The Military’s AI Strategy Threatens Everything We Love
For Hegseth, the tech bros, and technofascists who have infiltrated the government, all of the above represent the best of American innovation. For them, innovation is a pseudonym for constant surveillance, never-ending warfare, and widespread environmental destruction.
On the same day as Hegseth’s SpaceX speech, a report revealed that the first four military bases to add data centers will be Fort Hood (Texas), Fort Bragg (North Carolina), Fort Bliss (Texas), and Dugway Proving Ground (Utah). Hegseth said these facilities will be developed through private partnership agreements with companies such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, SpaceX, and Microsoft.
February 7, 2026, By Chris Jeske for Codepink, https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/07/the-militarys-ai-strategy-threatens-everything-we-love/
As did many fellow Americans, I chuckled when President Trump announced the creation of the U.S. Space Force on December 20, 2019. I even remember laughing heartily while taking in the late-night circuit’s many Star Trek jokes that day. Yet, I had mostly forgotten that the Space Force still exists until last week when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth started a policy speech alongside Elon Musk at SpaceX’s headquarters by flashing the Vulcan salute and affirming Musk’s desire to “make Star Trek real.”
The absurdity of Musk’s introduction–in which he spoke of “going beyond our star system to other star systems, where we may meet aliens or discover long dead alien civilizations” as if this could happen in any of our lifetimes–belied the seriousness of the new U.S. Military Artificial Intelligence strategy that Secretary Hegseth proceeded to announce.
Before an audience of Pentagon leadership and SpaceX employees, Hegseth outlined the structures, initiatives, and objectives in place to bring about what he called “America’s military AI dominance,” with his remarks largely following the plan documented in the July 2025 report “America’s AI Action Plan.”
A core goal Hegseth specified was “becoming an AI-first warfighting force across all domains.” He elaborated that AI will be deployed in three ways: for “warfighting, intelligence, and enterprise missions.”
Hegseth shared that the military’s generative AI model, known as genai.mil, launched last month for all three million Department of War (DOW) employees and will run on “every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.” The initial model was developed with Google Gemini and will soon incorporate xAI’s Grok. In its first month, one-third of DOW’s workforce (one million people) has used the generative AI model.
In the speech, Heseth repeated phrases such as “removing red tape,” “blowing up bureaucratic barriers,” and “taking a wartime approach” to the people and policies that he called “blockers.” Specifics he voiced disdain for included regulations in “Title 10 and 50″–referring to Title 10 of the U.S. Code (the legal bedrock of the armed forces, including the configuration of each branch) and Title 50 of the U.S. Code (the laws which govern national security, intelligence, defense contracts, war powers, and more). These don’t sound like the types of data, processes, and policies to treat with a ‘move fast and break things’ approach.
How genai.mil might be used is even more frightening, especially as we learn how other AI programs are already being used to direct intelligence, surveillance, and warfare.
An April 2024 report from +972 unveiled an Israeli military AI program known as “Lavender,” which was used to generate kill lists of Palestinians. Despite the program reportedly having a known 10 percent false identification rate, no human validation was required before launching air strikes on the AI-identified targets. Another system, known as “Where’s Daddy?,” employed AI to locate targeted individuals. The program was often most confident in a target being at a specific location when they were at home, so the air strikes regularly killed entire families instead of just the targeted individual.
Hegseth eagerly addressed the need for “responsible AI,” but this proved to be another instance of doublespeak. His description was as follows: “We will not employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars.” Perhaps the reason he needs to state this is that, in theory, a properly trained AI model would not likely recommend military action in most instances–especially if built upon the data of recent U.S.-involved wars.
Furthermore, Hegseth echoed President Trump, promising that the military’s AI will not be ‘woke’ or ‘confused by DEI and social justice.’ Such declarations raise the question of whether this could mean military AI models will be designed with explicit white supremacist biases. A July 2025 incident involving xAI’s Grok offers a prescient case study: After Elon Musk claimed to remove ‘political correctness’ and ‘wokeness’ from Grok, the program proceeded to praise Hitler, claim to be “MechaHitler,” and spew a series of antisemitic tropes.
Regardless of how genai.mil is ultimately used, it will require extraordinary computing power. While hyperscale data centers are already massive environmental risks, Executive Order 14318, “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” signed by President Trump on July 23, 2025, exempts qualifying projects from virtually all federal environmental regulations.
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright is ‘all-in’ with the development of federal data centers and the required energy infrastructure. He’s joyfully referred to such initiatives as “the next Manhattan Project” on multiple occasions. As of July 2025, four national lab sites have been selected for data center and energy infrastructure development: Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho), Oak Ridge Reservation (Tennessee), Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (Kentucky), and Savannah River Site (South Carolina).
On the same day as Hegseth’s SpaceX speech, a report revealed that the first four military bases to add data centers will be Fort Hood (Texas), Fort Bragg (North Carolina), Fort Bliss (Texas), and Dugway Proving Ground (Utah). Hegseth said these facilities will be developed through private partnership agreements with companies such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, SpaceX, and Microsoft.
These same companies are frequently the driving force behind commercial data centers popping up in municipalities across the nation. Regardless of where data centers are located–municipalities, national lab sites, or military bases–the environmental costs are massive. Aaron Kirshenbaum, CODEPINK’s War is Not Green Campaigner, documents power consumption, water usage, noise pollution, toxic waste, and rare mineral extraction among the many negative local impacts of data centers in our communities. “They must be fought against at all costs,” Kirshenbaum says.
For Hegseth, the tech bros, and technofascists who have infiltrated the government, all of the above represent the best of American innovation. For them, innovation is a pseudonym for constant surveillance, never-ending warfare, and widespread environmental destruction.
Yet, some wisdom never ages. George Manuel in The Fourth World: An Indian Reality speaks of the destructive tendencies of ‘innovations’ developed by settlers: “Europe’s most important contributions that are still of value today seem either to be means of transport or instruments of war: ships, wagons, steelware, certain breeds of horses, guns. Most of the other things that were brought to North America by Europeans came from other parts of the world: paper, print, gunpowder, glass, mathematics, and Christianity.”
So many science fiction classics are rooted in the truth of Manuel’s observation–that western industrial development fuels a lust for warfare and environmental destruction. The authors of these sci-fi classics–unlike our technofascist ‘geniuses’–are true visionaries who are concerned with the future of humanity, and who feel compelled to warn of what might become if we follow these dangerous ideologies that have fuelled centuries of colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy to their logical conclusions.
Even Star Trek itself famously depicts a utopian future where humankind has moved beyond racism, beyond conquest, and beyond capitalism itself. “There simply couldn’t be a more anti-Trek idea than an ‘AI-first warfighting force across all domains,” says Gerry Canavan, a professor of English at Marquette University specializing in science fiction studies. “Watch just one episode of the show, and you’ll see.”
While it’s hard to take Musk and Hegseth seriously when they talk about making Star Trek real, I don’t doubt for a minute that they can find many new ways to violate our rights and destroy what we love about the natural world.
But we aren’t without hope. “For every science fiction narrative about a new technological means for violence and oppression,” Canavan says, “there’s another about what happens when the people suffering under the machine finally unite together to smash it, and take the future back for themselves.”
Just as the protagonists in our favorite science fiction stories actively struggle for and create the world they want to live in, so can we.
Chris Jeske is an organizer with CODEPINK Milwaukee and Associate Director of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking.
Trump’s $1.5 Trillion “Dream Military”
Or What National Nightmares Are Made Of
By William J. Astore. Tomgram, February 5, 2026
What constitutes national security and how is it best achieved? Does massive military spending really make a country more secure, and what perils to democracy and liberty are posed by vast military establishments? Questions like those are rarely addressed in honest ways these days in America. Instead, the Trump administration favors preparations for war and more war, fueled by potentially enormous increases in military spending that are dishonestly framed as “recapitalizations” of America’s security and safety.
Such framing makes Pete Hegseth, America’s self-styled “secretary of war,” seem almost refreshing in his embrace of a warrior ethos. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is another “warrior” who cheers for conflict, whether with Venezuela, Iran, or even — yes! — Russia. Such macho men revel in what they believe is this country’s divine mission to dominate the world. Tragically, at the moment, unapologetic warmongers like Hegseth and Graham are winning the political and cultural battle here in America.
Of course, U.S. warmongering is anything but new, as is a belief in global dominance through high military spending. Way back in 1983, as a college student, I worked on a project that critiqued President Ronald Reagan’s “defense” buildup and his embrace of pie-in-the-sky concepts like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as “Star Wars.” Never did I imagine that, more than 40 years later, another Republican president would again come to embrace SDI (freshly rebranded as “Golden Dome”) and ever-more massive military spending, especially since the Soviet Union, America’s superpower rival in Reagan’s time, ceased to exist 35 years ago. Amazingly, Trump even wants to bring back naval battleships, as Reagan briefly did (though he didn’t have the temerity to call for a new class of ships to be named after himself). It’ll be a “golden fleet,” says Trump. What gives?………………………………………………
In America, nothing — and I mean nothing! — seems capable of reversing massive military spending and incessant warfare. President Ronald Reagan, readers of a certain (advanced) age may recall, was nicknamed the “Teflon president” because scandals just didn’t seem to stick to him (at least until the Iran-Contra affair proved tough to shed). Yet history’s best candidate for Teflon “no-stick” status was never Reagan or any other president. It was and remains the U.S. warfare state, headquartered on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. And give the sclerotic bureaucracy of that warfare state full credit. Even as the Pentagon has moved from failure to failure in warfighting, its war budgets have continued to soar and then soar some more………………………………….
The Shameless Embrace of Forever War and Its Spoils
………………………………………….In case you’ve forgotten them (or never read them), here are Ike’s words from that televised address in January 1961, when he put the phrase “the military-industrial complex” in our language:
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”…………………………..
Those were the prescient words of the most senior military man of his era, a true citizen-soldier and president, and more than six decades later, we should and must act on them if we have any hope left of preserving “our liberties and democratic processes.”
………………………………..More, More, More!
Not only is such colossal military spending bad for this country, but it’s also bad for the military itself, which, after all, didn’t ask for Trump’s proposed $500 billion raise. America’s prodigal son was relatively content with a trillion dollars in yearly spending. In fact, the president’s suggested increase in the Pentagon budget isn’t just reckless; it may well wreck not just what’s left of our democracy, but the military, too………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Americans, we must act to cut the war budget, shrink the empire, embrace diplomacy, and work for peace. Sadly, however, the blob has seemingly become our master, a well-nigh unstoppable force. Aren’t you tired yet of being its slave?
On the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, which was predicated on resistance to empire and military rule, it should be considered deeply tragic that this country has met the enemy — and he is indeed us. Here the words of Ike provide another teachable moment. Only Americans can truly hurt America, he once said. To which I’d add this corollary: Only Americans can truly save America.
As we celebrate our nation’s birthday this July 4th, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could save this deeply disturbed country by putting war and empire firmly in the rearview mirror? A tall task for sure, but so, too, was declaring independence from the mighty British Empire in 1776. https://tomdispatch.com/trumps-1-5-trillion-dream-military/
The new era of Israeli expansionism and the war economy that fuels it
By Ahmed Alqarout February 2, 2026, https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/the-new-era-of-israeli-expansionism-and-the-war-economy-that-fuels-it/
While Israel’s current trajectory is being framed domestically as a triumph, its long-term outlook remains grim and costly. Permanent war locks Israel into permanent military mobilization, accelerates demographic and moral exhaustion, and increases long-term exposure to asymmetric retaliation from Palestinian resistance, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
How Israel’s war-driven economy, regional realignments, and Netanyahu’s push for military independence are ushering in a new period of Israeli expansionism in its quest for regional dominance.
Israel has entered a new era of territorial expansionism and military aggression beyond the borders of historic Palestine. Its belligerent actions have accelerated across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Qatar, Libya, and most recently, Somaliland. These developments aren’t due to a change in Israeli strategic ambitions, but rather to the loosening of constraints that had kept it bounded before October 2023.
This expansionist turn reflects a structural recalibration of risk, leverage, and international tolerance rather than a sudden ideological shift. But it is also due to the way Israel’s economy is now structured: the military industry has been carrying the economy ever since Israel experienced a level of global isolation that decimated most other sectors over the past two years. The result? Israel now has an additional structural incentive to be in a perpetual state of war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave voice to this reality when he announced that Israel would need to become a “super Sparta” — a highly militarized warrior state with a self-sufficient military industry, capable of defying international pressure and arms embargoes because it no longer has to rely on American military beneficence.
A crucial recent strategic declaration sharpens this trajectory. In January 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to end U.S. military aid to Israel within roughly a decade, framing this as a path toward military-industrial self-sufficiency and strategic autarky. This announcement signals that Israel is no longer content to remain subordinate to the U.S., instead seeking to operate as its strategic partner in the region at a time when the U.S.’s national security strategy is shifting attention from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.
Netanyahu’s declaration amplifies the urgency of the export-led growth model, which is largely based on arms and defense-linked industries. The problem is, if Israel is to replace $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid, it must dramatically scale up its domestic production and export capacity.
Also read: Israel moves to embrace its isolation.
The Israeli state is attempting to institutionalize this export surge through policy, committing roughly NIS 350 billion (equivalent to $100–108 billion) over the coming decade to expand an independent domestic arms industry. Economically, this means that military production will become central to Israel’s long-term industrial strategy, diverting capital, labor, and state support toward weapons manufacturing rather than civilian recovery, a strategy that is untenable during wartime. This also embeds Israeli firms deeper into global security supply chains, even as the state itself becomes diplomatically isolated.
The structural dimension: incentive for permanent war
Since 2023, Israeli military exports have become one of the few sectors compensating for its broader economic slowdown. In 2023, defense exports reached approximately $13 billion, and in 2024 they climbed further to around $14.7–15 billion, setting successive records. This expansion took place while civilian economic growth weakened, labor shortages and unemployment intensified due to the prolonged mobilization of the army, and large segments of the small and medium enterprise sector reported sustained losses and bankruptcies. Arms exports essentially functioned as a countercyclical stabilizer during wartime stress, but now they’re becoming a permanent part of how the Israeli economy aims to reproduce itself.
In 2025, this trajectory accelerated even further. Israel signed some of its largest defense agreements to date with the U.S., UAE, Germany, Greece, and Azerbaijan, covering air defense systems, missiles, drones, and advanced surveillance technologies. While full contract values are not always disclosed, these deals are expected to push total defense exports beyond the 2024 record, reinforcing the arms sector as Israel’s most dynamic export industry, even as other exports, such as agriculture, face an imminent “collapse,” according to Israeli farmers.
The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.
As civilian sectors stagnate, the war economy provides growth, foreign currency earnings, and political insulation. This creates a structural incentive for permanent mobilization: war sustains demand, shields the government from accountability, and reinforces a worldview in which force is treated as the primary currency of international relations.
In this configuration, military aggression and territorial expansionism are the mechanisms through which the Israeli economy now seeks to reproduce itself. As a result, Israel’s governing coalition rests on permanent securitization. The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.
The global dimension: the end of international law
The international dimension is equally decisive. Israel’s territorial expansionism and military aggression have been enabled by the hollowing out of global constraint mechanisms such as international law.
Western states have demonstrated that there is no meaningful red line when violence is framed as counterterrorism or civilizational defense. Legal norms remain rhetorically intact but operationally suspended. This has altered Israel’s strategic calculus, because if Gaza produces diplomatic noise but no material sanctions, then Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq carries even lower expected costs.
The collapse of normalization: no reason to play nice
Read more: The new era of Israeli expansionism and the war economy that fuels itNormalization politics also play a role. The collapse of Israeli-Saudi normalization talks — which had accelerated throughout 2023 under U.S. mediation but stalled after Israel launched its genocide in Gaza — did not discipline Israeli behavior, but liberated it.
Without Saudi recognition serving as a bargaining chip or incentive for restraint, Israel abandoned any pretense of using territorial compromises as a negotiating tool. It doubled down on the objective of establishing facts on the ground while seeking bilateral security ties with smaller or more vulnerable actors. Expansion now substitutes for Israel’s dying soft power, and recognition is increasingly extracted through leverage rather than negotiation.
What makes the post-2023 moment distinctive is Israel fighting across multiple theaters simultaneously, in the open, and with confidence that escalation will not trigger systemic pushback. Furthermore, Israel’s strategy has become structurally enabled by an ever-increasing reliance on new technologies developed during war. It is no longer a response to threats but a method of governance at home and influence abroad.
Since 2023, Israel has no longer pursued peace through containment, as it did during the Arab Spring period. Instead, it has shifted toward permanent occupation, land seizure, and the redrawing of political maps to sustain and expand its war machine.
How Israel is pursuing regional dominance
Domestically, Israeli territorial expansionism aims to permanently resolve the Palestinian question through a combination of expulsion, cantonization, co-optation, and ultimately displacement. The underlying logic is to eliminate what is perceived as Israel’s primary domestic security problem — the very presence of the Palestinian people on their land — once and for all, thereby restoring elite and societal confidence in the long-term survival of the state.
At the regional level, Israel pursues diverse objectives across the countries in which it intervenes, some involving territorial acquisition or semi-permanent occupation, others focused on subordination, fragmentation, and neutralization of perceived threats.
In Iran, aggression takes the form of seeking regime destabilization and military degradation through sustained airstrikes on nuclear and military facilities, alongside efforts to exacerbate social and political unrest. The June 2025 war between Israel and Iran marked the most direct military confrontation between the two states to date, yet it terminated in an informal pause rather than escalating into full-scale war, with neither side crossing recognized deterrence thresholds despite the intensity of exchanges.
Since then, large-scale protests inside Iran have introduced a new internal pressure point that external actors increasingly frame as a strategic vulnerability. This has coincided with explicit threats of war from Donald Trump and renewed U.S. military signalling, which together reinforce Israel’s long-standing view of Iran as an existential threat to be confronted through regime change. Yet the persistence of non-escalation reflects how aggression against Iran operates within implicit boundaries that territorial expansionism in Palestine or Syria does not face, even as the fusion of internal unrest and external coercive rhetoric makes this equilibrium more fragile.
In Lebanon, Israel seeks to dismantle Hezbollah not only as a military actor but as the backbone of a Shiite-led political order that obstructs Israeli regional dominance. The deeper objective is to fracture Lebanon into a minorities-based system in which Druze, Christians, and other groups are incentivized to seek external protection and economic linkage with Israel. A weak and segmented Lebanon provides strategic depth without the costs and liabilities of direct occupation. For now, the cross-border escalation in Lebanon functions less as a pathway to outright military victory and more as a tool for reshaping Lebanon’s internal political balance over time.
As of January 2026, despite the ceasefire nominally holding, Israel has maintained “temporary” positions in five “strategic” locations in southern Lebanon, refusing to complete its withdrawal. The result is a tense stalemate in which Israel maintains military leverage over Lebanon while withholding its commitment to a full withdrawal and leaving open the possibility of renewed major escalations.
Israel’s strikes across Syria are somewhat more complex, becoming a central theater of Israeli military intervention and engineered political fragmentation following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. The Israeli strategy in Syria involves both direct military action and efforts to prevent unified Syrian state consolidation by providing military support for and coordination with Syrian Kurdish forces (the SDF) aimed at fragmenting the new Syrian government’s authority.
In March 2025, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly announced that Israel would permit Syrian Druze workers to enter the Golan Heights for agricultural and construction work, framing this as a humanitarian gesture while simultaneously cultivating labour dependencies and economic ties that bind border communities to Israel. In July 2025, Netanyahu adopted a formal policy of “demilitarization of southern Syria,” declaring that Israeli forces would remain in southern Syria indefinitely and that no Syrian military forces would be permitted south of Damascus, effectively partitioning Syrian territory. Netanyahu framed this policy as “protection of the Druze.”
Israel’s setbacks in Syria
By late 2025 and early 2026, the SDF’s position had collapsed. Arab tribal defections in Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour, mounting pressure from Turkish forces to the north, and a lack of sustained external support led to a rapid SDF retreat from much of northern and eastern Syria by January 2026. This collapse of Israel’s primary Kurdish proxy, coupled with the failure of Israeli-backed Druze militia resistance to prevent Damascus’s consolidation of authority in southern Syria, has undermined Israel’s strategy of preventing unified Syrian state reconstruction through proxy warfare.
The Druze and Alawite populations represent potential economic and demographic assets at a time when Israel faces a structural shortage of both soldiers and workers. Since 2023, this shortage has become acute. The Syrian periphery offers a pool of labor that can be selectively incorporated under autonomy arrangements or informal annexation, which Israel has already done by allowing a number of Syrian Druze to work in the Golan Heights. What is emerging is a strategy of economic annexation without formal borders, integrating the southern Syrian periphery into the Israeli economy on subordinate terms.
As for Yemen, its alignment with Gaza and its demonstrated capacity to disrupt Red Sea shipping have elevated it from a peripheral conflict to a strategic threat for Israel, especially since Ansar Allah’s blockade undermines Israel’s global trade architecture and its security relationships with Western shipping insurers, logistics firms, and port operators.
Yemen’s growing ties with Russia and China have only compounded this threat. That’s why attacking Yemen isn’t about Yemen alone, but about preserving a Western-aligned maritime order in which Israel is embedded as its key security node.
This is where Israel’s recognition of Somaliland comes in, allowing Israel to bypass internationally recognized states and to work directly with sub-state entities. Somaliland has allegedly agreed to have an Israeli military base established in the territory and to accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza in exchange for this recognition.
Regarding direct Israeli involvement in North Africa more broadly, Israel has not pursued direct military operations in Egypt or sustained military intervention in Sudan or Libya, but it has pursued indirect strategies of influence and intelligence gathering, from maintaining contacts with both sides of the Sudanese civil war to secretly meeting with Libyan officials before October 2023.
The costs of expansionism and potential for resistance
While Israel’s current trajectory is being framed domestically as a triumph, its long-term outlook remains grim and costly. Permanent war locks Israel into permanent military mobilization, accelerates demographic and moral exhaustion, and increases long-term exposure to asymmetric retaliation from Palestinian resistance, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
Each absence of consequence recalibrates expectations on both sides. Within Israel, it reinforces the belief that force carries no meaningful cost. Among those targeted, it sharpens incentives to develop longer-horizon strategies of attrition and retaliation. Geographic overreach further compounds these vulnerabilities. Israel’s efforts to embed itself within overseas military infrastructures in places such as Somaliland and southern Yemen (and to establish bases through regional proxies like the UAE) expose Israel’s operational reach to extended supply lines that are distant, insecure, and vulnerable to interdiction.
Rather than Israeli-operated facilities, these arrangements rely on third-party bases (principally Emirati), whose stability depends on shifting regional power dynamics and state priorities beyond Israel’s direct control. Maintaining an effective presence at such a distance raises the likelihood of further military stumbling blocks, financial constraints, and unanticipated entanglements that may prove difficult to sustain over time, especially as Yemen’s Ansar Allah threatens to target any future military bases in Somaliland.
Israel’s War on Iran: The Overkill No One Calls War
| urbanwronski on February 3, 2026, https://urbanwronski.com/2026/02/03/israels-war-on-iran-the-overkill-no-one-calls-war/ |
Tehran, June 13, 2025, 4:17 a.m. The first explosions light up the sky over Natanz. Israeli F-35s, invisible to radar, drop JDAMs on Iran’s largest uranium enrichment plant. Within minutes, no fewer than five car bombs detonate across Tehran, next to government buildings and the homes of nuclear scientists. The IDF, ever the courteous occupier, issues a warning to Iranian civilians: evacuate the areas around weapons factories and military bases in Shiraz. Or else.
By dawn, Israel has struck over 100 targets. Not just nuclear sites, but missile depots, air defences, and the homes of Iran’s top military brass. General Hossein Salami, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, is dead. So is Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri. So are nuclear scientists Fereydoon Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.
The Mossad, meanwhile, has spent years smuggling precision weapons into Iran, setting up covert drone bases near Tehran, and recruiting Iranian dissidents to sabotage air defences from within. This is not a flare-up. This is not a crisis. This is war, waged by Israel, enabled by the US, and dressed up as something else entirely.
The US Joins the Party On June 22, the Americans arrive. Twelve B-2 stealth bombers, escorted by 125 aircraft, drop 30,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The GBU-57s, each capable of burrowing 200 feet underground before detonating, are the only weapons on Earth that can destroy Iran’s fortified nuclear sites. Trump calls it “Operation Midnight Hammer.” The Pentagon calls it “degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities.” The rest of the world calls it what it is: the US and Israel bombing a country that, by all independent accounts, is not building a nuclear weapon. Nor intends to.
The Body Count By June 28, the numbers are in. Iranian health officials report 1,190 dead, including 435 military personnel and 436 civilians. Another 4,000 are wounded. Israel loses 28. The US? Zero. Iran fires back with missiles at Tel Aviv, drones at Haifa, a barrage at a US base in Qatar, but the Iron Dome and Patriot batteries swat most of them away. The Iranian air force, such as it is, never gets off the ground. Its fleet of MiG-29s and F-14s, some half a century old, are no match for Israel’s F-35s and the US’s B-2s. Iran has no air force to speak of. It has missiles, proxies, and little else.
The Mossad’s Shadow War This is not just a war of bombs. It’s a war of knives in the dark. The Mossad doesn’t just strike from the air, it strikes from within. In the months leading up to June 2025, Mossad operatives and recruited Iranian dissidents disable air defences, plant explosives, and assassinate scientists. They infiltrate government databases, steal passport data, and turn Iranian software against itself. When the war “ends,” the Mossad stays.
“We will be there,” Mossad Director David Barnea promises, “like we have always been there.”
The Next Round And there will be a next round. The US and Israel have already authorised fresh strikes. The CIA and Mossad are busy preparing the ground with cyberattacks, sabotage, the occasional hanging of an accused spy in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Iran, for its part, threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz, block oil shipments, and unleash its proxies across the region. But the pattern is set: Israel strikes, the US backs it up, and the world calls it anything but war.
The Language of Impunity Why does this matter? Because language is the first casualty. When Israel and the US bomb Iran, it’s a “campaign.” When Iran fires back, it’s “escalation.” When 1,190 Iranians die, it’s “collateral damage.” When the Mossad assassinates a scientist, it’s “targeted killing.” When the US drops bunker busters, it’s “degrading capabilities.” This is not neutral phrasing. It’s a lie by omission, a way to wage war without consequence, to turn atrocity into policy.
The Spectacle of Overkill Israel has 345 combat aircraft. Iran has 312, most of them museum pieces. Israel spends 5.6% of its GDP on defence. Iran spends 2.6%. Israel has the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and the full backing of the US military. Iran has the S-300, a system so outdated that Israeli drones fly right through it. This is not a war. It’s a slaughter, dressed up as self defence.
What Comes Next The ceasefire is a pause, not an end. The Mossad is still in Tehran. The CIA is still running ops. The US with Donald Trump’s “beautiful Armada” is still offshore, waiting for the next excuse. And Iran? Iran is still standing, still defiant, still a target. Because for Israel and its American backer, the war never ends. It just gets rebadged.
Name it now. Or live with it forever.
Why Trump’s Denunciations of the Iranian Killings Ring Fatally Hollow
How the Ghost of Renee Nicole Good Haunts His Response to Iran’s Protests
By Juan Cole, TomDispatch, 3 Feb 26
The pro-democracy protesters in Iran deserved so much better. They deserved the support of a democratic United States that could sincerely urge the rule of law and habeas corpus (allowing people to legally challenge their detentions) be respected, not to speak of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly in accordance with the Constitution. Unfortunately, President Donald J. Trump has forfeited any claim to respect for such rights or a principled foreign policy and so has proved strikingly ineffective in aiding those protesters.
The arbitrary arrests and killings committed by agents of Trump’s authoritarian-style rule differ only in number, not in kind, from the detainments and killings of protesters carried out by the basij (or pro-regime street militias) in Iran. In fact, they rendered his protests and bluster about Iran the height of hypocrisy. Above all, the killing of Renee Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis by a Trumpian ICE agent haunted his response, providing the all-too-grim Iranian regime with an easy rebuttal to American claims of moral superiority.
Rioters and Terrorists
Trump’s threats of intervention in Iran came after the latest round of demonstrations and strikes there this winter. In late December, bazaar merchants in Iran decried the collapse of the nation’s currency, the rial. For many years, it had been under severe pressure thanks to Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions, renewed European sanctions over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, and incompetent government financial policies. In December, the rial fell to 1.4 million to the dollar — and no, that is not a misprint — having lost 40% of its value over the course of the previous year. Inflation was already running at 42%, harming those on fixed incomes, while the rial’s decline particularly hurt the ability of Iranians to afford imported goods. ……………….
A turning point came on January 8th, when security force thugs began shooting down demonstrators en masse and stacking up bodies. Until then, the demonstrations had been largely peaceful……………………………………………………………………………………………………
By mid-January, human rights organizations were estimating that thousands of demonstrators had been mown down by the Iranian police and military. Even Iran’s clerical leader, Ali Khamenei, confirmed that thousands were dead, though ludicrously enough, he blamed Donald Trump for instigating their acts. On January 9th, perhaps as a cover for its police and military sniping into crowds, the government cut the country’s internet off, while denouncing all protesters as “rioters” and “terrorists.”
Antifa-Led Hellfire
And here’s the truly sad thing: while such unhinged rhetorical excesses were once the province of dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes like those in Iran and North Korea, the White House is now competing with Tehran and Pyongyang on a remarkably even playing field. The Trump White House, for instance, excused the dispatch of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, last year on the grounds of a “Radical left reign of terror,” “antifa-led hellfire,” and “lunatics” committing widespread mayhem in that city, even deploying “explosives.” Of course, Trump’s image of Portland as an apocalyptic, anarchist free-fire zone bore no relation to reality, but it did bear an eerie relation to the language of the authoritarian regimes in Iran and North Korea.
That means Trump’s America now stands on increasingly shaky ground when it accuses other regimes of atrocities. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://tomdispatch.com/why-trumps-denunciations-of-the-iranian-killings-ring-fatally-hollow/
It is 85 seconds to midnight
By Sarah Starkey | January 27, 2026, https://thebulletin.org/2026/01/press-release-it-is-85-seconds-to-midnight/#post-heading
“Failure of Leadership:” Doomsday Clock Moves Closer to Midnight as Global Existential Threats Worsen. Experts Cite New START Expiration, Record-Breaking Climate Trends, AI, Various Biosecurity Concerns Among Other Factors.
WASHINGTON, DC – January 27, 2026 – The Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB), which sets the Clock, called for urgent action to limit nuclear arsenals, create international guidelines on the use of AI, and form multilateral agreements to address global biological threats.
Alexandra Bell, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “The Doomsday Clock’s message cannot be clearer. Catastrophic risks are on the rise, cooperation is on the decline, and we are running out of time. Change is both necessary and possible, but the global community must demand swift action from their leaders.”
The Doomsday Clock time is annually determined by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes eight Nobel Laureates. Major factors in 2026 included growing nuclear weapons threats, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), multiple biological security concerns, and the continuing climate crisis. The Clock’s time changed most recently in January 2025, when the Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds to midnight.
Daniel Holz, PhD, professor at the University of Chicago in the departments of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and SASB chair, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “The dangerous trends in nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technologies like AI, and biosecurity are accompanied by another frightening development: the rise of nationalistic autocracies in countries around the world. Our greatest challenges require international trust and cooperation, and a world splintering into ‘us versus them’ will leave all of humanity more vulnerable.”
Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of Rappler, professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, said: “Without facts, there is no truth. Without truth, there is no trust. And without these, the radical collaboration this moment demands is impossible. We are living through an information Armageddon—the crisis beneath all crises—driven by extractive and predatory technology that spreads lies faster than facts and profits from our division. We cannot solve problems we cannot agree exist. We cannot cooperate across borders when we cannot even share the same facts. Nuclear threats, climate collapse, AI risks: none can be addressed without first rebuilding our shared reality. The clock is ticking.”
The 2026 Doomsday Clock statement says:
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe …
Even as the hands of the Doomsday Clock move closer to midnight, there are many actions that could pull humanity back from the brink:
The United States and Russia can resume dialogue about limiting their nuclear arsenals. All nuclear-armed states can avoid destabilizing investments in missile defense and observe the existing moratorium on explosive nuclear testing.- Through both multilateral agreements and national regulations, the international community can take all feasible steps to prevent the creation of mirror life and cooperate on meaningful measures to reduce the prospect that AI be used to create biological threats.
- The United States Congress can repudiate President Trump’s war on renewable energy, instead providing incentives and investments that will enable rapid reduction in fossil fuel use.
- The United States, Russia, and China can engage in bilateral and multilateral dialogue on meaningful guidelines regarding the incorporation of artificial intelligence in their militaries, particularly in nuclear command and control systems.
Nuclear Weapons: Sliding further down a slippery nuclear slope
Jon B. Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “In 2025, it was almost impossible to identify a nuclear issue that got better. More states are relying more intently on nuclear weapons, multiple states are openly talking about using nuclear weapons for not only deterrence but for coercion. Hundreds of billions are being spent to modernize and expand nuclear arsenals all over the world, and more and more non-nuclear states are considering whether they should acquire their own nuclear weapons or are hedging their nuclear bets. Instead of stoking the fires of the nuclear arms competition, nuclear states are reducing their own security and putting the entire planet at risk. Leaders of all states must relearn the lessons of the Cold War – no one wins a nuclear arms race, and the only way to reduce nuclear dangers is through binding agreement to limit the size and shape of their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear states and their partners need to invest now in proven crisis communication and risk reduction tools, recommit to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, refrain from nuclear threats, and pursue a more predictable and stable global security system.”
Disruptive Technologies: Competition crowds out cooperation
Steve Fetter, PhD, professor of public policy and former dean, University of Maryland, fellow, American Physical Society (APS), member, National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “As uses of AI expand and concerns grow about potential risks, Trump revoked Biden’s AI safety initiative and banned states from crafting their own AI regulation, reflecting a ‘damn the torpedoes’ approach to AI development. The emphasis on technological competition is making it increasingly difficult to foster the cooperation that will be needed to identify and mitigate risks, and attacks against universities and cuts in federal funding are eroding our ability to come up with effective solutions.”
Climate Change: A troubling outlook
Inez Fung, ScD, professor emerita of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “Reducing the threat of climate catastrophe requires actions both to address the cause and to deal with the damage of climate change. First and foremost come reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy. Many technologies for renewable energy are now mature and cost effective, and governments should ramp up the wide deployment of these clean energy technologies by providing incentives to produce them on a large scale and to create markets for them. Equally important in the fight against climate change is renewed reliance on science that tracks and guides emission reduction and mitigation efforts. This return to science-based climate policy includes the collection, validation, and sharing of climate and greenhouse gas information around the world, as well as the enhancement of model projections of climate impacts on the wellbeing of all inhabitants of the planet.”
Biological Threats: Degraded capacity and major concerns
Asha M. George, DrPH, executive director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense at the Atlantic Council, and SASB member, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “This year featured degraded capacity to respond to biological events, further development and pursuit of biological weapons, poorly restrained synthetic biology activities, increasingly convergent AI and biology, and the specter of life-ending mirror biology. Partnerships–between countries, between industry and government, and between the public health and national security communities–will be key to managing these risks. With the right tools and determination, we need not fall prey to the diseases that threaten us.”
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. The Bulletin created the Doomsday Clock two years later to convey man-made threats to human existence and the planet. The Clock is a reminder of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe and a symbol that there is still time left to act.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Alex Frank, (703) 276-3264 and afrank@hastingsgroupmedia.com, or Max Karlin, (703) 276-3255 and mkarlin@hastingsgroupmedia.com.
US military action in Iran risks igniting a regional and global nuclear cascade.
The Conversation, Farah N. Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Pennsylvania, January 30, 2026
The United States is seemingly moving toward a potential strike on Iran.
On Jan. 28, 2026, President Donald Trump sharply intensified his threats to the Islamic Republic, suggesting that if Tehran did not agree to a set of demands, he could mount an attack “with speed and violence.” To underline the threat, the Pentagon moved aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln – along with destroyers, bombers and fighter jets – to positions within striking distance of the country.
Foremost among the various demands the U.S. administration has put before Iran’s leader is a permanent end to the country’s uranium enrichment program. It has also called for limits to the development of ballistic missiles and a cutting off of Tehran’s support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
Trump apparently sees in this moment an opportunity to squeeze an Iran weakened by a poor economy and massive protests that swept through the country in early January.
But as a scholar of Middle Eastern security politics and proliferation, I have concerns. Any U.S. military action now could have widespread unintended consequences later. And that includes the potential for accelerated global nuclear proliferation – regardless of whether the Iranian government is able to survive its current moment of crisis.
Iran’s threshold lesson
The fall of the Islamic Republic is far from certain, even if the U.S. uses military force. Iran is not a fragile state susceptible to quick collapse. With a population of 93 million and substantial state capacity, it has a layered coercive apparatus and security institutions built to survive crises. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s military wing, is commonly estimated in the low-to-high hundreds of thousands, and it commands or can mobilize auxiliary forces.
After 47 years of rule, the Islamic Republic’s institutions are deeply embedded in Iranian society. Moreover, any change in leadership would not likely produce a clean slate. ……………………………………………….
What strikes teach
Whether or not regime change might follow, any U.S. military action carries profound implications for global proliferation.
Iran’s status as a threshold state has been a choice of strategic restraint. But when, in June 2025, Israel and the U.S struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, that attack – and the latest Trump threats – sent a clear message that threshold status provides no reliable security.
The message to other nations with nuclear aspirations is stark and builds on a number of hard nonproliferation lessons over the past three decades. Libya abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 in exchange for normalized relations with the West. Yet just eight years later, NATO airstrikes in support of Libyan rebels led to the capture and killing of longtime strongman Moammar Gaddafi……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The domino effect
Every nation weighing its nuclear options is watching to see how this latest standoff between the U.S. and Iran plays out.
Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia, has made no secret of its own nuclear ambitions, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly declaring that the kingdom would pursue nuclear weapons if Iran did.
Yet a U.S. strike on Iran would not reassure Washington’s Gulf allies. Rather, it could unsettle them. The June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran were conducted to protect Israel, not Saudi Arabia or Iran. Gulf leaders may conclude that American military action flows to preferred partners, not necessarily to them. And if U.S. protection is selective rather than universal, a rational response could be to hedge independently………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
And the nuclear cascade would not likely stop at the Middle East. ………………………………………… https://theconversation.com/us-military-action-in-iran-risks-igniting-a-regional-and-global-nuclear-cascade-274599
Upcoming Trump attack on Iran likely to kill thousands of Americans and Israelis.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 30 Jan 26
In word and deed President Trump appears on the cusp of attacking Iran to decapitate its regime and destabilize the entire country of 93 million.
Trump threatens war and moves massive military might into the region near Iran. Trump did the same thing to Venezuela last September. On January 3, he pulled the trigger, attacking Venezuela, killing a hundred Venezuelans and kidnapping its president to stand trial in the US.
The criminal Venezuelan campaign would be small potatoes should Trump pull the trigger to utterly destroy the Iranian regime, consigning Iran to failed state status.
The US and Israel tried and failed to do that during the June Twelve Day War. Trump suckered Iran into complacency by scheduling negotiations, allowing Israel to launch a sneak attack June 13. Tho suffering massive destruction, Iran struck back, firing over 1,500 missiles and drones into Israel. It caused enough damage and chaos that Israel begged Trump to negotiate a ceasefire.
Israel and the US tried again last December by using provocateurs to support domestic Iranian government protests. Trump threatened military intervention based on protecting the protesters from death. But when Iran crushed the protests Trump backed down once again.
This time it appears Trump may go for broke with all out war. Big mistake. Iran understands, ‘Fool me once shame on Iran.’ This time they’re ready with tens of thousands of missiles and drones widely dispersed and impossible to neutralize.
Iran realizes America and Israel’s existential threat to Iran cannot be negotiated away. Any attack will likely inflict thousands of casualties in Israel and to US forces in the region. The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln may end up in Davy Jones Locker. Iran could shut down the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices into the stratosphere and US economy into the dumpster.
War with Iran has nothing to do with America’s national security interests. It has to do with Israel’s determination to destroy its last hegemonic rival in the Middle East. For America, it has to do with acquiescing in whatever madness Israel demands of both parties under near total control by the Israeli government and its American lobby.
UN watchdog warns Ukraine war remains world’s biggest threat to nuclear safety.
30 January 2026, https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166863
The war in Ukraine remains the world’s biggest threat to nuclear safety as a fifth year of combat looms, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog warned on Friday, citing continued risks to power supplies at nuclear sites vulnerable to fighting nearby.
Addressing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, Director General Rafael Grossi said the agency remains focused on preventing a nuclear accident as fighting continues to endanger critical infrastructure.
“The conflict in Ukraine is about to enter its fifth year,” Mr. Grossi said. “It continues to pose the world’s biggest threat to nuclear safety.”
IAEA teams remain deployed at all nuclear power plants affected by the conflict and publish regular updates on nuclear safety and security conditions.
The Board of Governors is the IAEA’s main decision-making body, bringing together representatives of 35 countries to oversee nuclear safety, security and safeguards, and to guide the work of the UN nuclear watchdog. Its current membership includes, among others Russia, the United States, United Kingdom, and France.
Off-site power a critical safety lifeline
Mr. Grossi stressed that a central safety requirement is reliable off-site power – the electricity a plant receives from the national grid. Without it, nuclear sites must rely on backup systems to run cooling and other essential safety functions.
“There must be secure off-site power supply from the grid for all nuclear sites,” he said, pointing to the IAEA’s “Seven Pillars” guidance for nuclear safety during armed conflict, where off-site power is pillar number four.
He also cited Principle 3 of the IAEA’s Five Principles for protecting the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) that “all efforts should be made to ensure off-site power remains available and secure at all times.”
Mr. Grossi said both sets of guidance have broad international support, including from the parties directly involved, and that he has repeatedly called for adherence to them, including at the UN Security Council.
Progress at Zaporizhzhya amid ongoing risks
He reported recent progress at ZNPP, where Europe’s biggest plant was reconnected on 19 January to its last remaining 330-kilovolt backup power line after repairs were carried out under a temporary ceasefire negotiated with Ukrainian and Russian counterparts.
The line had been damaged and disconnected since 2 January, reportedly due to military activity.
Until the reconnection, ZNPP relied on its last remaining 750-kilovolt main line to provide off-site power for safety systems needed to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel pools. IAEA teams are also monitoring the plant’s ability to manage winter conditions, including keeping water in cooling and sprinkler ponds from freezing.
Beyond the plants themselves, Mr. Grossi warned that Ukraine’s electrical substations are also crucial to nuclear safety. “Damage to them undermines nuclear safety and must be avoided,” he said. An IAEA expert mission is now assessing 10 substations vital to nuclear safety amid ongoing strikes on the country’s power infrastructure.
Other nuclear sites also affected
IAEA teams have also reported military activity near other nuclear facilities, including the Chornobyl site, where damage to a critical substation disrupted multiple power lines and forced temporary reliance on emergency diesel generators. The affected lines have since been reconnected.
Mr. Grossi said the IAEA has shown how international institutions can help reduce risks and provide predictability in a volatile war. But, he added, technical measures have limits.
“The best way to ensure nuclear safety and security,” he said, “is to bring this conflict to an end.”
Aldermaston named on Russia nuclear war UK ‘strike list’
30th January, By Suzanne Antelme, https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/25809589.aldermaston-named-russia-nuclear-war-uk-strike-list/
A small Berkshire village has been named on an alleged list of UK targets that Russia might strike with missiles or nukes if war between the two countries ever breaks out.
The alleged strike list of 23 sites was revealed by a Russian politician, according to LADbible.
The outlet reported that Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian senator and the country’s former deputy prime minister, shared a map of the potential targets as tensions rose between NATO and Russia last year.
The list of 23 targets includes Aldermaston, a village in Berkshire that happens to be the main site for the UK’s atomic weapons programme.
Aldermaston has hosted the programme since 1950, and it was in this humble village that the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) designed the UK’s first hydrogen bomb in 1957.
The AWRE has since become the AWE Nuclear Security Technologies, and Aldermaston remains at the centre of the government’s nuclear capabilities, responsible for designing and manufacturing the UK’s nuclear warheads.
Trump May Launch Strikes on Iran — Regime Change, Not Nukes, Is the Goal.
January 30, 2026, By Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/30/exclusive-trump-may-launch-strikes-on-iran-regime-change-not-nukes-is-the-goal/
A Drop Site News exclusive reports that senior U.S. military officials have informed the leadership of a key Middle Eastern ally that President Donald Trump could authorize direct military strikes on Iran as early as this weekend, with targets potentially extending beyond nuclear and missile facilities to include senior Iranian leadership — a push some strategists say aims at precipitating regime change rather than merely halting Tehran’s military programs. This after new sanctions were placed on Iran by the US treasury department.
With Drop Site reporting “This isn’t about the nukes or the missile program. This is about regime change,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who consults for Arab governments and is an informal advisor to the Trump administration on Middle East policy. He told Drop Site that U.S. war planners envision attacks that target nuclear, ballistic, and other military sites around Iran, but will also aim to decapitate the Iranian government, and in particular the leadership and capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is a branch of the Iranian armed forces created after the country’s 1979 revolution whose leadership now plays a major role in the country’s politics and economy.
Trump not sharing that regime change is part of the plan posted “Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!”
From Senator John Cornyn: in a foregin realtions meeting with Rubio: Cornyn stating: “I know the President is being presented with a range of options. We’ve noticed a lot of movement into the region by our Navy… but what happens if the Supreme Leader is removed in Iran?”
From Marco Rubio: “We have to have enough force and power in the region to defend against the possibility that, at some point, as a result of something, the Iranian regime decides to strike at our troop presence in the region.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I think what you’re seeing now is the effort to posture assets in the region to defend against what could be an Iranian threat against our personnel.”
This came from Department of War head Pete Hegseth during a recent Cabinet meeting: the Iranians “have all the options to make a deal,” he said. But if the goal is purely regime change, what deal is even possible? Hegseth also claimed that the war in Ukraine and the October 7 massacre “would not have happened” if Trump had been in power.
Iranian officials have made clear that they would respond with a major counterstrike using all means necessary if the U.S. attempts a Venezuela‑style operation or, worse, targets Iranian leadership — a scenario that has regional allies deeply concerned about the risk of a wider war. With Iran’s misison to the UN tweeting…..
While the region waits Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated in Istanbul saying about the above issue “The Islamic Republic of Iran, just as it is ready for negotiations, it is also ready for war,”
adding:
“Our position is exactly this: Applying diplomacy through military threats cannot be effective or constructive,” Araghchi told journalists Wednesday outside of a Cabinet meeting. “If they want negotiations to take shape, they must abandon threats, excessive demands and the raising of illogical issues.”
Looking at Iran’s past stance versus what could be coming, a recent interview sheds some light with Dr. Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran, telling Drop Site that in the past:
“a number of high-ranking military officials … made the decision to inform the United States when they were attacking the U.S. bases.”
“The idea was basically trying to ride out the Trump administration, not to confront him in a serious manner, respond to him, but respond in a very limited style so they don’t start a huge war with the United States,” he said. “This was their decision. And they were killed in June,” during the 12-day bombing campaign unleashed against Iran by the U.S. and Israel.”
The report comes amid escalating U.S.–Iran tensions that have woven together diplomatic brinkmanship, regional alliances, and conflicting strategic priorities. While U.S. and Israeli forces previously carried out coordinated strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in 2025 — prompting retaliatory missile barrages and suspending negotiations — the Trump administration has continued to oscillate between threats of further military action and claims it prefers a negotiated settlement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
International concern is growing, with Arab states urging restraint to prevent a wider regional conflagration, even as Tehran signals readiness for both talks and defense in the face of mounting pressure.
With at least two nations, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have made it clear they will not allow their airspace to be used for any potential U.S. strike on Iran. Yet the United States has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the region, assets capable of launching attacks from the sea. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry emphasized diplomacy, with top diplomat Badr Abdelatty engaging both Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to “work toward achieving calm, in order to avoid the region slipping into new cycles of instability.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Oman, and Qatar have all been in contact with Washington and Tehran, warning that any escalation could destabilize the region and disrupt energy markets. Arab and Muslim states fear that even a limited U.S. strike could provoke immediate retaliation from Tehran, potentially targeting regional or American interests and causing collateral damage. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, currently in Washington for high-level talks, reinforced this message, noting on social media that he discussed “efforts to advance regional and global peace and stability” with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top U.S. officials. With Saudi prince Khalid bin Salman tweeting from the west wing:
This is a developing story, but in Washington, it feels like the only ones pushing it are Trump and his allies. The Saudis are calling for calm, Israel is en route to the capital, and the only thing anyone can predict is that more fuel might soon be thrown on an already blazing fire. Tensions are high: Iran warns it will strike at the heart of Tel Aviv, and whispers of war are spreading across Israel.
The memories of past conflicts remain sharp for Israelis. The latest round of threats between Tehran and Washington has stirred anxiety and put the country on edge. During previous wars, Israel’s air defenses were remarkably effective—but citizens still ran for shelter at the sound of sirens, and the fear of another confrontation has only intensified in recent weeks.
As U.S. warships draw closer, Israeli headlines have been dominated by speculation over a potential American strike on Iran—and the grim expectation that Israel, as the closest U.S. ally in the region, would bear the first wave of retaliation.
Some towns are reopening public bomb shelters. Airlines are canceling flights, hotels are seeing reservations vanish, and citizens are stockpiling food and water. Yet the government and the Home Front Command—Israel’s alert system based on real-time security intelligence—have issued no special guidance.
Without official word, rumors flourish. Both Trump’s and Iran’s statements are heavy on drama, light on specifics, and in Israel, everyone knows “someone who knows something.” Daily chatter revolves around alleged knowledge of a U.S. strike—hours or days away—and debates over whether to cancel travel or postpone events.
In the end, nobody—neither in Tehran nor Tel Aviv—can say for sure what’s coming next.
What we all know is this: war is bad for humans, and our leaders don’t care.
Doomsday Clock setting feels more like 8 or 7 seconds to midnight than 87 seconds.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 28 Jan 26
Lived all but the first 4 months of my 81 years under the threat of nuclear annihilation. So every January, I take seriously the annual Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock announcement of our countdown to global catastrophe.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists wasfounded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago atomic bomb scientists. They created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 to dramatize peoplekind’s threats to existence. Originally focused on nuclear annihilation, the Clock’s setting now includes climate crisis, biological threats, and disruptive AI technologies.
Tuesday’s announcement was disturbing. The Bulletin moved the Clock at 87 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been in its 79 year countdown. Tho just two seconds closer than its previous worst of 89 seconds last year, the Bulletin sees nary of sign of progress in halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, unstoppable wars, hostel military entanglements and refusal to address the escalating climate crisis.
The return of President Trump casts gloom over reducing nuclear tensions. In his first term he exited both the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Open Skies Treaty with Russia. He also failed to renew the New Start Treaty which thankfully was extended for 5 years by successor Biden within 2 weeks of taking office. Set to expire again in 7 days, Trump’s refusal to renew it marks the end of all US Russian nuclear agreements. It will quickly accelerate US and Russian development of their nuclear arsenals limited under New Start.
Trump has bombed 7 countries this past year, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen. His bombing of Iran’s imagined nuclear program could have triggered a massive Middle East war with the potential of going nuclear. It also likely increases Iran’s perceived need to go nuclear.
Daniel Holz, chair of the group’s science and security board give this stark assessment. “Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner take all great power competition undermining international cooperation needed to reduce existential risks. If the world splinters into an us v. them, zero-sum approach, it increases the likelihood we all lose,”
The furthest from midnight the Doomsday Clock ticked was 17 minutes (1,020 seconds) in 1991 when the US and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Followed by the demise of the Soviet Union, further progress on nuclear disarmament should have a snap. Instead, the US foreign policy elite snapped, ramping up a new Cold War against a weakened Russia. This culminated in the 2022 US proxy war on Russia destroying Ukraine, putting the world at risk of it going nuclear every day it continues.
No wonder the current 87 seconds, for those of us seeking an end to the specter of nuclear annihilation, feels more like 8 or 7 seconds
It is now 85 seconds to midnight
2026 Doomsday Clock Statement
Science and Security Board
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,Editor, John Mecklin, January 27, 2026
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.
Last year started with a glimmer of hope in regard to nuclear risks, as incoming US President Donald Trump made efforts to halt the Russia-Ukraine war and even suggested that major powers pursue “denuclearization.” Over the course of 2025, however, negative trends—old and new—intensified, with three regional conflicts involving nuclear powers all threatening to escalate. The Russia–Ukraine war has featured novel and potentially destabilizing military tactics and Russian allusions to nuclear weapons use. Conflict between India and Pakistan erupted in May, leading to cross-border drone and missile attacks amid nuclear brinkmanship. In June, Israel and the United States launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions. It remains unclear whether the attacks constrained those efforts—or if they instead persuaded the country to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.
Meanwhile, competition among major powers has become a full-blown arms race, as evidenced by increasing numbers of nuclear warheads and platforms in China, and the modernization of nuclear delivery systems in the United States, Russia, and China. The United States plans to deploy a new, multilayered missile defense system, Golden Dome, that will include space-based interceptors, increasing the probability of conflict in space and likely fueling a new space-based arms race. As these worrying trends continued, countries with nuclear weapons failed to talk about strategic stability or arms control, much less nuclear disarmament, and questions about US extended deterrence commitments to traditional allies in Europe and Asia led some countries without nuclear weapons to consider acquiring them. As we publish this statement, the last major agreement limiting the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Russia, New START, is set to expire, ending nearly 60 years of efforts to constrain nuclear competition between the world’s two largest nuclear countries. In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Even as the hands of the Doomsday Clock move closer to midnight, there are many actions that could pull humanity back from the brink:
- The United States and Russia can resume dialogue about limiting their nuclear arsenals. All nuclear-armed states can avoid destabilizing investments in missile defense and observe the existing moratorium on explosive nuclear testing.
- Through both multilateral agreements and national regulations, the international community can take all feasible steps to prevent the creation of mirror life and cooperate on meaningful measures to reduce the prospect that AI be used to create biological threats.
- The United States Congress can repudiate President Trump’s war on renewable energy, instead providing incentives and investments that will enable rapid reduction in fossil fuel use.
- The United States, Russia, and China can engage in bilateral and multilateral dialogue on meaningful guidelines regarding the incorporation of artificial intelligence in their militaries, particularly in nuclear command and control systems.
Our current trajectory is unsustainable. National leaders—particularly those in the United States, Russia, and China—must take the lead in finding a path away from the brink. Citizens must insist they do so.
It is 85 seconds to midnight.
Editor’s note: Additional information on the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, biological events, and the misuse of other disruptive technologies can be found elsewhere on this page and in the full PDF / print version of the Doomsday Clock statement.
Learn more about how each of the Bulletin‘s areas of concern contributed to the setting of the Doomsday Clock this year:
Nuclear Risk
The lack of arms control talks and a general dearth of leadership on nuclear issues has worsened the nuclear outlook. Read more…
Climate Change
Reducing the threat of climate catastrophe requires actions both to reduce the primary cause—the burning of fossil fuels—and to deal with the damage climate change is already causing. Read more…
Biological Threats
Four developments—research into self-replicating “mirror life”; AI tools that can design biological threats; state-sponsored biological weapons programs; and the dismantling of US public health efforts—have increased the possibility of bio-catastrophe. Read more…
Disruptive Technologies
The increasing sophistication and uncertain accuracy of AI models have generated significant concern about their application in critical processes, particularly in military programs. Read more… https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%202026%20Doomsday%20Clock%20statement&utm_campaign=20260129%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20copy1%20%20%28Copy%29
Brian Goodall concerned about nuclear subs at Rosyth
Last month the MoD told the committee that they will not reveal if nuclear weapons will be aboard submarines being repaired at Rosyth.
28th January
A ROSYTH councillor is calling for a public consultation on plans to temporarily base the UK’s new nuclear submarine fleet at the dockyard.
Brian Goodall highlighted the “seriousness of the implications” of providing a contingency dock for the Dreadnought class of vessels that will carry Trident missiles.
He said emergency plans to be put in place in the event of a radiological accident “could require urgent protective actions, like arrangements for sheltering local people and the distribution of potassium iodide tablets to the local community”.
He has submitted a motion to next week’s South and West Fife area committee, calling on the convener to write to the “Secretary of State for Defence requesting that a public consultation be held on the proposals”.
Cllr Goodall also wants the committee to acknowledge the “seriousness of the implications of these plans and the impact any radiological accident or event would have on the local population”.
Rosyth will “bridge a gap” by offering a temporary home for the new subs and Babcock said the dock needs to be ready by 2029.
Long term the vessels will be maintained at Faslane, however the site on the Clyde won’t be ready until the mid 2030s.
The UK Government are investing £340 million in the dockyard which includes funding for the contingency dock.
Cllr Goodall’s motion explains the dock will be used for the “Dreadnought-class nuclear submarines from the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear Trident missile programme”.
He said the UK Government plans included information on the need for a “Detailed Emergency Planning Zone” which was still being calculated but was likely to include parts of the town within 1.5km.
The SNP councillor added that “emergency plans both on and off site will also be needed to reduce and/or prevent the escalation of the impact of any radiological accident or event”.
Last month the MoD told the committee that they will not reveal if nuclear weapons will be aboard submarines being repaired at Rosyth.
They also confirmed residents would be given potassium iodate tablets to block radiation in the event of an emergency.
The MoD was giving an update on the plans for Rosyth to be the temporary repair base for the UK’s new fleet of nuclear deterrent submarines.
This work would be alongside the submarine dismantling project, which is cutting up an old nuclear sub, Swiftsure, at the dockyard and removing the radioactive waste left within it.
There are another six decommissioned subs laid up at Rosyth – and 15 at Devonport – still to be dismantled and although no decision has been made, local Labour MP Graeme Downie has called for that work to be done here.
He said the yard could become a “centre of excellence” for submarine dismantling which would secure highly paid skilled jobs for decades to come.
This week Cllr Goodall posted: “I’ve said that this (motion) should include an update from Babcock and the Ministry of Defence, following the local Labour MP’s really concerning call for all of the UK’s decommissioned nuclear submarines to be brought to Rosyth for the dismantling, and so, the storage of radioactive materials that goes with it, to go on in Rosyth indefinitely.”
Ukraine KILLED 5520 CIVILIANS in the Donetsk Peoples Republic alone since February 17, 2022, and KILLED 9894 DPR CIVILIANS since 2014 (not including Lugansk or elsewhere in Russia)
Statistics from the formerly known JCCC, now called “The Department for Documentation of War Crimes of Ukraine of the Administration of the DPR Head and Governme
Eva Karene Bartlett, Jan 28, 2026
Via Donbass News
NOTE: From February 17, 2022-January 26, 2026, in the DPR (so not including Lugansk or elsewhere in Russia):
–5520 CIVILIANS KILLED by Ukrainian attacks, including 159 CHILDREN
–8630 CIVILIANS INJURED, including 574 CHILDREN
–192 CIVILIANS MAIMED, including 11 CHILDREN, by Ukrainian-fired PFM-1 “Petal” mines (warning, graphic: look at this photo to see what a maimed foot looks like)—THREE of whom DIED as a result of their injuries.
SINCE 2014 when Ukraine began illegally bombing the civilians of the Donbass, 9894 CIVILIANS KILLED (in the DPR alone), including 250 CHILDREN,
and 16,449 CIVILIANS INJURED, including 1043 CHILDREN………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/ukraine-killed-5520-civilians-in?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=186053822&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
1 This Month
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8BIIOUvQ2ONJR1nta65DQ#/registration
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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