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The Unwarranted Iran War: US-China Stakes, Regional Costs, Global Losses

5 April 2026 AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/the-unwarranted-iran-war-us-china-stakes-regional-costs-global-losses/

By Dr Dan Steinbock

After one month of hostilities and no exit plans, the economic and human costs of the US-Israel joint war against Iran are soaring in the region, increasingly global and testing US-China ties.

Originally set for March, the high-stakes summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was postponed for about “five or six weeks,” due to the U.S. focus on military operations in Iran.

The delay suggests that the Trump administration grossly underestimated Iran’s resilience.

The summit will take place under the shadow of the worst energy crisis since the 1970s.

US-China stakes in the crisis

The crisis itself illustrates the differential stakes the two major powers have in the outcome. US military exposure is high, due to its military bases and fleets in the Gulf, whereas China’s armed presence is minimal. As a result, US strategic position is militarily stretched, whereas China’s is economically exposed.

Furthermore, US energy vulnerability is low, thanks to its domestic production. By contrast, China’s energy exposure is high, due to its import dependency. Accordingly, the US is only moderately exposed to an adverse economic impact in the Gulf, whereas in China that effect will be more substantial.

Even if the Trump administration’s initial “decapitation” strike succeeded tactically, as its proponents argue, it has failed strategically. The Iranian leadership remains intact and the command dispersed.

After one month of the unwarranted war, the U.S. enjoys escalation dominance, but it has been stalemated. US and Israel have air superiority, yet Iran retains strategic denial via missiles, proxies, and Hormuz leverage.

Unwarranted devastation

The crisis has spread across the region and beyond. It has caused a severe disruption to global oil flows, threatening 20% of global consumption – some 20 million barrels per day – that typically passes through Hormuz. Over 94% of normal traffic through Hormuz collapsed already in mid-March.

In one of the largest energy shocks since the 1970s, oil has soared by more than 50%, up to $110-120, with supply down by 11 mb/d (million barrels per day). Global system has suffered a highly adverse impact with airspace closures, rerouted shipping, and data infrastructure hits.

In Iran alone, some 1,900-3,500 people have been killed, with up to 17,000-20,000 wounded. The US-Israel strikes have caused widespread damage, with more than 90,000 civilian installations hit, including schools, hospitals, and residential buildings.

Over 3.2 million people are internally displaced in Iran, primarily fleeing major urban centers. In Lebanon, that figure is over 1-1.2 million; that’s every fifth or sixth Lebanese.

A 2-Month War Scenario

At the end of March, the White House assessed that a mission to pry open Hormuz would push the conflict beyond his timeline of 4-6 weeks. As a result, President Trump reportedly told his aides that he’s willing to end the war without reopening the chokepoint. Let’s presume the report is not fake news and the war will continue toward the end of April.

From the military perspective, the U.S. continues its air and missile war, even if the naval campaign to reopen Hormuz may or may not intensify. Limited ground and Marine deployments may or may not occur. If Americans engage, Houthis in Yemen and Iraqi militias join in the conflict.

Despite Trump’s repeated “mission accomplished” claims, there is no decisive victory. Gradual attrition prevails as Iran’s infrastructure continues to be degraded.

War fatigue rises in Israel, where anti-government demonstrations escalate. Iranian missile barrages have depleted Israel’s stockpile of high-end interceptors, forcing a shift toward rationing and relying on less capable systems.

In the US, the Pentagon continues to downplay the costly toll of Iranian missiles, even though by late March many of the 13 military bases in the region used by US troops were ”all but uninhabitable.”

Oil price stabilizes around $120–150, but remains volatile. The supply disruption is persistent.

Spillovers changing the region

After 1 month of hostilities, every country in the primary battlefield – Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Israel – is likely to suffer an adverse GDP impact of up to -6 to -30%.

In most Gulf states, that impact is already at -3 to -12%, which threatens to defer the ambitious modernization projects in the region for years.

In the proximate Middle East, most economies, including Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, are taking hits of -2 to -6%. When such negative shocks come after two years of regional stabilization by Israel with US support, it leaves these countries vulnerable.

By the end of April, the regional impact is likely to amount to -4% to -7%. Add another month and it will climb to -6% to -12%. Gulf economies alone could see a plunge of -5% to -15% in severe scenarios.

Some are indirectly affected via an inflation shock (Morocco, Tunisia). Big Gulf actors like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar benefit from price gains, but suffer from disruption.

Several economies – Iraq, Jordan, Gulf states – cope with high stress, due to fiscal strains and security pressures.

Only low-exposure gas exporters like Algeria benefit in the short-term, but no regional state is immune to rising fiscal pressures and geopolitical risks.

If hostilities prove extended, Lebanon and Yemen will teeter at the edge of state or infrastructure breakdown. The same goes for Iran, as long as the White House mistakes PM Netanyahu’s ambitions with US national security.

Strategic options and priorities

The Trump White House is burning almost $1 billion daily in the war. Critics argue that the first month of spending totals close to $37 billion. The administration is seeking $200 billion supplemental funding from the Congress. By contrast, China avoids war costs but must absorb energy and trade shock.

In a 2-month war the US pays in strategy (overextension), whereas China pays in economics (energy shock).

What about the next 4 weeks?

In terms of its strategic options, the US seeks to keep Hormuz partially open. It could release some of its stockpile of crude oil to mitigate economic shocks. It can push non-MENA supply (US shale, Atlantic basin). In the short term, it can tolerate high prices to avoid deeper entanglement.

China, too, can draw down reserves. It can also secure long-term contracts (Russia, Central Asia). It could quietly buy discounted Iranian barrels. And it can engage in limited escort and diplomacy to stabilize energy flows.

Regarding their respective postures in the Middle East, the US is likely to persist in what it calls controlled escalation. China will stress its role as a non-military actor. It willl focus on diplomacy and economic ties. It will position as a mediator and avoid security commitments.

US priority is – or at least should be – not to get trapped in MENA. By contrast, China’s priority is to let US absorb the security costs, while avoiding sanctions and escalation in bilateral relations.

What if regional war lingers

If diplomacy fails, regional war emerges as an alternative scenario, as hostilities escalate from Iran and Lebanon to Gulf, Iraq, Yemen, even beyond. A sustained closure of Hormuz would amplify the supply shock undermining global prospects.

The number of deaths doubles, regional displacement exceeds 5 million. Brent oil climbs to $120-150, even $150-200 in the worst scenarios. If infrastructure is damaged, far greater losses loom ahead.

Some analysts declare it’s the 1970s déjà vu all over again. They are wrong. Since global economy is today more integrated, the negative ramifications will reverbarate worldwide, not just regionally. Even in the most benign scenario, the world economy will pay a hefty price, through the prolonged high-cost equilibrium.

The Iran crisis has exposed the region’s structural contradiction. On the one hand, the Gulf is an energy superpower (40% global gas reserves). But it is also a highly fragile, chokepoint-dependent system. In this delicate equilibrium, Hormuz holds systemic lever because it controls both oil exports (Gulf states, Iraq, Iran) and liquefied natural gas (Qatar).

The lesson is simple but harsh: With energy disruption everyone loses, as the region morphs from an energy exporter hub to a geopolitical shock epicenter.

April 9, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | MIDDLE EAST, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The unforeseen consequences of Iranian resistance

Thierry Meyssan, Voltairenet.com, Tue, 17 Mar 2026, https://www.sott.net/article/505569-The-unforeseen-consequences-of-Iranian-resistance

By resisting the illegal attack on their country by Israel and the United States, the Iranians brought the “paper tiger” to its knees. In a matter of days, they demonstrated that the Pentagon’s sophisticated and expensive weapons were ill-suited to their highly economical approach to warfare. They disrupted the global oil market, which underpins the US dollar. Finally, they provided a new model that all opponents of Anglo-Saxon dominance are now considering. It has already led China to completely revise its defense plans in the event of a US attack on Taiwan.

The war against Iran is unlike any other. For the first time, the targets destroyed are of little importance. The protagonists are focused on the economic consequences of their actions. This experience is revolutionizing the way wars are waged and has already led the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to revise its battle plans.

A Shaheh drone costs approximately $35,000. To shoot it down, the United States would need to launch two Patriot missiles, each worth $3.3 million. If they allow the Shaheh drone to hit any target, it would be assumed that they are incapable of defending themselves or their allies. By launching a drone, Iran is guaranteed to force the United States to spend $6.6 million, roughly 188 times their initial investment.

The United States does possess the Merops anti-drone system. However, these systems have only been in the testing phase for the past year and a half in Ukraine. They are also deployed along the Polish and Romanian borders. The Pentagon has decided to reduce its troop presence on NATO’s eastern front in order to deploy its Merops systems to the Gulf.

“We received a specific request from the United States for protection” against Iranian drone systems, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 12. Ukrainian officers immediately joined the mission in the Gulf.

Furthermore, the United States has been experimenting with anti-drone lasers for years. It’s a highly economical solution, but currently, we don’t know how to use these weapons, let alone how to mass-produce them. It will be many years before the Pentagon uses them on the battlefield.

Furthermore, Patriot missile stocks are dwindling rapidly. While the Pentagon maintains secrecy regarding available stockpiles, it is diverting resources from all other fronts to deliver Patriots to the Middle East. All that is known is that the US military-industrial complex cannot produce more than 700 per year, while Iran has already launched several thousand Shahed missiles.

We are only concerned here with the destruction of Shahed drones. The defense of the United States and Israel against long-range missiles is not only a financial problem, but also, in the very short term, the depletion of THAAD interceptor missiles, of which only about ten can be manufactured per week . [ 1 ]

In any case, the United States officially spent $5.6 billion on munitions in the first two days of its illegal war against Iran [ 2 ] . This amount rose to $11.3 billion, according to a Pentagon statement to Congress on March 10. With 1,444 Iranians killed as of March 12, according to the Iranian Ministry of Health [ 3 ] , this works out to a cost of approximately $8 million per life! The most expensive war in history.

By comparison, Iranians have experienced two major traumas: World War I — which claimed more lives in Iran than in Germany and France — killed approximately 6 million people.The war imposed by Iraqkilled at least 500,000 Iranians. It is therefore understandable that the few hundred deaths recently will not sway the country.

Another Iranian innovation is the retaliation Tehran has launched against its neighbors. Invoking international law and statements by Israeli and American leaders, Iran has attacked US military bases in the Gulf and the Levant. I am not referring here to attacks by the Lebanese Hezbollah (the Party of God) or the Iraqi Saraya Awliya al-Dam (the Guardians of Blood Brigade), but solely to Iranian attacks.

Iran, stunned, reminded the West of Resolution 3314 (XXIX), dated December 14, 1974 [ 4 ] . Adopted without a vote by the United Nations General Assembly, it clarifies the concept of aggression to which the Charter of San Francisco refers. The international press, dominated by Anglo-Saxon media, has become convinced that international law prohibits entry into another country’s territory. It was on the basis of this prejudice that the General Assembly condemned the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Iran has resurrected this forgotten text.

This text authorizes the use of force to assist “peoples subjected to colonial or racist regimes,” as is the case with Russian aid to the Donbas republics (Article 7). It prohibits not only aggression against Iran by Israel and the United States, but also third-party states hosting Israeli or US military bases participating in the aggression (Article 3) from doing the same.

Consequently, Iran has the right to retaliate against the territories of the Gulf States and the Levant.

We observe that these states are reeling from the Iranian response and that their economies are paralyzed. These states, primarily those in the Gulf, are major oil producers. They are therefore attempting to break free from Israel and the United States, which until now guaranteed their security but are now responsible for their misfortunes. If their desire for independence were to lead them to sell their oil not in US dollars, but in other currencies, the value of the dollar would collapse. Indeed, its value is not guaranteed by the US GDP, but by the international hydrocarbon market. During the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, we emphasized that the United States was not seeking to seize the country’s considerable oil reserves, but to re-establish oil trading in dollars. What succeeded in Venezuela could fail in the Middle East and mark the beginning of the end for the United States.

What is happening today in the Middle East is suddenly inspiring all the states that complain about US domination. Starting with China:

Beijing is preparing for a conflict with the United States and Japan over its Taiwan region. It’s important to remember that China has no intention of invading the island, but considers any attempt to grant it independence an act of aggression. From its perspective, Chiang Kai-shek had no right to secede, and Taiwan remains a Chinese region. The Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek’s successor party, agrees with this view; only the very small Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of President Lai Ching-te seeks independence. This issue only arises because the United States is raising it.

Beijing has just realized that international law allows it, in the event of US aggression, to retaliate against US military bases in the Asia-Pacific region. In the blink of an eye, the People’s Liberation Army has completely revised its plans [ 5 ] . It has redirected its missiles, no longer towards Taiwan, but to target the 24 US military bases in the region.

This shift is being followed by all states hosting US military bases, which are now anticipating the difficulties faced by the Gulf and Levant countries. Undoubtedly, they will soon reconsider their presence.

Beyond the Iranian conflict, it now appears that Iran’s model of resistance is compelling for all those who anticipate a military conflict with Washington and that it is revolutionizing the way we understand the balance of power.

It is important to understand that the United States allowed itself to be manipulated by its own propaganda. It convinced itself that the events following the collapse of Ayandeh Bank resulted in over 40,000 deaths, all attributable to the Revolutionary Guards. This is obviously grossly false. Most of the victims were attributable to ISIS attacks and the panic created by snipers positioned on rooftops, killing both protesters and police officers. As for the actual number, it is at least six times lower.

Similarly, they convinced themselves that all these protesters were “anti-regime,” assuming that those demanding the return of their bank deposits were necessarily against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In doing so, they lumped together economic protesters, those opposed to religious totalitarianism, and those who aspired to Western-style governance. They are now discovering that one can be ruined by the banking system, resent the mullahs, be captivated by American series broadcast in Persian by some forty Western television channels, and still defend one’s country.

This miscalculation, comparable to the one that led them to organize the departure of the shah, Reza Pahlavi, and the return of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, led them to military defeat, or even their own downfall.

References:

[ 1 ] ” US Military Operations Against Iran: Munitions and Missile Defense “, Hannah D. Dennis & Daniel M. Gettinger, Congressional Research Service , March 12, 2026.

[ 2 ] ” Early Iran strikes cost $5.6 billion in munitions, Pentagon estimates” , Noah Robertson, The Washington Post , March 9, 2026.

[ 3 ] ” US’s Hegseth claims new Iran Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei injured “, Al-Jazeera, March 13, 2026.

[ 4 ] ” Definition of aggression “, Voltaire Network , December 14, 1974.

[ 5 ] ” How Iran’s strikes on US bases could offer a preview for the Asia-Pacific “, Amber Wang, South China Morning Post , March 11, 2026.

April 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Can Prospects for Nuclear War Get Any Worse? Sure, We Can Put AI in Charge

How quickly is the Pentagon moving toward handing the nuclear keys over to AI systems and Big Tech? No one really knows.

Tom Valovic, Apr 05, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/ai-increase-nuclear-risk

Can we possibly get away from AI’s ubiquitous presence in our lives? But as long as AI is now in our faces 24/7, it’s time to seriously start pushing back about its outsized and overwhelming influence. Troubling stories tumble out of the media daily. Employees in a major fast-food chain must now wear AI headsets that tell them how friendly they’re being to customers and coaching them on their work. (AI is now posing as our servant, but in the years ahead will the dynamic be reversed?)

And then there is the looming data center controversy, with Big Tech companies rapidly taking over huge swaths of land across the US to build massive and environmentally unfriendly data centers. Fortunately, this trend is now emerging as a campaign issue given early and cascading effects on electricity prices. In general, AI is having a tough year in the court of public opinion. Witness this cover story in a recent issue of Time magazine: “The People vs AI.” The article noted that “a growing cross section of the public—from MAGA loyalists to Democratic socialists, pastors to policymakers, nurses to filmmakers—agree on at least one thing: AI is moving too fast…. A 2025 Pew poll found… the public thinks AI will worsen our ability to think creatively, form meaningful relationships, and make difficult decisions.” Along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement-related pushback, a spontaneous wellspring of grassroots activism appears to be bubbling up against the AI juggernaut and the patently undemocratic backdoor power grab by technocrats and the companies behind them.

One of the greatest concerns in the public sphere is AI’s rapid incorporation into present and future military campaigns. This is actively being encouraged by the Trump administration’s decision to give AI companies free reign to develop their products with minimal regulation and oversight. This is an existential train wreck waiting to happen, and it came into striking focus in the monthslong dispute between AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon. Although it was already using the Claude platform, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was unhappy with the company’s refusal to use it to remove human decision-making from military operations and support accelerated mass surveillance of US citizens.

Anthropic’s move was that rarity in Big Tech circles, a strong and principled ethical stand against an administration that doesn’t seem to know what that is. Happy warrior Hegseth then branded the company as a “supply chain risk,” effectively banning further use by the Pentagon and punishing the company’s overall viability in the non-defense marketplace as well. Ever the opportunist, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, then jumped in to offer his AI platform to do what Anthropic wouldn’t. The matter is now in the courts.

Handing AI the “Nuclear Football”

Using AI to create what are called autonomous systems represents a quantum leap in the rapidly advancing business of modern weaponry. Paradoxically, weapons technology is being simultaneously downsized through the use of drones and smaller and sophisticated high-tech devices (such as mine sniffers) and upsized with the use of the AI systems designed to manage and control them.

This raises the very troubling picture of wars being conducted without much human oversight. It’s probably one reason even high- profile AI influencers and Big Tech CEOs have admitted (sometimes a little too casually) that the technology could destroy humanity given the right set of circumstances. While autonomous systems can apply to stand-alone weapons such as killer robots, the most worrying concern relates to the Pentagon’s desire to build and deploy command-and-control systems that remove military officers from the split-second decisions that need to be made in warfare. And yes, that includes nuclear weapons.

If AI is truly as superintelligent (and sentient) as its Big Tech proponents claim it is, then these systems should also be smart enough to refuse to participate in any projects that could degrade or destroy life on the planet.

How quickly is the Pentagon moving toward handing the nuclear keys over to AI systems and Big Tech? No one really knows. When questioned by a reporter on the matter, one senior official in the Trump administration weakly demurred, “The administration supports the need to maintain human control over nuclear weapons.”

AI experts and strategic thinkers say that a big driver of this process is that America’s top nuclear adversaries—Russia and China—are already using AI in their command-and-control systems. These developments are happening at lightning speed and are being further propelled by Epic Fury, the first AI-fueled war in US history. And let’s not be too laudatory about Anthropic. Its Claude system has been integrated with Palantir’s Maven to identify military targets. The Pentagon is still investigating whether Maven played any part in the horrific event when a US Tomahawk missile struck a girls’ elementary school killing more than 165.

Sleepwalking Into Armageddon?

What madness is this? By what shallow calculus can a handful of powerful individuals or shadowy organizations decide or even risk the fate of humanity? How do we put all of this dangerous thinking at the highest levels of our government into some kind of perspective that correlates with common sense and basic human decency? In our trajectory toward what some have called techno-feudalism, we have this apparent plunge into barbarity coupled with a powerful array of tools to accelerate it. When nuclear activist Helen Caldicott warned that Western civilization is “sleepwalking into Armageddon,” it was perhaps this particular kind of blindness that she had in mind. And the brilliant socio-biologist E.O. Wilson’s profound observation also springs to mind: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous.”

The rush to deploy AI as large-scale weaponry with every bit as much destructive potential as our existing nuclear arsenal is a tip off to the deeper motivations behind its development. In the meantime, some obvious questions need to be asked. Why aren’t government and academic institutions eager to apply these advanced AI tools to the many intractable problems that characterize world polycrisis such as global climate change or better distribution of scarce resources including food and water? Where are the urgent calls from those who serve in Congress to do so? Or why don’t we see headlines like “Harvard Inaugurates $100 Million AI Project to Address Climate Change”?

It seems pretty clear that AI justifications coming from the both the administration and Congress (not to mention that the establishment commentariat that serves them) invariably gravitate to enhancing corporate productivity or military use. And it’s equally clear that AI will also serve as yet another powerful mechanism of wealth transfer to the 1% and either knowingly or unknowingly act as a chaos agent in an increasingly unstable multipolar geopolitical world. If AI is truly as superintelligent (and sentient) as its Big Tech proponents claim it is, then these systems should also be smart enough to refuse to participate in any projects that could degrade or destroy life on the planet. I don’t see any evidence of this. Sadly, it looks like we may have to once again learn the hard way that information, knowledge, and wisdom all are very different things. And that while knowledge can be appropriated by powerful computers, wisdom will never be.

April 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Did Trump bomb Iranian schoolgirls with UK-made weaponry?

Exclusive: Scottish factory helps make US Tomahawk missiles reportedly used in attack on the Minab compound in Iran, where over 100 children were killed.

JOHN McEVOY, 9 March 2026

On 28 February, a girls’ primary school in southern Iran was hit by a missile, killing 168 people, mostly children.

The UN education agency, UNESCO, said the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab was a “grave violation of humanitarian law”.

Videos analysed by Bellingcat revealed yesterday that a US Tomahawk missile was used to hit another building inside the same compound, adding to evidence indicating the US was responsible for the school strike minutes earlier.

Neither Israel nor Iran is known to possess Tomahawk missiles.

The revelation raises serious questions about whether UK-made components were used in the attack.

This is because a factory owned by US arms firm Raytheon in Glenrothes, Scotland, has won several contracts to produce components for Tomahawk missile systems over recent years.

In 2017, Raytheon won a $260 million contract to make 196 Tomahawks, with 4.4 percent of the goods being supplied from its factory in Glenrothes.

A similar US navy contract published in May 2022 shows that around 3 percent of the Tomahawk supply chain was awarded to Raytheon’s site in Scotland.

Most recently, in December 2025, the Pentagon announced Glenrothes would have a 2.9 percent stake in making another 350 Tomahawks.

A defence industry website said this arrangement reflected the missiles’ “longstanding transatlantic supply chain”.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) spokesperson Sam Perlo-Freeman told Declassified: “The UK arms industry is deeply entwined with the US. This is true of the F-35 aircraft that has played such a devastating role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and is now playing a crucial role in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran.

“And it is true of the Tomahawk missiles, which appear to have been used to commit this horrific massacre of schoolgirls in Iran.

“Far from being a guarantee of international peace and security as the government claims, this arms producing partnership is a principal source of war, death and destruction across the world. It is time for the UK to stop fuelling this US-led war machine, and disentangle itself from it”.

Asked whether it will review and potentially suspend export of the components, a UK government spokesperson said: “We operate one of the most robust export control regimes in the world and keep export licences under continual and careful review”.

Raytheon was asked to comment.

‘Play a key part’

A parliamentary report published in 2012-13 noted that Raytheon’s site in Glenrothes “design and manufacture components, predominantly exported to the US, for guidance systems used in weapons like the Tomahawk missile”.

A Glenrothes manager said in 2020 the factory “designed and manufactured three power supplies” for the Tomahawk, adding: “This work enabled us to be involved in one of the US Navy’s flagship programmes and to play a key part in the manufacture of the electronics used in the system”.

Raytheon UK’s own website notes that its “advanced manufacturing business supports… Tomahawk long-range land attack cruise missile[s]”.

A CAAT report from 2021 found that “Glenrothes was the only Raytheon facility outside North America to play a part in the US-sold Tomahawk Missile production and is the sixth most involved of the 25-plus factories contributing to the weapon system”.

‘It was done by Iran’

The new evidence contradicts statements made by US president Donald Trump, who said on Sunday that the attack was launched “by Iran”.

He said: “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran”

NR Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, an intelligence consultancy that provides munitions analysis to governments and NGOs, told the Guardian: “The video shows a Tomahawk missile striking a target. Given the belligerents, that indicates it is a US strike, as Israel is not known to possess Tomahawk missiles”.

He added: “Despite various claims circulating online, the munition in question is clearly not an Iranian Soumar missile [as] the Soumar has a distinctive external engine located towards the rear, on the underside of the munition”.

Reuters reported on 5 March that US military investigators “believe it is likely that US forces were responsible” for the “strike on an Iranian girls’ school”.

Raytheon’s site in Glenrothes has previously been linked to war crimes in Yemen by Saudi Arabia, a key customer.

When Declassified visited the town in 2022, local primary school teacher Sharon Rickard said she was “horrified” to hear weapons made in her town might be used on civilians.

“I have a friend who works there as an engineer and she’s never really said too much about her job”, she said, “but maybe that’s why”.

April 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US-Israel war on Iran heightening nuclear accident risk – CND

“These countries are not only dragging the world into a major energy crisis not seen since the 1970s, they are increasing nuclear risks across the region.”

31st March 2026, By the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND),
https://labouroutlook.org/2026/03/31/us-israel-war-on-iran-heightening-nuclear-accident-risk-cnd/

The illegal war on Iran by nuclear-armed US and Israel is increasing the risks of a nuclear accident, as nuclear facilities are repeatedly targeted by missile attacks.

Missiles hitting or landing close to nuclear facilities in both Israel and Iran over the last week show that the risk of a nuclear accident is growing, as the US-Israeli war with Iran approaches the end of its first month.

On Saturday, Iranian missiles landed in two towns in southern Israel, just kilometres away from the site of the top-secret Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Centre, more commonly referred to as the ‘Dimona reactor,’ where Israel’s undisclosed nuclear weapons programme is said to be based. Israel is believed to have between 90 and 200 nuclear warheads, but it will not admit such possession and refuses to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Israel may be building a new nuclear facility at Dimona.

The strikes followed an attack by Israel on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation reported that there was “no leakage of radioactive materials” and that there was no danger posed to residents in the surrounding areas. Natanz, which had been targeted in the first days of the war and during Israel’s attacks on the country last year, has been used by Iran for the enrichment of uranium.

Iranian media reported a US-Israeli strike on the Bushehr nuclear plant, which had been targeted by Israel a week earlier on 17 March. No major damage or injuries were reported.

Following the second hit on Bushehr, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafeal Grossi, reiterated the need for “maximum restraint to avoid nuclear safety risks during conflict.”

A strike on a nuclear facility would lead to the release of radioactive material that could contaminate the environment and pose long-term health risks. In June 2025, when Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, Grossi stated that ‘…any armed attack … against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the principles of the United Nations Charter, international law and the Statute of the Agency.”

The Bushehr strike marks the fifth time a nuclear facility in Iran has been attacked since the start of the illegal US-Israeli attacks on 28 February.

The conflict has since spread into a wider regional and global crisis with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to shipping, attacks on oil and gas facilities, and surging energy prices.

Last weekend, Donald Trump threatened to start striking Iranian power stations if the Strait remained closed, but he has extended his initial 48-hour ultimatum to end on Friday. Attacking civilian energy infrastructure is considered a war crime. Trump’s claims that Iran and the US have been engaging in negotiations to end the war have been rejected by Iran.

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:

Targeting nuclear facilities is incredibly dangerous and risks a humanitarian and ecological disaster with consequences that could last for generations. The illegal US and Israeli attacks on Iran started as peaceful negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme were reportedly reaching a breakthrough. Rather than respecting these talks, Trump and Netanyahu chose to sabotage them with illegal bombing. These countries are not only dragging the world into a major energy crisis not seen since the 1970s, they are increasing nuclear risks across the region. CND calls for an immediate end to these attacks and for the creation of a nuclear weapons-free Middle East.”

April 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, safety, weapons and war | Leave a comment

No sane soldier would follow Hegseth into illegal, failed war.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 5 Apr 26

As Chicago Tribune letter writer Robert Geist’s comment ‘Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is someone soldiers can follow’ reached print, Pete Hegseth unceremoniously fired revered Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, Gen. David Hodne, director of Army training, and Gen. William Green Jr., Senior Army Chaplin. All this a month into a war of choice going terribly wrong.

The US Army has been senselessly thrown into chaos. US military morale is in freefall. Hegseth may just have made the biggest military leadership mistake in US history.

Robert Geist might view Pete Hegseth as a military leader he could follow. But if so, it’s doubtful a single active Army soldier would be following behind Geist.

April 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US and Iran trade threats to unleash ‘hell’ as search for missing US airman continues.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad,BBC Persian and Henri Astier, 5 Apr 26

US President Donald Trump has threatened that “all hell would rain down on” Iran if it did not make a deal, an ultimatum that Tehran has rejected.

Senior Iranian military officer, Gen Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi, echoed Trump’s rhetoric, saying “the gates of hell will open for you”.

On Saturday Iran fired more missiles at the Gulf States, Iraq and Israel, with falling debris from intercepted missiles causing damage.Since then, more strikes have been reported in Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE overnight.

The threats from the US and Iran came as both searched for a missing American crew member after a US F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday. The pilot was rescued, US media says………………………………..https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y90jl8veyo

April 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Two Faces of Peace: How Trump’s “Peacemaker” Presidency Waged War Across the Globe

March 31, 2026 , ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/31/two-faces-of-peace-how-trumps-peacemaker-presidency-waged-war-across-the-globe/

When the world hears “peace,” it rarely imagines schools leveled, civilians at risk, and covert armies deployed across continents. Yet, reporting from The Intercept reveals that under President Donald Trump, the promise of a “peace presidency” has coexisted with a sprawling network of global conflicts. Nick Turse’s investigation exposes the U.S.’s secretive military footprint in more than 20 countries, while Natasha Lennard documents the deliberate targeting of Iranian universities by U.S.–Israeli airstrikes—attacks designed to cripple a nation’s capacity to rebuild. Together, these Intercept reports reveal two faces of the same strategy: the veneer of peace masking the machinery of war, from classrooms to battlefields, and from boardrooms to drone command centers.

Nick Turse’s investigative report for The Intercept exposes the stark contrast between President Donald Trump’s public image as a “peacemaker” and the reality of his administration’s military actions. While Trump campaigned on promises to avoid foreign entanglements and even founded a so-called Board of Peace, Turse details how the U.S. under Trump has been drawn into more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and covert operations worldwide.

From drone strikes and proxy wars to full-scale interventions, Trump’s military footprint spans Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, and dozens of other countries. The report highlights the administration’s repeated bypassing of Congress, reliance on secretive programs like 127e, and the cloak of legal euphemisms—“advise, assist, and accompany” missions or “military actions”—to obscure combat operations.

Turse documents a disturbing pattern of clandestine operations, including regime-change efforts, attacks on civilian targets, and the deployment of thousands of Special Operations forces without clear oversight. As Sarah Harrison, former Pentagon counsel, notes, these actions not only flout constitutional and international law but also put Americans at greater risk while enriching the military-industrial apparatus.

“Under the U.S. Constitution, it’s Congress that has the authority to declare war, not the president,” pointed out Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “Congress has not authorized conflicts in this wide array of contexts, and indeed many lawmakers — to say nothing of members of the public — would be surprised to learn that hostilities have taken place in many of these countries. Congressional authorization isn’t just a box-checking exercise: it’s a means of ensuring that the solemn decision to go to war is made democratically and accountably, with a clear purpose and goal that the American people can support.”

“The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted after 9/11 and stretched by successive administrations, has been invoked to justify counterterrorism operations—including airstrikes, ground combat, and support for partner militaries—in at least 22 countries, according to a 2021 report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project. Under Trump, even this framework has been circumvented in favor of more secretive programs and broad interpretations of executive authority.”

While Trump projected an image of peace abroad, Natasha Lennard reports in The Intercept on the very real human consequences of his and Israel’s military campaigns in Iran. Over the weekend, U.S.–Israeli strikes targeted the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran. These attacks, part of a broader campaign that has hit hospitals, power plants, desalination facilities, and schools, left Iranian students and staff unprotected and at risk.

The official justification—that the universities were connected to Iran’s weapons programs—is deeply cynical, Lennard notes. By this rationale, any advanced U.S. or Israeli institution involved in military research could be deemed a legitimate target, from MIT to Technion or Johns Hopkins. The reporting underscores the double standard of asymmetric warfare: aggressors rationalize strikes while shielding their own infrastructure.

Experts cited by Lennard emphasize that the bombings are systematic, aimed at undermining Iran’s capacity for indigenous development and sovereignty. Drawing parallels to Gaza, the attacks on universities are part of a long-term strategy to foreclose reconstruction and maintain strategic dominance

By combining Turse’s exposé of Trump’s global “peace presidency” turned conflict presidency with Lennard’s documentation of targeted strikes on educational institutions, the picture is clear: a veneer of peace masks a sprawling, violent network of operations designed to project power, suppress knowledge, and reshape global dynamics on U.S. and Israeli terms.

Both reports highlight the human cost and the hypocrisy of modern warfare, where civilian infrastructure, education, and research are treated as expendable under the guise of national security, and where the appearance of peace serves to hide the orchestration of conflict at a global scale.

Sources: Nick Turse, “Trump’s Secret Wars on the World Keep Expanding,” The Intercept, March 30, 2026; Natasha Lennard, “What Would We All Say If Iran Razed MIT Because of Military-Related Research?” The Intercept, March 30, 2026.

April 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘This Arrogant Enemy’: Israel’s Colonial Reversion to the Noose

April 1, 2026 SCHEERPOST, Zarefah Baroud for Thinking Palestine

“Israel is also confronted by something older than Israel itself: namely, the willingness and ability of the Palestinian people to mobilize and resist in the face of state-sanctioned death.”

The authorities cuffed the nationalist detainees, leading them to their death at the gallows, scaffolding and rope that had borne witness to the final moments of dozens of nationalists like them. As they approached the noose with grace and a sacred conviction, they declared their final tribute to the beloved homeland: “Filasteen ‘Arabiyya!” (“Palestine is Arab”), and issued a final, unflinching indictment of her oppressors.

The families and communities of the martyrs gather outside Sijn Akka, dressed in white and adorned with henna as if they were attending a wedding, receiving the martyr’s body among eruptions of ululations and celebratory songs.

This is not a romantic tale, but rather the tradition adopted by Palestinians throughout the British Mandate for Palestine, a colonial regime that saw to the systematic annihilation of an entire generation of Palestinian nationalists.

The Spectacle of the Noose

While this scene played out on many occasions throughout the British Mandate for Palestine, it could conceivably happen tomorrow, if proposals put forward by Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security, are approved by the Israeli Knesset. If this comes to pass, the “death penalty bill” — an amendment to the current Israeli penal code – will result in the execution of those who have allegedly killed Israelis for nationalist purposes (or, more reductively and disingenuously, for “anti-Semitic” reasons).

Further, recent reports have confirmed that the Knesset’s proposed legislation draft will no longer perform the death penalty via lethal injection but rather transform the execution of Palestinian detainees into a colonial spectacle. In other words, the original mode of colonial execution would be restored as the chosen method of capital punishment par excellence.

If approved, hanging will once more become a colonial spectacle, which is enacted, in the sterile and removed wording of the National Security Committee, with the aim of “cut[ting] off terrorism at its root and creat[ing] a heavy deterrent.”

It is critical that, as we discuss this pending policy, which Abdel Nasser Farawna characterizes as improbable (though not impossible), we recognize that the extrajudicial execution of prisoners has always been Israel Prison Service (IPS) policy.

Ben-Gvir has put forward his proposal at a time (the period since October 7, 2023) when the Israeli authorities have murdered detainees at an unprecedented rate. In April 2023, the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees estimated 236 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli custody after 1967, a period of 56 years. In the post-October 7 period, in contrast, almost one hundred Palestinians have died in custody, a killing rate around 10 times the historical average.

A November 2025 report produced by Physicians for Human Rights Israel suggests that this may actually be a substantial under-estimate, by virtue of the (at least) 14,000 Gazans who are still missing, presumed to be dead or abducted at the time of writing…………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/01/this-arrogant-enemy-israels-colonial-reversion-to-the-noose/

April 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

What Happens When a Nuclear Site Is Hit?

2 April 26, https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-can-happen-when-the-us-bombs-irans-nuclear-sites/

As US and Israeli strikes continue on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the real danger isn’t the explosion, but what happens if critical safety systems fail—and how that risk could spread across the Gulf.

Into the second month of the US-Iran war, the conflict in the Gulf continues to escalate—airstrikes widening, oil markets reacting, and pressure mounting around the Strait of Hormuz. But beyond the immediate security and economic concerns, another question is quietly taking shape: What actually happens if a nuclear site is hit?

That is the problem with Nuclear Power. It’s a target. There are no do overs if it goes wrong. The IAEA spends a lot of time trying to mitigate atomic problems but they can’t stop those who want to do bad things. When I think about how Chernobyl was handled by the Russians, I think would our government do what they did?
Deny and hide the truth from the public? I’m not sure I’m not willing to place a bet on nuclear but I know many are.

April 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

A ‘small’ nuclear war would still be global catastrophe

There is no such thing as a small nuclear war. Even a limited exchange of tactical weapons could kill 90 million people – far more than died in WWII – in the first few hours,

April 2, 2026, Julian Cribb, https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/a-small-nuclear-war-would-still-be-global-catastrophe/

There is no such thing as a “small” nuclear war. Even limited use would trigger mass death, famine and global collapse.

As West Asia stumbles towards a ‘small nuclear war’, it is time to evaluate the consequences for the entirety of humanity and the Planet.

A small nuclear war, by definition, is one involving the use of so-called tactical or battlefield nukes, low yield weapons (1000-50,000 tonnes of TNT equivalent) designed chiefly for a military objective, delivered as aerial bombs, shells, small missiles, torpedoes, mines etc. It does not involve the use of ICBMs, MIRVs, “city busters” and large-scale strategic weapons.

For comparison, the weapons that levelled Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of 15,000 and 21,000 tonnes respectively, which today would probably rate them as tactical weapons.

However, with practically all of the world’s nuclear treaties and restraints crumbling, it is now almost inevitable that one regime or another will experiment with the smaller nukes and seek to regularise their use, primarily as a means of terrorising their opponents. Only 74 of 197 nations have signed the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. None of the nuclear-armed states or their close allies have signed.

Informed commentators on the Israel-USA-Iran conflict consider the use of nukes, probably by Israel in the first instance, to be increasingly likely as the war goes against them and both Trump and Netanyahu fight to stay out of jail. Israeli Ministers have previously uttered threats to employ nuclear force, though they were later silenced by Netanyahu.

US official documents indicate the America has been preparing for a limited nuclear war for over seven years. Trump has refused to rule out use of nukes, and military observers suspect the US already has them in the West Asian theatre. He has also declared his intent to restart nuclear testing. Authoritative commentators are asking whether Trump is mentally ill – and the world’s most potent nuclear arsenal in the hands of a madman.

Compounding the danger is the frequent use of nuclear threats by Russian leader Vladimir Putin along with Russia’s recent warning that the West Asia conflict could go nuclear.

Observers also consider that the Israeli nuclear threat and its assassination of the chief Iranian opponent to nuclear weapons, Ayatollah Khamenei, makes it far more likely that the new Iranian regime will accelerate plans to build atomic bombs, in the hope of deterring an attack. So one outcome of the war will be a nuclear-armed Iran – the opposite of its professed intention. This will, in turn, spark new regional arms races, with at least seven countries, and probably more, seeking to acquire the civilisation-ending weaponry.

Thus, whether or not the Israel-USA-Iran conflict goes nuclear, it may still prove to be the pebble that starts the landslide to global nuclear holocaust.

A ‘small’ war

There is no such thing as a small nuclear war. Even a limited exchange of tactical weapons could kill 90 million people – far more than died in WWII – in the first few hours, according to modelling by Princeton University. The study refers to the European context, but its message has far wider application.

In the context of dozens of nuclear armed nations – many controlled by men of questionable sanity – the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, which has kept the nuclear peace for 80 years, lapses into irrelevance. Little now prevents nations from committing suicide in their crazed desire to eliminate those they deem as foes.

Furthermore, any ‘small nuclear war’ can rapidly escalate into a far larger, global affair quite quickly and unpredictably. Unable to penetrate or understand their opponent’s motives, nations may choose to strike first and hardest, regardless of the ultimate cost to their own citizens. Indeed, this already appears a significant factor in the escalation of the West Asia conflict.

A current threat analysis made during the conflict finds that the threat of nuclear war to be higher than most periods of the Cold War, but not quite as high as its 1962 Cuban crisis and 1983 ‘Able Archer’ peaks, making it the third deadliest moment in human history since nukes were invented.

It is being stoked by the failure of arms control agreements, the increasingly pugnacious rhetoric of national leaders, and technical advances that could easily go wrong. Misinterpretation, miscalculation, political impulsiveness and an AI glitch have become primary triggers for an atomic war.

A nuclear explosion produces three instant killing mechanisms: a shockwave, a pulse of extreme heat, and a burst of deadly radiation. A very small 10kt weapon, detonated at ground level, causes severe shockwave damage up to 1km from the blast. The thermal pulse inflicts fatal burns and a firestorm up to 2kms. Flying debris kills or injures people several kms distant.

The radiation burst will kill unprotected people up to 1km away, and drifting fallout will create a potential death zone up to 10kms downwind. Larger weapons inflict proportionately greater death and destruction.

Those exposed to moderate doses of radiation develop acute radiation syndrome, which develops in stages: bone marrow is the first to fail, leading to uncontrolled infections and bleeding. Around half of those exposed to a moderate dose die within 60 days. At higher doses, the patient experiences severe vomiting, diarrhoea and internal haemorrhage. Death occurs within two agonising weeks, and no treatment can reverse it. At extreme doses, the heart and central nervous system collapse, and death occurs within three days. In a nuclear war, most radiation victims will receive little or no medical care.

Fallout from a nuclear strike contains particles with a half-life lasting from days to 30 years, so can go on killing for decades, without the need for new strikes. Gamma rays can travel long distances and penetrate most buildings unless they are sheathed in lead, thick concrete or rock. Long term effects include an epidemic of cancers, thyroid and immune system failure.

Globally, even a ‘small nuclear war’ could affect every country and every person, no matter how far away from the seat of the conflict, by means of the “nuclear winter”.

In a scientific paper published in 1983, Professor Brian Toon, Carl Sagan and colleagues calculated that the dust and smoke from a larger (5000 megaton) nuclear war would cut light to the Earth and reduce land temperatures to minus 15-25 degrees Celsius, destroying the entire world food harvest and causing universal starvation. It was this that persuaded Reagan and Gorbachev to pull back from the brink of catastrophe.

However, even a ‘small nuclear war’ of fifty or so tactical blasts would cover the Earth in a smoke cloud 30-100 kms deep within two weeks causing subzero temperatures for several years. The smoke would linger for years, possibly decades, ruining harvests everywhere. Between one and two billion people would die of starvation around the world. Everybody would go hungry. The world economy would collapse.

Iran’s deterrent

Three days before the US bombed the nuclear enrichment site at Fordow in 2025, a line of empty trucks was spotted by satellites at the facility. Intelligence assessment decided these were tasked to carry 408 kilos of highly enriched (60 per cent purity) uranium, part of a larger cache of 8.4 tonnes of uranium, to a place of greater safety.

If so, this leaves Iran with the capability to manufacture up to 14 atomic bombs or 300+ dirty bombs to deter a nuclear attack by Israel. It also has the ballistic and hypersonic missiles to deliver them, while Israel’s air defences are weakened. The radiation from a dirty bomb made from 60 per cent enriched uranium has a half-life of 740,000,000 years. While not deadly in the short term this could still render areas uninhabitable for the rest of history.

Whether this would deter a US or Israeli attack, given the unhinged state of their leadership and the moral cowardice of their governments, is not certain.

A wise course would be not to force Iran into such an escalation. But where is there wisdom in any of this?

April 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | 1 Comment

What to Know About the ‘Massive’ Military Bunker Beneath Trump’s Ballroom

President Trump has been talking about the emergency facility beneath what was once the East Wing, details of which are usually kept secret, as he tries to justify his renovation.

By Luke Broadwater, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/politics/trump-ballroom-military-bunker.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20260403&instance_id=173568&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=60047519&segment_id=217713&user_id=432fc0d0ad6543e820e2dfcd39f76c35April 2, 2026

While most public attention has focused on the aboveground portion of President Trump’s planned $400 million ballroom, what is underneath could prove to be the more complex and expensive portion of the project.

Work crews have been digging in the earth for weeks, ripping out the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC, to build something bigger, better and deeper underground.

The PEOC, which was built during World War II to protect the president and other top officials in the event of an emergency, was where Vice President Dick Cheney was hustled after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, later to be joined by President George W. Bush and his national security teams. Mr. Trump was rushed there, too, during protests over the death of George Floyd in 2020.

The bunker is beneath what was once the East Wing, which Mr. Trump tore down last year to make way for his ballroom.

Details of the underground facility are usually shrouded in secrecy. But as Mr. Trump’s ballroom faces legal challenges, he has been talking more openly about the bunker. He argues that the two are linked, which makes building the ballroom a matter of security.

Here is what we know about the PEOC.

A ‘Massive’ Military Complex

Speaking on Sunday to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Trump said that he envisioned his 90,000-square-foot ballroom as a “shed” for the underground project.

“The military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction, and we’re doing very well,” Mr. Trump said.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, the bunker will have bomb shelters and “very major medical facilities,” including a hospital. It will have the latest secure communication methods and defenses against bioweapons.

He said the ballroom would protect the underground facility from drones, bullets and other attacks. “It’s high-grade bulletproof glass. So all of the windows are bulletproof,” Mr. Trump said.

Last week, speaking about the ballroom project during a cabinet meeting, the president said that “the military wanted it more than anybody.”

Mr. Trump has said the security features make his project even more important — a point he made again this week after a judge halted the project, saying it required congressional approval.

“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” wrote Judge Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court in Washington, a George W. Bush appointee.

Mr. Trump ordered an appeal, but he pointed to a section of Judge Leon’s order that allowed “construction necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House” to continue

“We have biodefense all over,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week. “We have secure telecommunications and communications all over. We have bomb shelters that we’re building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we’re building. We have all of these things. So that’s called: I’m allowed to continue building.”

The Secret Service

The Secret Service has twice filed documents in court attesting to the necessity of finishing the ballroom project.

Matthew C. Quinn, deputy director of the Secret Service, wrote in December and again in January that any halt in the project could put lives in danger.

Mr. Quinn said that the agency was working with a contractor on security upgrades but that the underground work was not finished.

“Accordingly, any pause in construction, even temporarily, would leave the contractor’s obligation unfulfilled in this regard and consequently hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission,” Mr. Quinn wrote.

He offered to brief the judge privately about the security upgrades underway. The Trump administration also filed some documents about the project under seal in federal court.

Judge Leon appeared to mostly reject those arguments.

“While I take seriously the government’s concerns regarding the safety and security of the White House grounds and the president himself, the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the president’s own making!” he wrote.

Joshua Fisher, director for management and administration in the White House, told the National Capital Planning Commission in January that he could not share all the administration’s plans for the project.

“There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on,” he said.

There are still many unanswered questions about the project, including which branch or branches of the military are involved, the costs of construction and maintenance, and many other details.

Asked about the underground portion of the project on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, was equally closemouthed.

“The military is making some upgrades to their facilities here at the White House, and I’m not privy to provide any more details on that,” she said.

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

April 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

It Takes Years To Refuel A Nuclear Submarine – Here’s Why

By Chris Smith , BGR 10th March 2026

You probably charge your phone daily, while your car needs gas or a battery top-up every few days. But you don’t have to take the device or vehicle apart when you connect it to power or fill up the tank. Refueling a nuclear submarine, on the other hand, is a complicated process that takes years, just like refueling a nuclear aircraft carrier………………………

The ERO process is slow because it’s designed that way for safety reasons. The nuclear submarine has to be brought into a facility that’s capable of handling nuclear material throughout the replacement process, to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the repairs and the sailors who will crew the ship once the refueling process is done. The nuclear core remains radioactive during refueling, so radiation must be contained and the nuclear waste must be stored securely.

The submarine is brought to a dry dock for the ERO process, where engineers go through a rigorous procedure to defuel the ship and refuel it. The reactors are shut down and cooled before removing the old reactor core and installing its replacement. The actual removal of the spent core involves cutting through the submarine’s hull with hand tools, as the reactors aren’t easily accessible. These operations are performed under strict ventilation and filtration protocols to prevent radiation contamination. The old core is transported off-site for secure storage, as the nuclear material remains active. The new core is installed, and then the reactor is reassembled and the submarine is resealed. These procedures require precision and numerous inspections, as there’s no room for error. The structural integrity of the hull is key for allowing the submarine to operate at depth.

……………………………………… How much does refueling a submarine cost?

Like nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered surface ships undergo extensive RCOH processes — and they’re not cheap or quick. For example, it cost $2.8 billion to refuel and retrofit the USS George Washington aircraft carrier, and the process took even longer than anticipated. In May 2023, the U.S. Navy announced that the George Washington completed its RCOH process after 69 months

……………………………………………..
https://www.bgr.com/2117046/why-nuclear-submarine-takes-years-to-refuel/

April 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Experts Warned For Years That A War With Iran Would Happen This Way

Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 04, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/experts-warned-for-years-that-a-war?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=193077265&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Time has a new article out in which unnamed sources assert that the Pentagon was caught totally off-guard by Iran’s aggressive retaliation against the US-Israeli onslaught which began last month, reporting the following:

“Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation. In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran’s muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war. Hegseth ‘was caught off guard. There’s no question,’ says a person familiar with his thinking.”

It’s so wild how we keep seeing reports that Iran’s retaliation caught the US off guard. For all the years I’ve been paying attention to this issue I’ve been reading experts and analysts saying if the US attacks Iran, Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz and strike US bases and the energy infrastructure of US allies in the region.

A few examples:

A 2006 Oxford Research Group paper titled “Iran: Consequences of a War” warned that Iran has numerous options at its disposal in the event of a US attack, and that the “most significant of these would be any possible retaliatory Iranian action to affect the transport of oil and liquefied natural gas through the Straits of Hormuz,” adding that stopping Iran from doing this “would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, leading to a fear of attack which alone would have a formidable impact on oil markets.”

A 2007 Cato Institute paper titled “The Iraq War and Iranian Power” warns that “Iran possesses the largest ballistic-missile inventory in the Persian Gulf — missiles which can reach Israel, Saudi Arabia and US military bases in Iraq,” and that “experts argue Iran could also use the ’oil weapon’: blocking the 34km-wide Strait of Hormuz and conducting submarine and anti-ship missile attacks against ports and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf Cooperation Council states.”

A 2012 NPR article titled “Can Iran Close The World’s Most Important Oil Route?” features then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledging that Iran absolutely can block the Strait of Hormuz, saying Tehran has “invested in capabilities” which specifically enable them to do so.

A paper from the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy and the Center for a New American Security titled “IN DIRE STRAITS? IMPLICATIONS OF US-IRAN TENSIONS FOR THE GLOBAL OIL MARKET” warns of a potential scenario “that includes damage to Gulf oil infrastructure and a temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz.”

These weren’t a bunch of keffiyeh-wearing peaceniks making these assessments, they were deeply entrenched swamp monsters entirely loyal to the US empire. They opposed war with Iran not because it would be an evil act of unforgivable mass murder, but because it would be bad for the imperial power structure.

Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton recently tweeted that other administration officials had warned the president to dismiss Bolton’s urging to attack Iran because of the easily foreseeable consequences of that war, saying “In 2018–2019, I made the case for regime change in Iran as often as I could. Voices in Trump’s orbit often cited Iran’s capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz as a reason against regime change. Trump has been fully aware this is a possibility, and yet did not prepare.”

I have zero military training or expertise — on military matters I’m just some schmuck with internet access — and yet nothing Iran has done has surprised me. It’s playing out exactly how the experts warned it would play out. There’s no way any literate, thinking person didn’t see this coming; when they say they didn’t, it’s because they’re either lying or amazingly stupid.

Trump’s war machine is either made up of liars, morons, lying morons, or (most likely), an eclectic mixture of all three.

April 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Projectile hits near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, killing one: IAEA

Tehran says it is the fourth attack near the nuclear plant amid the US-Israel war on Iran.

By Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters 4 Apr 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/4/iaea-says-projectile-hits-near-irans-bushehr-nuclear-plant-killing-one

One person has been killed by projectile fragments after United States-Israeli strikes targeted a location close to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The agency, citing confirmation from Iranian authorities, said in a statement on X that there was “no increase in radiation levels” after Saturday’s attack.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed the Bushehr facility had been “bombed” four times since the war erupted on February 28, criticising what he described as a lack of concern for its safety.

The strike comes as the US and Israel escalate their targeting of Iranian industrial sites, even as experts warn of the high risks of striking nuclear or petrochemical facilities.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed “deep concern about the reported incident and says [nuclear] sites or nearby areas must never be attacked, noting that auxiliary site buildings may contain vital safety equipment”, the statement read.

Grossi also reiterated a “call for maximum military restraint to avoid risk of a nuclear accident,” the IAEA added.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) confirmed the incident in a post on X.

An “auxiliary” building on the site was damaged, but the main sections of the power plant were not affected by the strike, the government agency said, adding that the person killed was a member of security personnel.

The head of Russia’s state nuclear company, Rosatom, said 198 Russian staff had evacuated the plant following the attack, state news agency Interfax reported.

“As planned, we began the main wave of evacuations today, about 20 minutes after the ill-fated strike. Buses departed from the Bushehr station toward the Iranian-Armenian border. 198 people, to be exact – the largest wave of evacuation – are on the buses,” Alexei Likhachev said.

Rosatom has been evacuating staff ⁠from the plant since the US-Israeli war on Iran began. Saturday’s evacuations had been planned before the attack.

The Bushehr plant is Iran’s only operational nuclear power plant. It is located in Bushehr city, home to 250,000 people, and is one of Iran’s most important industrial and military nodes.

Meanwhile, US and Israeli strikes on Saturday hit several petrochemical plants in the southern Khuzestan region, an important energy hub, according to Iranian media.

At least five people were injured, Iranian media reported, citing a provincial official.

Explosions were heard, and smoke was also seen rising after missiles hit several locations across the Mahshahr Petrochemical Special Economic Zone.

The state-run Bandar Imam petrochemical complex, which produces chemicals, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), polymers and a range of other products, was struck and sustained damage, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.

A provincial governor in Khuzestan added that the Fajr 1 and 2 petrochemical companies, as well as other nearby facilities, were also hit, according to the Fars news agency. The extent of damage is unclear.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it shot down an MQ-1 drone over central Isfahan province on Saturday, hours after authorities said they forced down two US warplanes.

Isfahan, which houses an underground uranium conversion and a research site, was one of three facilities bombed during US and Israeli strikes on Iran last June.

April 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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