer’s Talking Points: King Charles III Visits Washington

29 April 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.net/starmers-talking-points-king-charles-iii-visits-washington/

He can hardly be blamed for being given the brief by his Prime Minister. King Charles III is in the United States on a repair job, playing diplomatic handyman and mender for Sir Keir Starmer and the US-UK alliance so long regarded as special. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of American independence, it was easy to forget that the British, despite losing its American colonies, gained some vengeance through the exploits of Major General Robert Ross, who, on August 14, 1814, burned down the White House, the Capitol building, and an assortment of other government facilities.

The US President Donald Trump has made it clear that alliances are only special if they serve his bullying and selfish needs, transient and fickle as they are. Otherwise, the whole notion of an alliance can be allowed to go by the wayside or stung into decay by venomous statements on social media. The UK’s ambassador to Washington, Christian Turner, who replaced the disastrously appointed Peter Mandelson in February, has even gone so far to suggest that the term “special relationship” be scrapped as dated and musty. The phrase, he unguardedly told a group of British students visiting that month, was “quite nostalgic” and “quite backwards-looking,” encumbered with “baggage.” Instead of leaving it at that, Turner proceeded to offer the only exemplar in the US diplomatic inventory that might count, whatever the baggage. “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States – and that is probably Israel.”

Any ruffles arising from that leaked audio has been seemingly contained. On the occasion of this state visit Trump was cordial, even sprightly. “The Americans have had no closer friends than the British,” he declared on April 28. The same language was spoken, the same values shared, the “warriors” of the two nations having “defended the same extraordinary civilization under the twin banners of red, white, and blue.”

Before a joint sitting of Congress, Charles delivered a speech filled with the usual solecisms on the US political system, not to mention a few on his own. The US Congress is hardly a “citadel of democracy created to represent the voice of all American people, to advance sacred rights and freedoms,” being the republican vision of slave owning plantation owners who were nervous about the mob and ever keen to keep them at bay with a dampening system of checks and balances. The “revolutionary” notions of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were to be kept on a firm leash. And while the United Kingdom has democratic pretensions, it exercises power through that mysterious political and legal construction known as the Crown. In a short note for the Spectator in October 1959, the conservative, at times reactionary novelist Evelyn Waugh made an abundantly clear point: “Great Britain is not a democracy. All authority emanates from the Crown.” All figures of note from judges and bishops to the Poet Laureate “exist by the royal will.” Elections are, rather, “a very hazardous process” to select ill-chosen advisors.

Starmer, as advisor-in-chief, clearly fed the monarch a rather odd assortment of dishes to temper and placate the businessman tyrant trainee. Lay it heavy with the friendship issue, talking of that “bond of kinship and identity” that is “priceless and eternal.” Accept that disagreements can happen between close allies (“no taxation without representation”, for instance, stirring the anger of the American colonists). “Ours is a partnership born out of dispute, but no less strong for it.” When the countries found ways to agree “what great change is brought about – not just for the benefit of our peoples, but of all peoples.”

A fig leaf of soothing assurance was offered to US lawmakers and the Trump administration. The UK, recognising “that the threats we face demand a transformation in British defence,” was swelling the defence budget, “the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War.” The defence of Ukraine, not high on Trump’s list but very much top of the Starmer summit, also warranted a mention.

Damnably foolish things can be said about defence, that area of spending scandalously exempt from the usual, fiscal scrutiny reserved for welfare budgets and services. And Charles was not spared the Starmer talking points about joint efforts to build F-35 fighter jets and pursuing “the most ambitious submarine program in history, AUKUS.” AUKUS was being pursued “in partnership with Australia, a country of which I am also immensely proud to serve as sovereign.”

AUKUS continues to warp the imagination of its executors, distort military planning, and, importantly, make the most telling demands on Australia, the junior yet, in some ways, most essential partner in the relationship. For one thing, it remains the most duped and witless of the three, having made staggering concessions to both the US and UK in terms of military real estate and investment. Despite turning Australia into a garrison state invigilating over the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific, the agreement makes no guarantee that the Royal Australian Navy will ever receive Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines it does not need, let alone any assurance that it will exercise control over their use and command.

The US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, published on January 26, does much to scupper suggestions that Australian sovereignty would ever be a serious consideration, given an analysis of the “benefits, costs, and risks compare[d] with those of an alternative of procuring up to eight additional Virginia-class SSNs that would be retained in US Navy service and operated out of Australia along with the US and UK SSNs that are already planned to be operated under Pillar 1.” Even as these doubts are being expressed, the Australian taxpayer continues to invest in the US submarine industrial base.

Obsessed by the deterrent value of such boats against China, the nail-biting worry in the Pentagon and Congress is that any transfer from a navy that remains tardy in meeting the set target of 2 SSNs a year will blunt potency. “Selling three to five Virginia-class SSNs to Australia would thus convert those SSNs from boats that would be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict into boats that might not be available for use in a US-China crisis or conflict.” Such considerations would have been unlikely to feature in Starmer’s mind when mulling over the details of the King’s speech. The British PM has shown himself to be stunningly short on political judgment and incapable in making sound decisions. However polished the performance by Charles in Washington, it may not be enough to save his prime ministership.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | politics international, UK | Leave a comment

More costs for Europe in the never-ending effort to keep Chornobyl safe.

 An agreement was signed with the EBRD for EUR30 million (USD35 million) of
funding for the initial phase of restoration work on the giant arch-shaped
New Safe Confinement shelter, which covers the initial shelter, which was
hastily built in 1986 and encases the wreckage of unit 4. The NSC was
damaged by a drone strike in February last year during the ongoing
Russia-Ukraine war, and assessments have put the cost of restoring it to
its full design function at about EUR500 million.

 World Nuclear News 27th April 2026, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/funding-pledge-and-tributes-paid-at-conference-marking-chernobyl-anniversary

May 1, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, safety | Leave a comment

UK parliament’s AUKUS inquiry report questions if Britain can keep nuclear submarine promises.

By Riley Stuart and Europe correspondent Elias Clure in London, Tue 28 Apr, 26, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-28/aukus-report-released-by-house-of-commons-defence-committee/106613750

In short:

The House of Commons Defence Committee has released its report on the AUKUS defence pact after launching an inquiry last year.

While the report was broadly supportive of AUKUS, it also “laid bare the scale of the endeavour that will be required to deliver it”.

What’s next?

There have been calls to hold a public inquiry into AUKUS in Australia too, although right now one has not been announced.

British politicians have cast doubt on their country’s ability to develop and deliver nuclear submarines promised as part of the AUKUS defence pact.

The House of Commons Defence Committee on Tuesday released the findings of its year-long review into the trilateral partnership.

While the report was broadly supportive of AUKUS, it also “laid bare the scale of the endeavour that will be required to deliver it”.

As part of the deal, the United Kingdom and Australia are working together to design and build a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarine, known as SSN-AUKUS, scheduled to enter service in the late 2030s and the early 2040s.

“For the UK, delivering SSN-AUKUS will be a lengthy and complex undertaking requiring a sustained financial commitment from government across several electoral cycles,” the report noted.

“It is deeply concerning that there are signs that the investment pipeline that underpins that commitment has already faltered.”

The report urged the UK government to devote more money to the partnership.

“Shortfalls or delays in funding risk a failure to deliver SSN-AUKUS on time, with potentially severe consequences for UK and wider Euro-Atlantic security, and our standing with our trilateral partners,” it read.

While the White House has reiterated its commitment to the partnership, and Australia has already given the United States $US500 million ($798 million) to try to reinvigorate the country’s shipbuilding industry, critics contend the AUKUS deal’s fine print means nothing is guaranteed.

Australia is expected to invest a total of $US3 billion in US submarine manufacturing capabilities as part of the deal.

It has been estimated AUKUS could cost Australia about $368 billion by the mid-2050s.

“For Australia, AUKUS is an unprecedented undertaking to be delivered to ambitious timescales,” the House of Commons report noted.

“The UK will need to work closely with Australia at both industry and government level to share expertise and support Australia in meeting its own milestones.”

Trump ‘an unreliable ally’, submission says 

US President Donald Trump has expressed his support for the trilateral pact, but the House of Commons inquiry received submissions saying the president’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and other geopolitical factors “had undermined the case for AUKUS and its chances of successful delivery”.

The Australian Peace and Security Forum — a not-for-profit that has been calling for a public inquiry into AUKUS to be held in Australia — gave a written submission to the inquiry in which it contended the US under Mr Trump was “an unreliable ally”.

The group also claimed that “geopolitical circumstances have changed for both the UK and Australia since AUKUS was conceived in 2021”.

“Strategic priorities for both countries do not align,” the submission read, adding “the UK should not proceed with AUKUS if it cannot guarantee delivery of its commitments on time and on budget”.

But the inquiry also heard from the UK’s minister for defence readiness, Luke Pollard, who said the changing geopolitical context and increasing threats meant “the importance of making sure that AUKUS delivers is even more prominent than it was when the original initiative was launched all those years ago”.

The House of Commons report highlighted difficulties in staff movement between the AUKUS partner countries due to the security clearances required to work in the defence sector.

A consultancy company involved in AUKUS told the inquiry that moving employees between its UK and Australian businesses was a “time-consuming and administratively burdensome” process.

While AUKUS enjoys significant support from both major political parties in Australia, the deal has also attracted criticism, notably from former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating.

Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough and chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, told the ABC the inquiry was designed to review the UK government’s progress with regard to AUKUS.

“Many of us had concerns that things were perhaps not progressing at the pace they should be, but we wanted to gain expert advice as well as evidence,” he said.

Mr Dhesi said as part of the inquiry, representatives of the defence committee visited locations in the UK, US and Australia.

“Our key recommendation is that the UK government needs to do much more and it needs to do it faster in order to reap the full benefits of this once-in-a-generation, long-term strategic partnership with Australia and the US,” he said.


Links to Full Report –
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9068/aukus/publications/ and https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/52831/documents/294641/default/

May 1, 2026 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran didn’t have a nuclear weapon before this war. But you can see why it would develop one now

Simon Tisdall, 26 Apr 26, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/26/iran-nuclear-weapon-war-develop-one-now

If lawless aggression by ‘might is right’ nuclear-armed powers spreads unchecked, what other option do middle-ranking countries have?

With every bomb dropped, ship seized and blood-curdling threat of annihilation, Donald Trump increases Iran’s incentive to reject his “grand bargain” peace deal and sprint instead to acquire nuclear weapons for future self-defence. Justifying his declaration of war on 28 February, Trump claimed that Iran – and primarily its nuclear programme – posed an “imminent threat”. But Iran does not possess nukes. The US and Israel do.

US intelligence chiefs and UN inspectors agree there’s no firm evidence that the regime, while developing its technical capabilities and keeping political options open, has built, or ever tried to build, a nuclear weapon since at least 2003, when a covert scheme was exposed. But after Trump’s second unprovoked attack in a year, and his vow to bomb Iranian civilisation back to the “stone ages”, that is very likely to change.

It’s increasingly difficult to argue with the view, attributed to the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals now running Iran, that nukes are the only sure way of deterring future onslaughts. The US and Israel have twice struck without warning, in the middle of diplomatic negotiations. Even if a peace deal were agreed, Iranians know the ever-vengeful Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu cannot be trusted. The US-Israel axis could sustain its aggression for years to come.

Trump’s focus on “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear programme is as woefully wide of the mark as any misdirected US Tomahawk cruise missile. Indigenous nuclear knowhow cannot be easily bombed away, no matter how many scientists Israel kills. And in any case, Tehran does not necessarily need to reconstitute the capacity and skills required to build nuclear weapons at home. It may be able to buy them off the shelf abroad.

North Korea, a longtime ally, would be the most likely source, while help from Vladimir Putin’s Russia (already collaborating on nuclear energy projects) cannot be entirely ruled out. Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang’s dictator, has steered clear of the war so far. But just as he covertly sent troops to assist Putin in Ukraine, he could yet secretly step in to arm Tehran. On nuclear proliferation, Kim has form.

Iran has joined a growing number of non-nuclear armed countries that have suffered grievously at the hands of domineering nuclear powers. In 1994, Ukraine surrendered its nukes in return for what turned out, when Russia first attacked it in 2014, to be valueless western security assurances. Iraq’s regime, lacking a nuclear deterrent, succumbed to US invasion in 2003. Would Trump have attacked Venezuela in January had it been nuclear-armed?

If the acknowledged nuclear weapons states honoured their 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT) obligation to reduce and ultimately eliminate their nukes, others might feel less need of a nuclear shield. But they persistently break their word. Increasingly, the US and Russia abuse their dominant position – abuses that the NPT was specifically designed to prevent. Israel (unlike Iran) never signed the treaty.

Trump’s alarmingly irrational, impulsive and threatening behaviour creates uncertainty and insecurity by itself. But his militarism also fuels global nuclear weapons proliferation. The US is spending billions modernising its arsenal. Russia, North Korea, France and the UK are doing likewise, while China is rapidly, hugely expanding its forces. Yet Trump has refused to renew a series of cold war arms control treaties.

He trashed Barack Obama’s European-backed 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, a foolish decision that has led directly to today’s confrontation. On the first day of the war, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was targeted and killed. His binding fatwa expressly forbidding development of an Iranian bomb probably died with him.

Regarding Iran, Trump and Netanyahu labour under two fundamental misconceptions. Even if some form of cold peace is eventually established, Iranians will neither forgive nor forget atrocities such as the Minab school massacre, the wanton destruction visited on their country, and Washington’s diplomatic betrayals – whether or not the current regime remains in power. The “Iran threat” will persist. Second, Tehran still has options over which the US and Israel, despite military superiority, have no control.

Sanctioned, ostracised North Korea offers a possible template for Tehran. The Pyongyang regime originally developed its own atomic weapons using hidden market technology obtained from Pakistan. The Kim dynasty later made nuclear-related transfers to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. It currently sells ballistic missiles to, among others, Iran and Russia.

It’s speculation at this point, but who’s to say Kim will not provide Iran with complete nuclear warheads? Or if that is too risky, he could supply highly enriched uranium, warhead designs and expertise in return for oil, suggested Mark Fitzpatrick, an International Institute for Strategic Studies non-proliferation expert and former senior US diplomat. If Kim did so, who would know and who could stop him?

Kim has grown increasingly emboldened since the failure of Trump’s embarrassing first-term charm offensive. Ignoring White House signals about renewed contacts when Trump visits Beijing next month, the North Korean leader ostentatiously test-fires new missiles, taunts South Korea and Japan, and stresses closer ties with China, Russia and Belarus. Speaking in March, he said US aggression in Iran “proved” North Korea was right to develop a nuclear deterrent. Tehran has surely heard that message.

If Kim is wrong, then why exactly does Trump treat North Korea so differently from Iran? After all, both countries menace their neighbours and embrace anti-western alliances, both are authoritarian regimes oppressing their citizens, and the North Korean nuclear threat is demonstrably genuine. The reason for the double standard seems obvious. Even Trump is not stupid enough to attack a nuclear-armed state.

The way Trump’s and Putin’s bellicose behaviour is legitimising arguments favouring the possession of nuclear weapons is prospectively disastrous for global non-proliferation efforts. If Iran does seek to acquire nukes to defend itself, will Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey follow? And that’s just in the Middle East. Like Ukraine, the Iran war also provides cover and precedent for other nuclear weapons states if they, too, decide to attack non-nuclear-armed countries. Might China follow suit in Taiwan? Given Iran’s fate, should Taipei rush to acquire nukes? Should Japan and South Korea?

Little wonder that an air of gloom hangs over the five-yearly NPT review conference, which opens in New York on Monday. Its challenges include ubiquitous nuclear weapons modernisation and expansion programmes; the collapse of arms control diplomacy; resumed nuclear testing; and what the Arms Control Association calls “rising nuclear dangers” and proliferation risks. “The idea of ‘global zero’, or a world without nuclear weapons, is seen to be steadily eroding,” a House of Commons Library research briefing warned this month.

This is no made-up story with which to scare the children. It’s real. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. So far, fortunately, it has not. In recent weeks, as Trump flailed in Iran, there was a flurry of reports, later denied, that the US, too, might resort to nukes. Sabre-rattling or not, such threats are becoming way too familiar. If a just and reasonable negotiated path can be found out of the present morass, Iran and similarly vulnerable middle-ranking countries may be persuaded to continue to forego nuclear weapons. But if lawless aggression by domineering “might is right” nuclear-armed powers spreads unchecked, the old cold war nightmare of mutually assured destruction will become today’s waking reality.

  • Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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