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Six in 10 Americans Support US Participation in a Nuclear Agreement with Iran.

Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 30 Apr 25

Majorities of Democrats and Independents support a potential deal similar to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but only a minority of Republicans agree.

For the first time since the United States withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), American and Iranian officials held direct talks to negotiate a new nuclear deal. These talks come amid reports of Iran’s rapid production of enriched uranium and acceleration of its nuclear weapons program. 

A recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs-Ipsos survey, fielded April 18–20, 2025, finds a majority of Americans consider a nuclearized Iran unacceptable and believe the United States should negotiate a deal with Tehran to limit its development. While Democrats and Independents support a deal that would trade sanctions relief for limitations on Iranian nuclear enrichment, Republicans oppose such a tradeoff. However, they may end up following US President Donald Trump’s lead if current negotiations bear fruit. 

Key Findings 

  • Eight in 10 Americans oppose Iran obtaining nuclear weapons (79%) and favor taking diplomatic steps (83%) or tightening economic sanctions (80%) to limit further nuclear enrichment.
  • A smaller majority of Americans believe the United States should participate in an agreement that lifts some international economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear program (61%).  
  • Partisan differences on a nuclear agreement are striking: 78 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independents support US participation in a deal with Iran compared to just 40 percent of Republicans.
  • If diplomacy or economic sanctions fail, many Americans are willing to take more forceful approaches: Six in 10 support the United States conducting cyberattacks against Iranian computer systems (59%), and half support conducting airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities (48%).
  • A majority oppose sending US troops to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities (60%). 

Americans Favor Diplomatic Approach to Iranian Nuclear Development 

The 2015 JCPOA, or the Iran Deal, was a landmark agreement reached between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany) that limited Iranian nuclear enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief and other provisions. While it was initially successful in limiting Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, the United States withdrew from the deal in 2018, as the first Trump administration considered it insufficient in curbing Iran’s ballistic missile program and protecting American regional interests. Upon the US withdrawal from the agreement, Iran promptly lifted the cap on its stockpile of uranium and increased its enrichment activities; it has since reached weapons-grade levels of enriched uranium. 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Conclusion 

Although US President Donald Trump has not ruled out using military action to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, he said he favors a diplomatic agreement to address this issue. Recently, Trump administration officials have given contradictory remarks about current talks, and they have yet to specify how renewed negotiations will produce an agreement more stringent and impactful than its predecessor. 

The pressure is on American diplomats to secure a deal that would limit Tehran’s nuclear enrichment without providing the sanctions relief that could potentially fund Iran’s efforts to further destabilize the Middle East or threaten the United States’ regional allies, including Israel. While the outcome of these negotiations remains to be seen, the public continues to express a preference for using diplomatic or economic coercion than direct military action. https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/six-10-americans-support-us-participation-nuclear-agreement-iran?fbclid=IwY2xjawKA64xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFISGV5ZEdSZW16a2ZnQzh3AR7iwwVkEnczI_DJHzOGHWvNWeSlg2xdd9YJCsBz0_OiQmJcM48Ujd0ZNX8ZNQ_aem_5kroZ8t3KQ5RgYf4EfYdDA

May 3, 2025 Posted by | Iran, public opinion, USA | Leave a comment

Republicans Unveil Bill To Bring 2025 Military Budget to Over $1 Trillion

House Republicans unveiled a bill this week that would bring the 2025 US military budget to over $1 trillion.

The legislation would add $150 billion to the budget and includes $25 billion for President Trump’s ‘Iron Dome for America’

by Dave DeCamp,  April 29, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/04/29/republicans-unveil-bill-to-bring-2025-military-budget-to-over-1-trillion/

House Republicans unveiled a bill this week that would bring the 2025 US military budget to over $1 trillion.

The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) totaled about $885 billion, and the new supplemental bill drafted by the House and Senate’s armed services committees would add $150 billion, bringing the 2025 military budget to a record-breaking $1.035 trillion.

The bill includes $25 billion for President Trump’s vision to create a new missile defense system for the United States, which he has called the “Iron Dome for America” or the “Golden Dome.” The project would be a boondoggle for US weapons makers and would likely kick off a new global arms race.

According to The Hill, the bill also includes $33.7 billion for shipbuilding, $20.4 billion for munitions, $13.5 billion for “innovation,” $12.9 billion for nuclear deterrence, $11.5 billion for military readiness, $11.1 billion for building up in the Pacific, $7.2 billion for aircraft, $5 billion for the border, $4.5 billion for the B-21 bomber, $2 billion for military intelligence, and $380 million for the Pentagon’s annual audit.

Republicans in the House initially proposed a budget plan to boost military spending by $100 billion, while Senate Republicans pushed for the $150 billion increase.

President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have already said they will seek a more than $1 trillion military budget for 2026, and the White House is expected to make the request for the 2026 NDAA in May.

The US has never officially had a $1 trillion military budget, but the actual cost of US military spending has exceeded $1 trillion for years. According to veteran defense analyst Winslow Wheeler, based on the $895 billion NDAA, US national security spending for 2025 was expected to reach about $1.77 trillion.

Wheeler’s estimate accounts for military-related spending from other government agencies not funded by the NDAA, such as the Department of Veteran Affairs and Homeland Security. It also includes the national security share of the interest accrued on the US debt and other factors.

May 2, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Congressional Budget Office (CBO)  predicts US nuclear weapons will cost nearly a trillion dollars over the coming decade.

Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group, 30 Apr 25

Albuquerque, NM — Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest biennial estimate of the costs of nuclear weapons over the coming decade (2025-2034).

CBO’s nuclear weapons cost estimates are built from the budget projections of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), as well as CBO’s own estimates of likely cost increases for these programs over the period in question, based on CBO’s historical records for comparable programs. 

CBO estimates that nuclear weapons will cost a total of $946 billion (B) over the coming decade, an average of about $95 B per year. This is $190 B (25%) higher than CBO’s estimate from two years ago.

Albuquerque, NM — Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest biennial estimate of the costs of nuclear weapons over the coming decade (2025-2034).

CBO’s nuclear weapons cost estimates are built from the budget projections of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), as well as CBO’s own estimates of likely cost increases for these programs over the period in question, based on CBO’s historical records for comparable programs. 

CBO estimates that nuclear weapons will cost a total of $946 billion (B) over the coming decade, an average of about $95 B per year. This is $190 B (25%) higher than CBO’s estimate from two years ago.

In the case of the Sentinel silo-based missile system, CBO’s estimates explicitly “do not include all of the cost growth that the program is likely to experience” (pp. 6-7). In other words, CBO knows its estimate is too low but cannot provide a defensible better one, because it would only be a guess at this point. In other words, neither DoD nor CBO have any real idea what Sentinel will cost.

Many nuclear weapons-related costs, such as DOE environmental cleanup, are not included.

The report breaks down its findings in several ways, all clearly presented. Year-by-year estimates are not provided.

CBO’s findings include these items of particular interest regarding NNSA:

  • NNSA’s facility modernization plans are likely to cost $72 B over the coming decade, out of a total of $110 B that NNSA will spend on facilities over this period (p. 5). NNSA’s facilities will thus cost much more than the $16 B earmarked for “stockpile services” (NNSA’s part in maintaining existing weapons), or the $67 B to be spent on “other stewardship and support activities” (p. 4).
  • “CBO projects that the costs of nuclear acquisition programs would represent 11.8 percent of DoD’s total planned acquisition costs over the next decade as outlined in the 2025 budget submission…Competition for funding among
    acquisition programs will force DoD to make difficult choices about which programs to pursue.” (pp. 5-6).
  • NNSA’s projected total 10-year costs have increased by 27% over just the past two years. Some 85% ($45 B / $83 B) of these costs are not associated with any particular warhead but are rather expenses associated with NNSA’s capabilities overall (p. 10). CBO believes NNSA’s programs will cost an extra $11 B over the decade beyond NNSA’s projections, a little more than $1 B per year.
  • Regarding NNSA’s cost increase, “[a]bout 60 percent of the total increase comes from higher expected costs for operation and modernization of infrastructure, including establishing and operating new pit production facilities, secondary production facilities, tritium production facilities, and domestic uranium enrichment facilities. About 30 percent comes from support programs, such as scientific research to improve the weapon production and sustainment process, and federal employee oversight of contractors operating laboratories.” The balance of the NNSA increase comes from new programs and projects, leading to higher annual spending in the 2032-2034 years than in 2023-2024 years, which are now in the rear-view mirror.
  • “CBO’s estimates come with substantial uncertainty stemming mainly from two sources: Future plans may not be achievable, leading to cost growth and delays; and the costs of developing, producing, and operating weapon systems are uncertain even when the plans are fully determined” (p. 8).

Study Group director Greg Mello:

“As CBO notes, most nuclear weapons costs are incurred by modernizing the arsenal and its production facilities, not by deploying and maintaining existing weapons.

“NNSA insists that its entire growing portfolio of projects and programs is necessary. There is no distinction between “needs” and “wants.” NNSA also believes, and has said, it is no longer “cost-constrained” [NNSA: “Evolving the Nuclear Security Enterprise,” Sep 2022, p. 3]. Under these assumptions, NNSA’s costs are certain to continue growing rapidly. If the present growth rate continues, NNSA’s warhead budget will double in less than 8 years. 

“There is one high-dollar NNSA infrastructure program that is not generic to all warheads but rather needed solely for just one, namely pit production at LANL. LANL pit production is explicitly directed to the W87-1 warhead for the Sentinel missile and is unlikely to be sustainable beyond the needs of that program, if indeed it can be established at all. The jury is still out on whether LANL pit production will be possible, or stable and if so, for how long. 

“NNSA will not be able to operate two pit facilities, even if it can set one up at LANL. Once the pit facility at the Savannah River Site begins production, every budget hawk on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon will eye LANL’s gerry-rigged pit program for closure, assuming it operates at all.

“As CBO notes, there will be increased competition for defense dollars as nuclear weapons programs grow. The huge expenses tallied in this report were not anticipated at the outset of the nuclear modernization program. Since 2015, and with every report, estimated nuclear weapons costs have increased beyond prior predictions, from $348 B in 2015 to $946 B today. The opportunity costs are staggering.

“CBO devotes two big text boxes to the troubled Sentinel program — why they can’t estimate its cost, etc. The buzzards are circling. The coming year will bring more revelations about Sentinel and they won’t be good. The White House and Congress should pull the plug on Sentinel now, however difficult that would be.

“In every report since 2015, CBO has revised its estimate of future cost overruns. This year’s prediction will also be too low, especially for Sentinel and NNSA.

“The problems faced by nuclear weapons programs cannot all be fixed by pouring in more money. There are very real material and human limitations involved. There will be no return to the ‘heroic mode of production’ for nuclear weapons. Even if Congress dumped $100 or $200 billion more on nuclear weapons, the system that produces them would not ‘jump to the task’ for years, if at all. The people, the skills, the facilities, the motivation — none of these are in place for a nuclear arms race, especially if the U.S. is going to build its manufacturing back and repair its sorry civilian infrastructure. The neocons who want to ramp up nuclear production are ignorant about what that would really entail. They are going to be sorely disappointed.

“Practical problems aside, ‘peace through strength’ is a mistaken idea in this place and time, especially as regards nuclear weapons. No thoughtful strategy supports the proliferation of US nuclear weapons. Quite the contrary — present policies are driven by organized greed and fear. US nuclear weapons policies, and as we see here their costs, are out of control.”

May 2, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As US military prepares for war on China, Silicon Valley tech oligarchs are profiting

Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a “holy war” against the international left, China, and Islam.

Hegseth revealed that the US military is making “real war plans” for China, over Taiwan.

The US military is preparing for war on China. It has missile systems in the Philippines aimed at major Chinese cities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the USA is turning “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”. Silicon Valley Big Tech oligarchs are making hugely profitable investments.

By Ben Norton, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/04/28/us-military-war-china-silicon-valley/

Evidence grows showing that the US military is setting the stage for war on China.

A leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post reveals that the US Department of Defense has made preparing for war with China into its top priority, giving it precedence over all other issues.

The Pentagon is concentrating its resources in the Asia-Pacific region as it anticipates fighting China in an attempt to exert US control over Taiwan.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a fundamentalist self-declared “crusader” who called for overthrowing the Chinese government, took a trip in March to Japan and the Philippines, where he repeatedly threatened Beijing and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.

In 2024, the US military installed its Typhon missile system in the northern Philippines. This has a range of 1,240 miles (roughly 2,000 kilometers), and can hit most major cities on the Chinese mainland.

The United States has access to at least nine military bases in the Philippines.

The Wall Street Journal reported that this “new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines puts key Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance”.

The newspaper added that it “is the first time since the Cold War that the U.S. military has deployed a land-based launching system with such a long range outside its borders”.

This blatant US provocation has caused outrage in Beijing, which sees the Pentagon’s move as a significant escalation of Washington’s new cold war on China.

Cold War Two

Cold War Two has more and more parallels to Cold War One.

Students in US schools are often taught that the Soviet Union’s deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba in the 1962 missile crisis was an act of “aggression”. Their classes usually omit the fact the United States first put nuclear weapons in NATO member Turkey in 1959, provoking Moscow.

Today, Washington is provoking Beijing in many domains.

Donald Trump launched a unilateral, aggressive trade war on China in 2018, during his first term.

Trump’s Democratic successor, Joe Biden, not only continued this trade war but expanded it further, adding more tariffs and export restrictions in an attempt to strangle China’s high-tech sector.

Now in his second term, Trump has waged a nuclear trade war on China, threatening tariffs of 245%.

This new cold war has become a lucrative enterprise for some US oligarchs.

Silicon Valley oligarchs hope to profit from US war on China

Big Tech capitalists in Silicon Valley have poured money into new weapons systems, hoping to profit off of war on China.

The Wall Street Journal published an article in 2024 titled “Tech Bros Are Betting They Can Help Win a War With China”. It featured an interview with right-wing billionaire Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive who founded the arms manufacturer Anduril Industries.

Anduril has established itself as a significant Pentagon contractor, with its work developing advanced autonomous weapons.

The Wall Street Journal wrote (emphasis added):

These weapons, Luckey argues, are needed for a potential conflict with China, which the Pentagon two years ago announced is the greatest danger to U.S. security. The U.S. military, Luckey and others say, needs large numbers of cheaper and more intelligent systems that can be effective over long stretches of ocean and against a manufacturing and technological power like China.

Anduril is so focused on a conflict with Beijing, Luckey says, that many teams inside the company are building only weapons that can be completed by 2027—the year Chinese President Xi Jinping has said his country should be prepared to invade Taiwan. The fictional sword for which Anduril is named [from the Lord of the Rings] is also called the “Flame of the West.”

“We keep our eyes on the prize, which is great-power conflict in the Pacific,” Luckey said.

The newspaper highlighted how the US military-industrial complex has become increasingly privatized.

There has been a rapid influx of venture capital funds into weapons corporations in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reported (emphasis added):

Anduril is part of one of the largest shifts to take place in the defense sector since World War II: the flow of venture-capital funding into defense-technology companies.

For decades, the U.S. government funded defense companies, like Lockheed Martin, to develop new weapons, ranging from stealth aircraft to spy satellites. But as the private-sector money available for research and development has outstripped federal-government spending, particularly in areas like AI, a new cohort of defense startups is using private capital to develop technology for the Pentagon.

The amount of private capital flowing into the venture-backed defense-tech industry has ballooned, with investors spending at least 70% more on the sector each of the past three years than any prior year. From 2021 through mid-June 2024, venture capitalists invested a total of $130 billion in defense-tech startups, according to data firm PitchBook. The Pentagon spends about $90 billion on R&D annually.

A major investor in Anduril is Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.

Thiel is a far-right billionaire oligarch who has strongly supported Donald Trump and has funded Republican politicians. He even previously employed US Vice President JD Vance, and bankrolled his successful 2022 Senate campaign.

A former FBI informant, Thiel co-founded another major Pentagon contractor, Palantir, which the CIA helped to fund.

Thiel is also an extreme anti-China hawk. He openly defends monopolies, arguing “competition is for losers”, and wants to ban Chinese competitors to US Big Tech monopolies.

Like Thiel, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is staunchly pro-Trump. He is from the same community of far-right Silicon Valley oligarchs.

The Financial Times reported that Thiel’s Palantir, Luckey’s Anduril, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sought to create a “consortium” — or, rather, a cartel — to jointly bid for US government contractors.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wages “holy war” on China, from Japan and the Philippines

Trump has surrounded himself with a team of war hawks, including neoconservative Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth personally signed the Pentagon document obtained by the Washington Post that showed that the number one priority of the US military is preparing for war with China over Taiwan.

In this memo, which is officially known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance”, the Pentagon wrote, “China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario”.

The Washington Post revealed that several parts of this document were copied word-for-word from a vehemently anti-China report published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington, DC-based think tank that is funded by large corporations and conservative billionaires.

The oligarch-backed Heritage Foundation organized the notorious Project 2025, which crafted a detailed policy program for the Trump administration to implement.

Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a “holy war” against the international left, China, and Islam.

“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, Hegseth pledged in the book. He wrote, “If we don’t stand up to communist China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem someday”.

In March 2025, Hegseth traveled to Asia to pressure US allies to join Washington in its new cold war on China. The Wall Street Journal summarized his trip with the headline “Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China”.

When he spoke in Japan, Hegseth vowed to “strengthen our bilateral bonds and deepen our operational cooperation” against Beijing.

The US defense secretary stated that the Pentagon is turning “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”.

Japan previously colonized China. The Japanese empire, which later allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, killed tens of millions of people in China and other parts of Asia in the 1930s and ’40s.

“America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the Communist Chinese”, Hegseth asserted, fearmongering about “the severe nature of the threat”.

“Those who long for peace must prepare for war”, the US defense secretary said. “We must be prepared. We look forward to working closely together as we improve our war-fighting capabilities, our lethality, and our readiness”.

Hegseth articulated “three pillars” of the Trump administration’s Pentagon strategy: “Reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and restoring deterrence”.

The US defense secretary made similarly aggressive comments in the Philippines, blasting what he called “communist China’s aggression in the region”.

Hegseth revealed that the US military is making “real war plans” for China, over Taiwan.

At a press conference in the Philippines, Hegseth spoke of Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command. He said (emphasis added):

It’s not my job to determine where the Seventh Fleet goes. I defer to Admiral Paparo and his war plans. Real war plans. Admiral Paparo understands the situation, understands the geographic significance, understands the urgency, and is prepared to work with those in the region to ensure we are leaning forward in our posture. Not waiting for events to develop, not retrograding to places further from the front, but deploying capabilities forward, posturing and creating dynamics and strategic dilemmas for the Communist Chinese, that help them reconsider whether or not violence or action is something they want to undertake.

During the first cold war, the US hosted a military base on Taiwan, where it stored nuclear weapons.

In the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958, top US military officials wanted to attack the Chinese mainland with nuclear bombs, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower preferred conventional weapons.

May 1, 2025 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why is No. 1 US bombing No. 137 Yemen?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 

Is there a bigger bully in the world than President Trump?

Trump’s current effort is bullying the hapless innocents in Yemen. Trump will never war against anyone his own size. His No. 1 $30.5 trillion economy singled out for destruction No. 137, the $17.4 billion economy of Yemen.

Trump has launched 750 airstrikes against Yemen since March 15, killing and injuring over thousand innocents. His latest strike on Yemen’s Ras Isa fuel port in Hodeidah Province killed 95 and injured 192. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a nod to America’s all time premier warmonger Teddy Roosevelt, has dubbed the bombing campaign Operation Rough Rider. Ouch.

As with every US bombing campaign against innocents in weak countries, Congress simply rolls over allowing these grisly, unconstitutional wars to proceed without an iota of pushback.

Why is Trump bullying pitifully poor Yemen? Because Yemen is interfering in the ongoing Israeli/US genocide in Gaza. Yemen has largely shut down vital (tho not to US) Red Sea shipping with drone attacks to degrade Israel’s Gaza genocide campaign. Trump’s futile bombing campaign, which will never stop the Yemeni Houthis from opposing genocide, has no connection to US national security interests whatsoever.

That is unless our national security interests include enabling Israel to complete their genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza so Trump can kick off his dream real estate development, creating Trump Gaza Mediterranean to expand Greater Israel.

May 1, 2025 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

What’s Legally Allowed in War –  Gaza a dress rehearsal for U.S. war on China.

The claim that Israel has adhered to the laws of war is extremely contentious.

1977, an international agreement explicitly prohibited the intentional targeting of civilians.

Gaza not only looks like a dress rehearsal for the kind of combat U.S. soldiers may face. It is a test of the American public’s tolerance for the levels of death and destruction that such kinds of warfare entail….………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

April 28, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Smash it, then claim it

  by beyondnuclearinternational

Trump is trying to rebuild the Iran nuclear deal he destroyed, then declare personal triumph, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

There is deep irony in the current efforts by the Trump administration to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, given it was the previous Trump administration that broke a fully functioning agreement already in place to ensure Iran did not develop nuclear weapons. 

The JCPOA — or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — also known colloquially as the Iran nuclear deal — was agreed in Vienna in June 2015 between Iran and China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. It involved significant monitoring and verification of Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities to ensure it remained within the confines of commercial grade. It also lifted UN Security Council sanctions on Iran as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to its nuclear program.

But under the first Donald Trump presidency, the White House effectively tore up the agreement, rendering it worthless when the US withdrew in May 2018. In his classically hyperbolic style, Trump labeled the JCPOA “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

In recent weeks, the new Trump administration has been feverishly negotiating, most recently in Oman, to establish an Iran nuclear deal that could turn out to be remarkably similar to the JCPOA. But this, of course, is the Trump modus operandi: Destroy something perfectly effective, then rebuild it almost in the exact image and declare it his own invention. 

So far, the administration has wavered between demanding that Tehran dismantle its entire nuclear program, backtracking to allow Iran to enrich uranium to within commercial grade, then reversing again, with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff telling Iran it must “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment” before the US would sign a deal.

Whether any of this will work remains uncertain, but it certainly wasn’t helped by the recent ravings of New Jersey Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat and former Bernie Sanders supporter whose politics  — and especially rhetoric — on Israel and immigration, have become indistinguishable from many of the more extreme Republicans.  

Of the current Iran talks, Fetterman pronounced: “The negotiations should be comprised of 30,000-pound bombs and the IDF,” referring to the Israeli Defence Forces. …………………………………..

what would the health and environmental impacts be of a major bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities? Such an act could release clouds of radioactive dust into the atmosphere, contaminating land and water downwind. Contamination of surface and ground water would result in prolonged harmful consequences through ingestion by exposed populations.

Protracted exposure to enriched uranium dust by inhalation and ingestion can cause bone toxicity and reproductive toxicity and lead to renal failure. Uranium is also neurotoxic to the brain.

Tehran had been keeping its uranium enrichment well within the 3.67% limit, even after Trump withdrew the US from JCPOA. But in 2021, an act of sabotage against Natanz, Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility, which Iran blamed on Israel, blacked out the plant and damaged centrifuges. The attack prompted Iran, unfettered by the shattered nuclear deal, to begin enriching its uranium to as high as 60% U-235 — some sources assert it has even reached 85% — either way a level that is considered weapons usable. Uranium enriched to 90% is considered weapons grade.

Iran’s nuclear facilities have been targeted on several occasions. In 2010, a powerful computer worm known as Stuxnet, designed by US and Israeli intelligence, was used to disable a key part of the Iranian nuclear program. Last year, a strike by the Israeli Air Force hit Iran’s Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center for uranium conversion and fuel production.

As negotiations began with Iran this spring, Trump also used threatening rhetoric at first, warning in late March that if the country did not dismantle its nuclear program, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” He made similar threats during the last gasps of his first presidency, when he weighed an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear center but never followed through.

If Iran does indeed agree to end all its nuclear activities, the question remains about what to do with its stockpile of already enriched uranium. One idea apparently mooted by the White House is to allow Russia to store it, with a clause that would let Russia return the stockpile to Iran should the US breach any deal made in the coming weeks.

What all of this points to, of course, is the blurry line between commercial and military nuclear programs. Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, can claim to be abiding by the terms laid out in Article IV which gives countries who agree not to develop nuclear weapons “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” The trouble is, no one believes them, exposing the weakness in — and wrongheadedness of — the treaty clause that leaves the back door perpetually open to the production of nuclear weapons.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Views are her own. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/04/27/smash-it-then-claim-it/

April 28, 2025 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

US prepares $100bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia ahead of Trump visit

The mega deal comes as Washington continues to push for the normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel

APR 25, 2025, The Cradle,

Washington is preparing a major arms package for Saudi Arabia worth over $100 billion, according to six sources cited by Reuters.
The deal is expected to be announced during US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to the kingdom in May.
This proposed package follows a failed attempt by the former US president Joe Biden government to broker a broader security agreement that included Saudi normalization with Israel in exchange for advanced US arms, assistance in developing a civilian nuclear program, and reduced Chinese influence in the region.
While it remains unclear whether Trump’s proposal includes similar conditions, the package is expected to feature a range of advanced weaponry.

This includes C-130 transport aircraft, missiles, and radars supplied by major US defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics.

Lockheed is reportedly involved in a potential $20 billion drone deal involving MQ-9B SeaGuardian-style aircraft – an agreement discussed since 2018.
Defense company executives are reportedly considering traveling to Saudi Arabia as part of the US delegation. The Pentagon emphasized that the US–Saudi defense relationship remains strong under Trump’s leadership.

The US has a longstanding history of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, highlighted by Trump’s 2017 proposal of $110 billion in weapons deals. However, only $14.5 billion of those sales had been initiated by 2018, and Congress raised concerns following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. These concerns led to a 2021 congressional ban on offensive weapons sales under president Biden.

The Biden administration began softening its stance in 2022 due to shifting geopolitical dynamics, including the Ukraine war’s impact on oil markets. The ban on offensive weapons sales was lifted in 2024, as the US worked more closely with Riyadh after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

Meanwhile, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman visited Tehran on April 17, meeting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and conveying a message from King Salman.

The visit resulted from renewed nuclear talks between the US and Iran amid fears of regional escalation………………….https://thecradle.co/articles-id/30331

April 28, 2025 Posted by | Saudi Arabia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As Israel Openly Declares Starvation as a Weapon, Media Still Hesitate to Blame It for Famine

this is a genocide, after all—even if the corporate media refuse to say the word—and starvation is part and parcel of that.

Belén Fernández, April 25, 2025, https://fair.org/home/as-israel-openly-declares-starvation-as-a-weapon-media-still-hesitate-to-blame-it-for-famine/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 2 that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza,” where the ongoing Israeli genocide, with the loyal backing of the United States, has officially killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The announcement regarding the total halt of humanitarian aid amounted to yet another explicit declaration of the starvation policy that Israel is pursuing in the Gaza Strip, a territory that—thanks in large part to 17 consecutive years of Israeli blockade—has long been largely dependent on such aid for survival.

Of course, this was not the first time that senior Israeli officials had advertised their reliance on the war crime of forced starvation in the current genocidal assault on Gaza. On October 9, 2023, two days after the most recent launch of hostilities, then–Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Two days after that, Foreign Minister Israel Katz boasted of cutting off “water, electricity and fuel” to the territory.

And just this month, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proclaimed that there was “no reason for a gram of food or aid to enter Gaza.” Following an April 22 dinner held in his honor in Florida at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Ben-Gvir reported that US Republicans had

expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.

Never mind that the hostages would have been brought home safely as scheduled had Israel chosen to comply with the terms of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas that was implemented in January, rather than definitively annihilating the agreement on March 18.

It is no doubt illustrative of Israel’s modus operandi that the March 2 decision to block the entry of all food and other items necessary for human existence took place in the middle of an ostensible ceasefire.

‘Starved, bombed, strangled’

While Ben-Gvir’s most recent comments have thus far eluded commentary in the US corporate media, the roundabout media approach to the whole starvation theme has been illuminating in its own right. It has not, obviously, been possible to avoid reporting on the subject altogether, as the United Nations and other organizations have pretty much been warning from the get-go of Israel’s actions causing widespread famine in Gaza.

In December 2023, for example, just two months after the onset of Israel’s blood-drenched campaign, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC scale, determined that “over 90% of the population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.08 million people) was estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse).” The assessment went on: “Among these, over 40% of the population (939,000 people) were in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 15% (378,000 people) were in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5).”

A full year ago, in April 2024, even Samantha Power—then the administrator of the US Agency for International Development—conceded that it was “credible” that famine was already well underway in parts of the Gaza Strip. And the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs now warns that Gaza is “likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023”—its population being “starved, bombed, strangled” and subjected to “deprivation by design.”

Disappearance of agency

None of these details have escaped the pages and websites of corporate media outlets, although the media’s frequent reliance on ambiguous wordiness tends to distract readers from what is actually going on—and who is responsible for it. Take, for instance,  the New York Times headline “Gaza Famine Warning Spurs Calls to Remove Restrictions on Food Shipments” (6/25/24), or the CBS video “Hunger Spreads Virtually Everywhere in Gaza Amid Israel/Hamas War” (12/5/24).  Even news outlets that intermittently undertake to spotlight the human plight of, inter alia, individual parents in Gaza losing their children to starvation remain susceptible to long-winded efforts to disperse blame. (As of April of last year, Save the Children confirmed that 27 children in northern Gaza had already died of starvation and disease.)

In an era in which news consumption often consists of skimming headlines, the phrasing of article titles is of utmost import. And yet many headlines manage to entirely excise the role of Israel in Gaza’s “hunger crisis”—as in CNN’s report (2/24): “‘We Are Dying Slowly:’ Palestinians Are Eating Grass and Drinking Polluted Water as Famine Looms Across Gaza.” Or take the Reuters headline (3/24/24): “Gaza’s Catastrophic Food Shortage Means Mass Death Is Imminent, Monitor Says.” Or this one from ABC News (11/15/24): “Famine ‘Occurring or Imminent’ in Parts of Northern Gaza, Experts Warn UN Security Council.”

It’s not that these headlines are devoid of sympathy for Palestinian suffering. The issue, rather, is the dilution—and even disappearance—of agency, such that the “catastrophic food shortage” is rendered as transpiring in a sort of vacuum and thereby letting the criminals perpetrating it off the hook. Imagine if a Hamas rocket from Gaza killed an infant in Israel and the media reported the event as follows: “Israeli Baby Perishes as Rocket Completes Airborne Trajectory.”

‘No shortage of aid’

Then there is the matter of the media’s incurable habit of ceding Israeli officials a platform to spout demonstrable lies, as in the April 17 NBC News headline “Aid Groups Describe Dire Conditions in Gaza as Israel Says There Is No Shortage of Aid.” The fact that Israel is permitted to make such claims is particularly perplexing, given Israeli officials’ own announcements that no aid whatsoever may enter the territory, while the “dire conditions” are made abundantly clear in the text of the article itself: “The Global Nutrition Cluster, a coalition of humanitarian groups, has warned that in March alone, 3,696 children were newly admitted for care for acute malnutrition” in Gaza.

Among numerous other damning statistics conveyed in the dispatch, we learn that all Gaza bakeries supported by the UN World Food Programme closed down on March 31, “after wheat flour ran out.” Meanwhile, the WFP calculated that Israel’s closure of border crossings into Gaza caused prices of basic goods “to soar between 150% and 700% compared with prewar levels, and by 29% to as much as 1,400% above prices during the ceasefire.”

Against such a backdrop, it’s fairly ludicrous to allow Israeli officials to “maintain there is ‘no shortage’ of aid in Gaza and accuse Hamas of withholding supplies.” If the press provides Israel with space to spout whatever nonsense it wants—reality be damned—where is the line ultimately drawn? If Israel decides Hamas is using wheat flour to build rockets, will that also be reported with a straight face?

Lest anyone think that thwarting the entry of food into the Gaza Strip is a new thing, recall that Israel’s blockade of Gaza long predated the present war—although the details of said blockade are generally glossed over in the media in favor of the myth that Israel unilaterally “withdrew” from the territory in 2005. In 2010, the BBC (6/21/10) listed some basic foodstuffs—pardon, potential “dual-use items”—that Israel had at different times in recent history blocked from entering Gaza, including pasta, coffee, tea, nuts and chocolate. In 2006, just a year after the so-called “withdrawal,” Israeli government adviser Dov Weissglas outlined the logic behind Israel’s restriction of food imports into Gaza: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Fast forward almost two decades, and it’s safe to say that the “idea” has evolved; this is a genocide, after all—even if the corporate media refuse to say the word—and starvation is part and parcel of that. But on account of Israel’s extra-special relationship with the United States, US media have institutionalized the practice of beating around the bush when it comes to documenting Israeli crimes. This is how we end up with the aforementioned long-winded headlines instead of, say, the far more straightforward “Israel is starving Gaza,” a Google search of which terms produces not a single corporate media dispatch, but does lead to a January 2024 report by that very name, courtesy of none other than the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

‘Starving as negotiation tactic’

That said, there have been a few surprises. The New York Times (3/13/25), for example, took a short break from its longstanding tradition of unabashed apologetics for Israeli atrocities in allowing the following sentence to appear in a March opinion article by Megan Stack: “Israeli officials are essentially starving Gaza as a negotiation tactic.” In the very least, this was a vast improvement, in terms of syntactic clarity and assignation of blame, over previous descriptions of Israeli behavior immortalized on the pages of the US newspaper of record—like that time the Israeli military slaughtered four kids playing by the sea in Gaza, and the Times editors (7/16/14) went with the headline “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife.”

In the end, Israel’s starvation of the Gaza Strip is multifaceted. It’s not just about physically blocking the entry of food into the besieged enclave. It’s also about Israel’s near-total decimation of Gaza’s healthcare system: the bombardment of hospitals, the targeting of ambulances, the massacres of medical personnel (FAIR.org, 4/11/25). It’s about Israeli military attacks on humanitarian aid convoys and workers, including the April 2024 massacre of seven international employees of the food organization World Central Kitchen.

It’s about Israel razing agricultural areas, wiping out food production, devastating the fishing industry and depleting livestock. It’s about Israel bombing water infrastructure in Gaza. And it’s about Israeli troops slaughtering at least 112 desperate Palestinians queuing for flour on February 29, 2024 (FAIR.org, 3/22/24)—which was at least a quicker way of killing starving people than waiting for them to starve.

In his 2017 London Review of Books essay (6/15/17) on the use of famine as a weapon of war, Alex de Waal referenced the “physical debilitation of groups as a technique of genocide,” noting that “forced starvation was one of the instruments of the Holocaust.” It’s worth reflecting on the essay’s opening paragraph:

In its primary use, the verb “to starve” is transitive: It’s something people do to one another, like torture or murder. Mass starvation as a consequence of the weather has very nearly disappeared: Today’s famines are all caused by political decisions, yet journalists still use the phrase “man-made famine” as if such events were unusual.

As for the current case of the Gaza Strip, US establishment journalists appear to be doing their best to avoid the transitive nature of the verb in question—or any subject-verb-object construction that might too overtly expose Israeli savagery. And by treating famine in Gaza as a subject unto itself, rather than a “technique of genocide,” to borrow de Waal’s words, the media assist in obscuring the bigger picture about this very man-made famine—which is that Israel is not just starving Gaza. Israel is exterminating Gaza.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, media, USA | Leave a comment

Plutonium’s Hidden Legacy at Piketon

Plutonium was here. It was processed, mishandled, released, and denied. It contaminated water, soil, fish, and workers. It spread to schools. And it killed.

Investigative Team April 24, 2025, https://appareport.com/2025/04/24/plutoniums-hidden-legacy-at-piketon/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=jetpack_social&fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5XrBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE3b0JDR3JZZ0xqRkNqVU1oAR5YM8gN60lbVkb21XEno8JBYLC_Rnqv7LD993TwfBersmNr-c-SsZuL1J_1mA_aem_sCNRay627WxIPPEuu7DVsA  [ample illustrations]

For decades, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claimed that plutonium had no place at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS). But government documents, congressional testimony, and radiological data spanning more than 40 years tell a different story — one of systemic exposure, buried secrets, and radioactive contamination that continues to haunt the soil, water, and people of southern Ohio.

The truth has been revealed in pieces. Some of it was made public as early as the 1990s. Some surfaced only recently. Together, it paints an undeniable picture: plutonium was present at PORTS, it was mishandled, and it left a toxic legacy that federal agencies have failed to clean up — or fully acknowledge.

The Paper Trail: Plutonium Officially Confirmed

The denial cracked in 1999, when The Portsmouth Daily Times published a front-page bombshell: “Plutonium Confirmed in Piketon.” The article cited admissions by federal officials that plutonium-contaminated uranium had been shipped to the site from Paducah, Kentucky, as part of a Cold War-era uranium recycling program.

In a formal letter to DOE Secretary Bill Richardson, U.S. Senators Mike DeWine and George Voinovich confirmed that at least 570 tons of contaminated feed material had been sent to Piketon, beginning as early as 1983. DOE had known. The public had not.

The Incinerator and the Burned Truth

Records show the X-705A incinerator, which operated from the 1970s until 1986, was used to burn approximately 50,000 pounds of uranium-contaminated solid waste annually. But it didn’t stop there.

ccording to on-site Ohio EPA coordinator Maria Galanti, uranium-contaminated solvents — materials never meant for incineration — were also burned in the unit. The result? Soil surrounding the incinerator is now radioactive to a depth of at least 12 feet.

Until the late 1980s, operators even tilled radioactive oils into unlined soil, assuming it would degrade over time. It didn’t. And it won’t — the plutonium isotopes involved have half-lives exceeding 24,000 years.

Radiation in the Waterways — and the Food Chain

A 2006 Ohio EPA report confirmed what residents feared: plutonium had migrated offsite and into the public environment.

Testing in Little Beaver Creek, Big Beaver Creek, Big Run, and the Scioto River revealed the presence of:

  • Plutonium-238
  • Plutonium-239
  • Americium-241
  • Neptunium-237
  • Alongside technetium-99 and uranium isotopes

All these elements were detected well above background levels, confirming they originated from the plant, not nature.

The Hazard Index (HI) — a risk threshold used by federal agencies — was exceeded across all tested water bodies, with Big Run scoring more than 20 times the EPA’s risk cutoff.

Separate DOE assessments show Pu-238 in fish as a significant dietary exposure source, second only to Tc-99 in produce. Plutonium has entered the food chain.

Offsite Spread: Plutonium Detected Near Schools and Homes

Monitoring data confirmed the presence of plutonium-239/240, neptunium-237, and americium-241 at offsite stations including:

  • Station A41A near Zahn’s Corner Middle School
  • Station A6 in northwest Piketon
  • Station A23 near local residential zones

DOE contends that any plutonium found in air monitors comes from 1950s nuclear weapons testing fallout and not PORTS.

Workers Testify to Deception and Disease

At a 2000 Senate hearing, former worker Sam Ray described his fight with chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer he linked directly to his work at PORTS. He spoke of no health monitoring, no protective equipment, and no transparency.

Jeffrey Walburn, a plant whistleblower, testified to a 1994 chemical exposure that permanently damaged his lungs. He alleged a criminal cover-up by Lockheed Martin, including the alteration and destruction of radiation dose records.

He warned that widows of deceased workers may never receive compensation because exposure data had been falsified.

DOE’s Own Admissions: Plutonium in the Cascade System

According to a 2024 DOE report, plutonium-238 and plutonium-239 were present in enrichment equipment, having entered the cascade system through contaminated uranium hexafluoride cylinders. The isotopes were found in the X-326 Process Building and throughout the cascade.

DOE also confirmed that residual technetium-99 remained embedded in internal pipe surfaces, requiring special disposal decades after operations ended.

From Russian Warheads to Pike County: The Megatons to Megawatts Program

Between 1993 and 2013, the U.S. and Russia dismantled over 20,000 nuclear warheads under the Megatons to Megawatts Program — converting highly enriched uranium (HEU) into low-enriched uranium (LEU) for use in American power plants.

But that uranium didn’t just vanish. It came through U.S. enrichment sites — including the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.

Contractor and DOE records confirm that Russian-origin uranium — some of it likely carrying residual contaminants from dismantled warheads — was introduced into the U.S. enrichment stream at PORTS.

Whether plutonium from these shipments contributed to PORTS contamination is still under question. What’s undeniable is this: the U.S. government sent Russian bomb-grade material through an Appalachian processing plant with a history of unsafe handling, minimal oversight, and deliberate secrecy.

They took Soviet nukes and ran them through Appalachian lungs. Without warning. Without consent.

While the legacy of plutonium contamination at PORTS stretches back to the Cold War, the threat isn’t just historical — it’s current, legal, and active.

Centrus Energy: HALEU, the NRC license, and legal plutonium storage at PORTS

In 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted Centrus Energy Corp. a license to operate a first-of-its-kind High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) facility inside the old enrichment footprint at PORTS. HALEU is a higher-enriched form of uranium (5–20% U-235), specifically produced for next-generation small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

But buried in the licensing documents is something the public was never told:

The HALEU license explicitly authorizes Centrus to store an undisclosed amount of plutonium-bearing material at the site.

That’s not speculation — that’s federal licensing language. In plain English: Centrus is legally allowed to store plutonium compounds at a facility that already has a catastrophic contamination legacy.

A Legacy Buried in Contamination and Lies

Plutonium was here. It was processed, mishandled, released, and denied. It contaminated water, soil, fish, and workers. It spread to schools. And it killed.

Some of the evidence has been buried. Some altered. But most of it has been in plain sight — ignored by federal agencies and omitted from cleanup plans.

This is not an old story. This is an ongoing disaster.

The time for quiet compliance is over. The reckoning for Piketon — and for the people poisoned by its secrets — has come.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s transactional instincts could help forge a new Iran nuclear deal

Mohamad Bazzi, 265 Apr https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/25/trump-iran-nuclear-deal

The president has a chance to make good on his reputation as a dealmaker as Iran moves closer to a nuclear weapon.

In May 2018, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed American sanctions that crippled the Iranian economy. Trump tore up the 2015 agreement, which had taken years for Iran to negotiate with six world powers, under which Tehran limited its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions. Trump insisted he would be able to negotiate a better pact than the one reached by Barack Obama’s administration.

Today, in his second term as president, Trump is eager to fix the Iran deal he broke nearly seven years ago.

While Trump’s overall foreign policy has been chaotic and has alienated traditional US allies in Europe and elsewhere, he has an opportunity to reach an agreement with Iran that eluded Joe Biden. Since Trump walked away from the original deal, Iran has moved closer to having a nuclear weapon than it has ever been. It has enriched enough uranium close to weapons-grade quality to make six nuclear bombs, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But analysts believe that even after enriching enough uranium for a bomb, Iran would still need up to a year to develop an actual nuclear warhead that could be deployed on a ballistic missile.

Last month, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying the US wanted to negotiate a new deal. Trump followed up with a public threat, saying if Iran’s leaders did not agree to renewed talks, they would be subjected to “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”. After Trump’s threats and a buildup of US forces in the Middle East, Iran’s military said it would respond to any attack by targeting US bases in the region, which house thousands of American troops.

But Iranian leaders also agreed to indirect negotiations, rather than the direct talks Trump had proposed. Trump dispatched his special envoy, the real estate developer Steve Witkoff, to lead a team of US negotiators to meet indirectly with top Iranian officials, including the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. The two sides held two rounds of productive talks so far this month, under the mediation of Oman. And the US and Iranian teams are due to meet again this weekend in Muscat, the capital of Oman, where they will start talks on technical details of a potential agreement.

While Trump and Iran’s leaders both changed their tones in recent weeks, there are many obstacles before a deal can be reached, including hardliners in Iran and Washington, as well as opposition from Israel’s rightwing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent years working to undermine negotiations between the US and Iran. The main barrier will be whether the Trump administration insists on a total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program – the so-called “Libya model”, named after the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who decided to eliminate his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 under pressure from the US. But that decision deprived Gaddafi of a major lever to stave off western military intervention after the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, which led to his regime’s fall and his killing by Libyan rebels.

Some foreign policy hawks in Washington, including Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, insist on this maximalist strategy, which echoes Netanyahu’s demand that Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear enrichment activity and infrastructure as part of any deal with the US. If Trump takes a similar approach, negotiations would probably break down and Trump could follow through on his threat to carry out military strikes.

Iran has made clear that it will not agree to the total end of its nuclear program, but would accept a verification-based approach, as it did under the 2015 deal negotiated by the Obama administration along with China, France, Russia, the UK and Germany, together with the European Union. That type of agreement would place strict limits on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and impose an inspections regime involving international monitors. Several of Trump’s advisers, including Witkoff and the vice-president, JD Vance, seem to favor this solution.

“I think he wants to deal with Iran with respect,” Witkoff said of Trump’s outreach to the Iranian regime, in a long interview last month with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host who has been highly critical of Republican hawks agitating for war with Iran. “He wants to build trust with them, if it’s possible.”

Iran’s leaders apparently got that message – and have tried to stroke Trump’s ego and convey that they respect him in ways they never respected Biden. In a Washington Post op-ed published on 8 April, Iran’s foreign minister seemed to be speaking to Trump directly when he blamed the failure of earlier negotiations on a “lack of real determination by the Biden administration”. Araghchi also played to Trump’s oft-repeated desire to be a peacemaker who ends America’s legacy of forever wars, writing: “We cannot imagine President Trump wanting to become another US president mired in a catastrophic war in the Middle East.”

And the minister appealed to Trump’s reputation as a deal-maker, citing the “trillion-dollar opportunity” that would benefit US companies if they could gain access to Iran after a diplomatic agreement. Iran’s leaders evidently understand that Trump loves to frame his foreign policy as being guided by his desire to secure economic deals and benefits for American businesses.

In this case, Trump’s transactional instincts and bulldozer style of negotiations could lead to a positive outcome, avoiding war with Iran and undermining the hardliners in Washington, Iran and Israel. Trump has already adopted a significant shift toward Tehran from his first term, when he had insisted that Iran was the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and the greatest threat to US interests in the Middle East.

After he took office in 2017, Trump wanted to tear up the Iran deal partly because it was one of Obama’s major foreign policy accomplishments. Trump also surrounded himself with hawkish advisers who reinforced the danger of an Iranian threat, including HR McMaster, who served as national security adviser, and James Mattis, who was defense secretary. Both men commanded US troops during the occupation of Iraq, and they fought Iraqi militias funded by Iran. Trump later appointed John Bolton, another neoconservative and advocate of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, as his national security adviser.

In his second term, Trump has banished most of the neocons from his administration. Trump also seems to realize that Netanyahu could become one of the biggest obstacles to an Iran deal, as he was during the Obama and Biden administrations. It was no accident that the president announced his plan for renewed talks with Iran while Netanyahu sat beside him at an Oval Office meeting on 7 April. Netanyahu had arranged a hasty visit to Washington to seek an exemption from Trump on new tariffs on Israeli exports. But he left empty-handed and embarrassed by Trump’s Iran announcement. That meeting was a signal to Iran’s leaders: that Trump would not allow Netanyahu to steamroll him, as the Israeli premier had done with other US presidents.

If Trump continues to resist Netanyahu, along with hawkish Republicans and some of his own advisers, he might well be able to negotiate a dramatic deal with Iran – and repair the nuclear crisis he unleashed years ago.

  • Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern studies and a journalism professor at New York University.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

They didn’t know their backyard creek carried nuclear waste. Now, they’re dying of cancer.

By Skyler Henry, Cait Bladt, https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/coldwater-creek-st-louis-missouri-nuclear-waste-manhattan-project/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5WlNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE3b0JDR3JZZ0xqRkNqVU1oAR6r1OHnTIbzQszYmq5UdxWm2CDEhfSw2CBAqIbrvNc_QJ0mnVpSMlz18FoZ6A_aem_HBiqzbUxMZqObYI2gfOYx April 24, 2025 

This story is part one of a two-part series that examines the effects of nuclear waste contamination in Coldwater Creek on the surrounding community in St. Louis, Missouri. Part two aired Wednesday, April 23 on “CBS Evening News.”

When Linda Morice and her family first moved to St. Louis in 1957, they had no idea they had anything to fear. Then, people started getting sick.

“It was a slow, insidious process,” Morice said.

After the death of Morice’s mother, her physician uncle took her aside and gave her a stark warning: “Linda, I don’t believe St. Louis is a very healthy place to live. Everyone on this street has a tumor.”

Their neighborhood was bordered by Coldwater Creek, a 19-mile tributary of the Missouri River It wound through their backyards, near baseball fields, schools and cemeteries — and past lots where leaking barrels and open-air dumps of nuclear waste leeched into its waters.

“It was shocking that this creek was likely making people sick,” Morice said.

Starting in 1942, roughly one ton of pure uranium was produced per day in downtown St. Louis. It was then shipped to labs across the country for the top secret Manhattan Project that created the first nuclear bomb.

The leftover waste was dumped around the city. 

“That material was in 82 different spots throughout St. Louis County. It spilled. Children played in it. It seemed to me that there wasn’t an attempt to absolutely get to the bottom of it,” Morice said.

In Morice’s family alone, her mother, father and brother died of cancer, leaving her to think differently about her childhood.

“All that time, all those fun things were happening, but that whole time we, and the rest of the community were being exposed to some pretty dangerous stuff,” Morice said.

Now her husband, who also lived in the area, is fighting cancer. He’s being treated by urologic oncologist Dr. Gautum Agarwal. For the last several years, Agarwal has been tracking which of his patients lived near Coldwater Creek.

“I was seeing patients who are young, who had developed pretty significant cancers from areas that there’s been some contamination with nuclear waste,” Agarwal said.

While radiation is known to cause cancer, experts say they can’t pin down the specific cause of the disease in a given patient.

But a 2019 study from the Department of Health and Human Services found that people who lived and played near Coldwater Creek from the 1960s to 1990s “could be at an increased risk of developing lung cancer, bone cancer or leukemia.”

“The people there deserve for us to look at this much closer than we have,” Agarwal said.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | 1 Comment

The Ever-Expanding War Machine

Dismantling the Government While Pumping Up the Pentagon

By William D. Hartung, April 22, 2025 https://tomdispatch.com/the-ever-expanding-war-machine/

Under the guise of efficiency, the Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs and agencies that are the backbone of America’s civilian government. The virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and plans to shut down the Department of Education are just the most visible examples of a campaign that includes layoffs of budget experts, public health officials, scientists, and other critical personnel whose work undergirds the daily operations of government and provides the basic services needed by businesses, families, and individuals alike. Many of those services can make the difference between solvency and poverty, health and illness, or even, in some cases, life and death for vulnerable populations. 

The speed with which civilian programs and agencies are being slashed in the second Trump era gives away the true purpose of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In the context of the Musk-Trump regime, “efficiency” is a cover story for a greed-driven ideological campaign to radically reduce the size of government without regard for the human consequences.

So far, the only agency that seems to have escaped the ire of the DOGE is — don’t be shocked! — the Pentagon. After misleading headlines suggested that its topline would be cut by as much as 8% annually for the next five years as part of that supposed efficiency campaign, the real plan was revealed — finding savings in some parts of the Pentagon only to invest whatever money might be saved in — yes! — other military programs without any actual reductions in the department’s overall budget. Then, during a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7th, Trump announced that “we’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military . . . $1 trillion. Nobody has seen anything like it.”

So far, cuts to make room for new kinds of military investments have been limited to the firing of civilian Pentagon employees and the dismantling of a number of internal strategy and research departments. Activities that funnel revenue to weapons contractors have barely been touched — hardly surprising given that Musk himself presides over a significant Pentagon contractor, SpaceX.

The legitimacy of his role should, of course, be subject to question. After all, he’s an unelected billionaire with major government contracts who, in recent months, seemed to have garnered more power than the entire cabinet combined. But cabinet members are subject to Senate confirmation, as well as financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules. Not Musk, though. Not only hasn’t he been vetted by Congress, but he’s been allowed to maintain his role in SpaceX.

A Hollow Government?

The Trump and Musk hollowing out of the civilian government, while keeping the Pentagon budget at enormously high levels of funding, means the United States is well on its way to becoming the very “garrison state” that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in the early years of the Cold War. And mind you, all of that’s true before Republican hawks in Congress like Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), who is seeking $100 billion more in Pentagon spending than its officials have asked for, even act.

What’s at stake, however, goes well beyond how the government spends its money. After all, such decisions are being accompanied by an assault on basic constitutional rights like freedom of speech and a campaign of mass deportations that already includes people with the legal right to remain in the United States. And that’s not to mention the bullying and financial blackmailing of universities, law firms, and major media outlets in an attempt to force them to bow down to the administration’s political preferences.In fact, the first two months of the Trump/Musk administration undoubtedly represent the most blatant power grab by the executive branch in the history of this republic, a move that undermines our ability to preserve, no less expand, the fundamental rights that are supposed to be the guiding lights of American democracy. Those rights have, of course, been violated to one degree or another throughout this country’s history, but never like this. The current crackdown threatens to erase the hard-won victories of the civil rights, women’s rights, labor rights, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ rights movements that had brought this country closer to living up to its professed commitments to freedom, tolerance, and equality.

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April 25, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

World’s first AI-powered nuclear power plant Diablo Canyon worries experts after Trump plan

AI technology being used to aid the running of a nuclear power plant has experts worried as Trump scraps AI regulation labelling them it ‘as barriers to American AI innovation’.


 Daily Star 21st April 2025

Fears AI technology powering nuclear power plants could lead to catastrophe have been sparked experts caution the emergence of AI in the nuclear energy industry.

These fears come after Trump scraps AI regulation labelling it “as barriers to American AI innovation” as experts have begun to deploy AI to help run a once dead nuclear power plant.

Boffs at the Diablo Canyon, California’s sole remaining nuclear power plant, has begun exploring the frontier of AI to help aid them running the powerplant. In a venture with artificial intelligence start-up Atomic Canyon, a brand-new artificial intelligence tool designed for the nuclear energy industry.

Pacific Gas and Electricity who runs Diablo Canyon have announced a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up declaring the development of “the first on-site generative AI deployment at a U.S. nuclear power plant”.

Currently the artificial intelligence tool, dubbed Neutron Enterprise, is meant to help workers navigate extensive technical reports and regulations. Due to Neutron Enterprise’s use at the Diablo Canyon, both lawmakers and AI experts are requesting strong guardrails…………………..

Tamara Kneese, the director of tech policy non-profit Data & Society’s Climate, Technology, and Justice program commented on the use of AI in the field. “AI can be helpful in terms of efficiency,” the director said, praising the initial implementation.

“The idea that you could just use generative AI for one specific kind of task at the nuclear power plant and then call it a day, I don’t really trust that it would stop there. And trusting PG&E to safely use generative AI in a nuclear setting is something that is deserving of more scrutiny,” Kneese added…………………… https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/worlds-first-ai-powered-nuclear-35093367

April 25, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

DOE Releases More Funding to Reopen Palisades Nuclear Plant

Energy Secretary Chris Wright on April 22 announced the release of a third
loan disbursement to Holtec for the reopening of the Palisades Nuclear
Plant in southwest Michigan. Today’s action releases $46,709,358 of the
up to $1.52-billion loan guarantee to Holtec for the Palisades project.

The 800-MW Palisades plant, located in Covert Township, was closed in 2022.
Holtec bought the power station from Entergy that year, with intent to
decommission the facility, before deciding instead to restart the plant.
Palisades at present would be the first U.S. nuclear power plant to restart
after being closed.

The plant still needs licensing approvals from the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Opponents of restarting the nuclear power plant have said they will appeal a recent decision by a three-judge panel of the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which refused to grant a hearing on the merits for seven safety-related contentions brought by a coalition that includes Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit group. Beyond Nuclear and other groups have argued the plant should not be restarted.

 Powermag 22nd April 2025,
https://www.powermag.com/doe-releases-more-funding-to-reopen-palisades-nuclear-plant/

April 24, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

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