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UK schools and offices not equipped for impact of global heating, report warns

 The UK’s schools, care homes and offices are not equipped for the
effects of global heating and face lengthy heatwaves even in optimistic
scenarios, according to a groundbreaking report that calls for climate
resilience to be declared a national emergency.

The report by the UK Green
Building Council also predicts that towns including Peterborough and
Fairbourne will be uninhabitable by the end of the century because of
flooding.

Produced over two years, the roadmap sets out a blueprint for
action and warns that without the adaptation of millions of buildings,
there will be increased injury, health impacts, deaths and untold economic
damage. Five key threats are examined by the roadmap: overheating,
wildfires, flooding, drought and storms. Detailed thermodynamic modelling
on school buildings reveals that schools across London and the south-east
will face 10 weeks of extreme heat a year – defined as 28C and above –
in a low-warming scenario, defined as 2C above preindustrial levels. The
world is on track for 2.7C of heating.

 Guardian 26th June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/26/uk-care-homes-schools-and-offices-not-equipped-to-deal-with-global-heating

June 28, 2025 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Revealed: 585 cracks in Torness nuclear reactor

Rob Edwards,  The Ferret 26th June 2025

The estimated number of cracks in the graphite core of a nuclear reactor at Torness in East Lothian has risen to 585 – the highest so far – prompting fears of a nuclear “meltdown” and calls for its early closure.

In documents released under freedom of information law, the UK Government’s safety watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), said that the state of the graphite core posed a “significant challenge” to plans to keep Torness and other ageing nuclear stations running over the next five years.

In November 2024 ONR advised the French operator, EDF Energy, to “pause for thought” before deciding to extend the lives of Torness and other nuclear stations in England. Less than a week later EDF decided to extend the life of Torness from 2028 to 2030.

Campaigners accused EDF of putting profits before safety, and warned that keeping “clapped out reactors” running would endanger the public. It was “time for these ageing reactors to be closed”, they said.

EDF, however, insisted that nuclear safety was its “overriding priority” and that it would not consider operating Torness unless it was “confident it was safe”. Planned closure dates for reactors were “kept under review”, it said. 

ONR said that cracking was “a well known phenomenon”, and that the number of cracks was “acceptable”. It stressed that the risks were “tolerable”, and that it would not allow any nuclear plant to operate “unless we are satisfied that it is safe.”

The Ferret previously reported that 46 cracks had been detected in April 2024 in the graphite bricks that surround the highly radioactive uranium fuel powering one of the two reactors at Torness. The first three cracks were found in February 2022. 

But only a small proportion of the bricks were actually inspected, and no estimate has previously been given for the total number of cracks across the core. Following a freedom of information request by The Ferret, ONR has now disclosed that 59 cracks were found in a similarly limited inspection in March 2025.

In its response, ONR said that this “equated to around 585 cracks when forecast across the central area of the core where cracking is expected”. The high number of cracks did not “challenge safety margins” at Torness, it said.

EDF confirmed that it had found 59 cracks in the graphite bricks it sampled in March 2025. This suggested that in total around a third of the central part of the core had cracking, equivalent to about 585 cracks, it said.

ONR also revealed that another inspection in May 2025 discovered the first crack in the second reactor at Torness. It started generating electricity later than the first reactor.

Torness nuclear power station, near Dunbar, was officially opened in May 1989 by the then Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The site had been the target of anti-nuclear protests since 1978.

Scotland’s other nuclear power station at Hunterston in North Ayrshire was closed down in January 2022, more than a year earlier than planned. This followed the discovery of an estimated 586 cracks in its two reactors.

‘Pause for thought’ on Torness

ONR also released to The Ferret the results of its assessment of EDF’s 2024 review of extending the lives of Torness, and other advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) at Heysham, near Lancaster, and Hartlepool, on the north east coast of England. 

Three scenarios were reviewed. One assumed Torness closed as planned in 2028, a second assumed its operation was extended to 2030, and a third envisaged keeping it going until 2032.

ONR concluded that because of cracking and other issues, “graphite represents one of EDF’s significant challenges for lifetime extension”. It also highlighted a series of other potential ageing problems with AGRs, including risks from leaking boilers, failing equipment, and corrosion.

“It is possible that safe operation of certain components might be undermined due to life extension,” ONR said. There were a number of issues which had not been fully covered in EDF’s review, it argued.

“Although these are not considered a blocker to potential life extensions, ONR expects EDF to manage and resolve these issues as part of its lifetime management of the AGRs,” ONR added.

“Moreover, coupled with the aspects identified by EDF in the submissions, this should give EDF pause for thought when reaching a decision on AGR lifetime extensions.”

ONR wrote to EDF with its advice on 27 November 2024. On 3 December – less than a week later – EDF decided to extend the life of Torness from 2028 to 2030, and to extend the lives of its English AGR stations.

Another document released by ONR was a June 2024 assessment of the “structural integrity” of the graphite core of the more badly cracked reactor at Torness. The majority of the 35-page document was redacted “for the purposes of safeguarding national security”.

The ONR assessment found “shortfalls” in the crack predictions made by EDF, and concluded that this “raises a question” over the company’s “ability to predict the future core state”. At the time ONR nevertheless gave EDF permission to keep running Torness on the grounds that the risks were “tolerable”.

The nuclear critic and consultant, Peter Roche, argued that there was “a significant design difference” which could make cracking at Torness worse than at Hunterston. “Graphite debris in the fuel channels or misshapen bricks could compromise the operator’s ability to keep the fuel cool and in a worst case lead to a meltdown,” he claimed.

This risked releasing radioactivity into the environment. “Clearly it’s time for these ageing reactors to be closed,” Roche said. “Keeping them open would be gambling with public safety.” 

The veteran environmental campaigner, Dr Richard Dixon, accused EDF of trying to cover the costs of building new nuclear plants. “It cannot be a coincidence that running Torness for an extra two years would ease EDF’s major financial woes caused by the massive delays to its reactor projects elsewhere,” he said

“EDF’s inability to complete reactor projects anything remotely like on time or on budget should not mean that the public in Scotland face the extra risk of running clapped out reactors ever further past their sell-by date.”

The Scottish Greens described the Torness cracks as “potentially dangerous”. It was “deeply concerning” that EDF was planning to keep the station going until 2030, according to the party’s energy spokesperson and retiring co-leader, Patrick Harvie MSP.  

“It appears that the profits of a giant energy company are being put ahead of safety here in Scotland,” he told The Ferret. EDF is owned by the French government, and earnt £15.6bn (€18.3bn) before interest and taxes in 2024…………………………………………………………..
https://theferret.scot/nuclear-reactor-torness-585-cracks/

June 28, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Torness ideal for small modular nuclear reactor, says Britain Remade.

a recent analysis of the technology in the United States said that SMR are projected
to be the most expensive of all electricity technologies per KW. The report
by management consultancy firm ICF found that they would cost more than any
other source of electricity, including battery energy storage systems,
solar, wind, combustion turbines and gas.

 A UK campaign for accelerated infrastructure-building has said that
Torness is “a prime site” for the next generation of small nuclear
reactors. Britain Remade, a group co-founded by a former energy and climate
advisor to Boris Johnson, says Torness as an ideal target for small modular
reactors of the type the UK Government recently backed. ………………………………….

Britain Remade, which is strongly focussed on campaigning
for “nuclear power alongside the rapid roll-out of renewables” and
infrastructure-building to drive growth, hosted a public meeting in Dunbar
in April. The campaign also conducted a poll which found that half of the
SNP’s voters believe nuclear power should be part of Scotland’s mix of
clean energy generation.

But many in Scotland still maintain a strong objection to nuclear.

Pete Roche, who campaigned against Torness in the
1970s, founding the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace, said:
“The last thing Scotland needs at Torness is more reactors, whether large
or small. Incidentally Rolls Royce’s so-called small reactors at 470MW are
only slightly smaller than Torness’s two 660MW reactors.”

Earlier this month, the UK Government announced its selection of Rolls-Royce SMR as the
preferred bidder “to develop small modular reactors, subject to final
government approvals and contract signature – marking a new golden age of
nuclear in the UK”. Dumitriu said: “SMRs are already being deployed in
Canada. The idea behind them is that because you build them in a factory
and 90% of the construction of them is done in a factory, you’re rolling
them off a production line and because of that you get all of the cost
reductions of economies of scale, of learning by doing and you’re able to
build them a lot cheaper than the current design.”

However a recent analysis of the technology in the United States said that SMR are projected
to be the most expensive of all electricity technologies per KW. The report
by management consultancy firm ICF found that they would cost more than any
other source of electricity, including battery energy storage systems,
solar, wind, combustion turbines and gas.

Campaigner Pete Roche said:
“There is no evidence that small modular reactors will be cheaper,
because almost none have ever been built. In fact it is beginning to look
like small reactors will be even more expensive than large reactors because
they won’t benefit from economies of scale.”

Energy Secretary Gillian Martin said: “Decommissioning Scotland’s nuclear sites will take
decades and will require the retention of a highly skilled workforce.
Meanwhile, the significant growth in renewables, storage hydrogen, carbon
capture and decommissioning are key opportunities for our future energy
workforce in Scotland – with independent scenarios from Ernst and Young
(EY), showing that with the right support, Scotland’s low carbon and
renewable energy sector could support nearly 80,000 jobs by 2050.“

 Herald 28th June 2025,
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25261384.torness-ideal-small-modular-reactor-says-britain-remade/

June 28, 2025 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

As NATO Countries Pledge to Up Defense Spending, Will Food and Climate Security Have a Seat at the Table?

By Siena Cicarelli and Tom Ellison, https://climateandsecurity.org/2025/06/as-nato-countries-pledge-to-up-defense-spending-will-food-and-climate-security-have-a-seat-at-the-table/

This summer marks a critical juncture for European food and climate security. Before heading off on their summer holidays, leaders will attempt to navigate burgeoning crises in the Middle East, an unpredictable US government, growing defense needs, and an unstable global economy. 

Several key political decision points are unfolding this summer, starting with this week’s NATO Summit, where a number of member state leaders committed to a new defense and security spending target of 5 percent of GDP by 2035, which, if implemented by the target date, could entail roughly hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. However, given that the text of the commitment changed from “all Allies” to just “Allies,” in the final hours of negotiations, commitments will likely vary by member state. Furthermore, given the current combination of budget deficits, national politics, and a collective shift towards “competitiveness,” the European Union risks falling prey to false dichotomies and short-termism, placing climate and food security priorities essential to sustainable security on the back burner in favor of “hard” security goals. While 1.5% GDP of the new spending target can come from non-defense resilience, infrastructure, and civil preparedness spending, food and climate security were not prominent at the NATO Summit.

There are some positive signs, however, that countries are considering climate resilience as a core part of their defense and security strategies. This includes an explicit climate security pledge in the recent EU-UK defense partnership announcement and reported plans from some NATO members, like Spain and Southern Mediterranean states, to use the 1.5% resilience carveout for disaster response and climate investments.

A key indicator of how Europe will prioritize and balance food security, climate resilience, and defense needs will be the next five-year EU budget, also known as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and updates to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – the initial proposals for which are expected to be released in mid-July. The CAP is a complex structure of subsidies and schemes related to farming, environmental protection, and rural development that aims to keep European farmers competitive, enhance food security, and protect biodiversity. It remains the EU’s second-largest budgetary line item at €387/$450 billion in the current MFF period (roughly 25% of the EU budget). The formation of the MFF is notoriously opaque, but initial reporting suggests a limited commitment from national governments to additional expenditures and a strong desire from the largest net contributors to allocate more to joint procurement and defense spending. This raises doubts about whether the bloc’s food security ambitions are feasible, or if policies will be fractured across EU member states in a so-called “27-speed” system. 

While the topline goals of the CAP are relatively clear, implementation remains a perennial political challenge for the European Union. In 2024, farmers’ protests spread across Europe over concerns about fuel subsidy reductions, safety net cuts, and environmental regulations in the CAP. The protests at times featured misinformation, threats to political leaders, and property damage, and were exploited by right wing extremists and Russian propagandists to build influence and stoke division. This year, Commissioners have tried to reassure farmers that direct subsidies (which are €291/$338 billion, about three-quarters of the CAP budget) will likely remain protected in the next MFF, but concerns about cuts to rural development and national-level programs have already set top farming groups on edge.

More broadly, Europe cannot afford to ignore food and climate risks amid new defense spending obligations. Staple crops that underpin European food security and local agricultural economies are endangered in the coming decades, even with robust adaptation. In 2024, the European Environment Agency’s European Climate Risk Assessment rated risks from extreme weather disruptions to crop production and climate-driven food price spikes as rising from “substantial” to “critical” over the next two decades. Recent studies have showcased that agricultural vulnerability – and potential losses – are EU-wide. While the risks are severe in southern European states like Spain and Italy, they don’t stop there. The Benelux states, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, as well as southern regions of the Nordics, also face unusually hot and dry conditions. Drought alone currently drives over 50% of agricultural climate risk and is expected to contribute heavily to the EIB-estimated 42-66% increase in annual average crop losses (from EUR 17.4 billion to 24.8-28.9 billion annually) over the next 25 years. When incorporating other agricultural outputs, such as livestock or aquaculture, estimated annual losses reach EUR 40+ billion by 2050. These losses have cascading effects outside of the food and agricultural sector, straining supply chains and potentially boosting prices for consumers across the bloc. 

With climate change contributing to rising food, energy, and insurance prices, demands for military disaster relief, and overseas instability risks and migration, turning a blind eye to these risks could intensify a vicious cycle of affordability crises and nativist politics that already constrain Europe’s security investments. Under-resourced or disorderly approaches to these challenges would hinder Europe’s resilience and security, with climate and economic shocks to food exacerbating divisions that could precipitate another round of protests and even political shifts in upcoming elections, undermining European unity.

The Center for Climate and Security (CCS) will be watching for how key issues play out as these challenges come into focus this summer and over the coming years, including:


  • How does the EU balance its commitments to the CAP and the MFF with the budgetary demands of the new NATO target?
  • To what extent are any reforms or substantial changes to the CAP structure done in consultations with producers, consumers and other stakeholders navigating the green transition, to insulate against green backlash or disinformation?
  • What role can food and climate security investments play in the 1.5% of GDP portion of the NATO spending target that includes non-defense resilience, infrastructure, and civil preparedness?

June 28, 2025 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE | Leave a comment

EU and UK make contributions to EBRD-managed Chornobyl ICCA fund


 EBRD 26th June 2025,
https://www.ebrd.com/home/news-and-events/news/2025/eu-and-uk-make-contributions-to-ebrd-managed-chornobyl-icca-fund.html

  • EU and United Kingdom pledge up to €31.7 million to EBRD-managed International Chernobyl Cooperation Account
  • Contributions will help fund emergency repairs to New Safe Confinement
  • Total cost of emergency repairs could exceed €100 million

The European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom will make contributions to the EBRD-managed International Chernobyl Cooperation Account (ICCA) as part of ongoing international efforts to support the restoration of the key functions of the New Safe Confinement (NSC) at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (ChNPP) in Ukraine.

The EU will contribute up to €25 million, while the United Kingdom will contribute up to €6.7 million, with both pledges being made at today’s ICCA Assembly meeting in London. The money will be used to fund emergency repairs to the NSC following the Russian drone attack in February 2025.

That strike has severely affected the NSC’s two primary functions: (i) containing radiological hazards and (ii) supporting long-term decommissioning. Key systems designed to ensure the NSC’s 100-year lifespan have been rendered non-operational, with a significant risk of further deterioration in the absence of swift emergency repairs. While it is difficult to provide an accurate estimate of the cost of repairs to the NSC at the moment, the scale of the damage and the complex radiological environment suggest that the total cost of the emergency works could exceed €100 million.

Balthasar Lindauer, EBRD Nuclear Safety Department Director, said, “These new pledges to the ICCA are a manifestation of the international community’s unwavering support for Chornobyl and its togetherness in the face of the major radiological threat that the damaged NSC poses. We are grateful to the EU and the United Kingdom for their contributions to the ICCA.”

The ICCA was established by the EBRD in November 2020 at the request of the Ukrainian government. It was set up as a multilateral fund to support the development of a comprehensive plan for Chornobyl. The EBRD manages the ICCA, which currently holds some €25 million in donor funds. Following the occupation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) at the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the scope of the ICCA was broadened to support the restoration of safety and security within the CEZ, as well as wider nuclear safety measures across Ukraine.

The international community has contributed around €2 billion to EBRD-managed programmes in Chornobyl since 1995. In addition, the Bank has made more than €800 million of its net income available for Chornobyl-related projects.

June 28, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Centrica set to take 15% stake in Sizewell C nuclear project.

All sides are keen to reach an investment decision in July after years of delay and
months of negotiations. Centrica is set to take a 15 per cent stake in the
UK’s Sizewell C nuclear project after years of delay and months of drawn
out negotiations. All sides are keen to reach a final investment decision
on the project before parliament’s recess on July 21, according to people
familiar with the discussions.

The final cost of Sizewell — set to be
only the second new nuclear plant built in a generation in Britain —
could be close to £40bn, the Financial Times reported in January based on
assumptions from industry experts. Sizewell’s management has rejected
that figure although no new estimate has been given.

The planned investment
by Centrica means that the FTSE 100 energy company behind British Gas would
have the same size stake in Sizewell C as French state-owned energy group
EDF, which has progressively reduced its position in the Suffolk project to
15 per cent.

Centrica already holds a 20 per cent stake in the parent
company of the entity that operates EDF’s existing nuclear assets in the
UK. The investment in Sizewell could still come in time for French
President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to London for an Anglo-French summit on
July 8. However, timetables have slipped, according to the people familiar
with the situation, putting that goal in doubt.

 FT 27th June 2025 , https://www.ft.com/content/5e107953-7f93-4a0d-ba73-6f28213e943c

June 28, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

How Torness will decommission and what it means for jobs.

.The power plant is due to stop generating by the end of March 2030. However, that will not
be the end of the story, with decommissioning work expected to get under
way there afterwards. A spokesperson for EDF, which manages the plant,
said: “Decommissioning happens in stages. “Removing all the spent fuel
from the reactors will take about four years and will be carried out by
EDF.

“The site will then transfer to Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS)
to carry out deconstruction. “It will take around 15 years to remove all
the buildings from site, with the exception of the reactor building.

“It will be left in situ, in a state called ‘Safestore’, for around 70 years,
until final site clearance.” The decommissioning staffing structure is
yet to be agreed at the power station, which currently employs about 550
full-time EDF employees, plus more than 180 full-time contract partners.

Staff consultation is yet to begin, but the spokesperson added: “Every
site is different but, as a rough guide, at Hunterston B, the number of EDF
staff being transferred to NRS is about 250, which is around half the
generation headcount. “This has been a managed reduction which has been
taking place over a number of years and has largely been accommodated
through redeployment, retirement and voluntary redundancy.

“During defueling, we will go through formal consultation with staff to see who
wants to stay at site and who would like to leave. “Decommissioning
offers lots of new opportunities, but we have found at other sites that not
everyone who works at a site during generation wants to stay and be part of
deconstruction. “Those who do want to stay and secure a role in the
decommissioning structure will transfer over to NRS.

 Herald 28th June 2025, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25260842.torness-will-decommission-means-jobs/

June 28, 2025 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Why Trump’s Golden Dome must be opposed – Bruce Gagnon & Dae-Han Song

19 Jun 2025

In January 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the US armed forces to construct a missile defense system – the ‘Golden Dome’ – a proposed multi-layer defense system, comparable to the Iron Dome system in Israel. It aims to place and maintain space weapons orbit, for the first time in history.

The proposed system will be exorbitant. According to US Congress sources it could cost several trillion dollars. This would require the US to cut every one of its remaining social programs. Such a military system would inflict ever more damage to the environment both on and around our planet.

Trump wants such a system, so that the US can launch a nuclear attack on another nuclear armed country and the US be confident that it has sufficient defenses to reduce the impact of any retaliatory missiles launched against US to levels deemed acceptable to US military planners. As the US advances its war drive, it is developing its military alliances with other countries and locking them into its war preparations.

Military coordination is being stepped up with increased ‘interoperability’ of hardware. In these alliances, such as NATO, it is always the US that is ‘in charge of the tip of the spear’.

Bruce Gagnon, in discussion with Dae-Han Song, explains why the proposed Golden Dome should be opposed. Bruce Gagnon has been organizing to stop the new arms race in space (Star Wars) since 1982. He began by coordinating the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice from 1983-1998. During those years, in 1992, he co-founded the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in space that he now coordinates. Bruce began his organizing career working for the United Farm Workers Union. He is a Vietnam war era veteran. He lives in Brunswick, Maine.


Website of The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space: https://space4peace.org/ The petition against the Golden Dome is here: https://space4peace.org/global-networ… Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Center and the Korea Policy Institute. He is a member of the international No Cold War collective.

June 27, 2025 Posted by | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Chris Hedges Report: Starvation and Profiteering in Gaza (w/ Francesca Albanese)

Francesca Albanese joins Chris Hedges to break down the current starvation campaign in Gaza, and her upcoming report detailing the profiteering corporations capitalizing on the erasure of Palestinians

Chris Hedges, Jun 26, 2025

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

There is not much more that can be said about the unfathomable levels of devastation the genocide in Gaza has reached. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been chronicling the genocide and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to shed light on the current situation in Gaza, including parts from her upcoming report on the profiteers of the genocide.

Israel’s siege on the Palestinians is leaving the population starving, and Albanese lambasts other nations for not stepping up and completing their obligations under international law. “[Countries] have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I’m asking you. This is your obligation,” she explains.

Albanese compares Gaza and Israel’s siege to a concentration camp, stating it is unsustainable but also allows the world to witness how a Western settler colonial entity functions. “There is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism,” Albanese tells Hedges.

In her forthcoming report, Albanese will detail exactly how Palestine has been exploited by the global capitalist system and will highlight the role certain corporations have played in the genocide. “[T]here are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life,” she says.

“The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”……………………………………………TRANSCRIPT………………………………….. …………..https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/25/the-chris-hedges-report-starvation-and-profiteering-in-gaza-w-francesca-albanese/

June 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Why Limit Iranian Enrichment Peacefully When You Can Bomb Them Instead?

A deal was limiting Iran’s enrichment of uranium until Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of it. Instead the Dealmaker bombed Iran, threatening to set the region on fire, writes Joe Lauria. With a ceasefire what does he do now?

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News. June 24, 2025, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/06/24/why-limit-iranian-enrichment-peacefully-when-you-can-bomb-them-instead/

In the last great achievement of international diplomacy, the United States and its allies Britain, France and Germany, concluded a deal in 2015 with Russia, China and Iran — something that today would be unthinkable — to limit Iran’s nuclear enrichment to purely civilian uses at 3.67 percent. 

Negotiations on the deal began in November 2013, just three months before the U.S.-backed unconstitutional change of government in Kiev that started the long slide in U.S.-Russian relations. That did not prevent the nuclear deal from being concluded in July 2015 and endorsed by the Security Council in October of that year. 

Seven years later, Washington and its European allies began  fighting a hot war against Moscow through its proxy Ukraine. Relations with China have also sharply deteriorated. The idea of such cooperation on Iran now is unthinkable.

But in 2013 such wise diplomacy was still possible and the result was a peaceful resolution of the Iranian enrichment issue.

Iran agreed to stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency and in exchange, the United States, Europe and the United Nations lifted economic sanctions against Tehran. 

The IAEA certified that the deal was working. Iran was sticking to 3.67 percent enrichment. Diplomacy worked. Iran’s nuclear program was in check.

But the Israelis had opposed it all along because Israel’s aim has long been to overthrow the government in Iran in Israel’s quest for regional dominance.  

Netanyahu could not stop Barack Obama from working with the Chinese and the Russians to conclude the deal that solved the nuclear issue and left the Iranian government in a more secure position. 

Then Donald Trump became president. He did what Netanyahu wanted. He pulled the U.S. out of the deal, saying it was a lousy agreement and he could do better. But there was no new deal.  Iran continued to cooperate with the existing agreement for a year before increasing enrichment, eventually to 60 percent for leverage in the negotiation. (90 percent is needed for a bomb, but U.S. intelligence and the IAEA said in recents months that Iran is not pursuing a bomb).

Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, did nothing to return the U.S. to the deal to save it when he got into the White House, dishonoring probably Obama’s greatest achievement.

Trump 2.0’s idea of a better deal to limit Tehran’s enrichment was to demand zero percent after Iran agreed to return to 3.67 percent. Trump would look like a fool if he accepted 3.67 percent, as that would mean agreeing to the very deal that was working well before he tore it up. 

So it was bombs away instead.   

Clearing Smoke Reveals Trump’s Lies

More than 24 hours after the smoke cleared above Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities Trump’s lies during his address Saturday night came clearly into view. 

The strikes were not “a spectacular military success.” Iran’s “key nuclear enrichment facilities” were not “completely and totally obliterated.” There is no evidence that a single centrifuge was damaged and Iran’s 60 percent enriched fuel had already been removed and is in a location unknown to Israel, the U.S. and the IAEA.

Trump called Iran the “bully of the Middle East” when any neutral person knows that bully is Israel backed by the U.S., the bully of the world. 

In just the past few months, with U.S. backing, Israel has invaded Lebanon and Syria, launched an unprovoked attack on Iran and is committing genocide in Gaza. The last time Iran invaded anyone was Iraq in 1982 but only after Iraq had invaded it first in 1980. 

Israel gets away with this by portraying itself as the perpetual victim of an imminent new Holocaust 80 years after the fact and thus needs to invade and bomb its neighbors in “self defense” to pre-empt this from happening.

Regional hostility toward Israel does not stem from a reaction to its decades of aggression against Palestinians and its neighbors but purely from anti-semitic hatred.  These countries must constantly be attacked to wipe out this hatred, not to reconstitute an ancient Hebrew empire from (beyond) the River to the Sea. 

One power that empire never conquered was Persia

With their overlapping empires — Israel’s regional and the U.S.’s global — Iran, the land of Darius and Cyrus, is the prime target. The U.S. has sought to control it since at least its 1953 coup restored the shah to power for its oil and because of its Cold War rivalry with Russia.

Trump mimicked Israel, calling Iran “the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” when an objective analysis would correctly award that title to the Gulf Sunni monarchies, principally Saudi Arabia, all allied with the United States.

They have sponsored al-Qaeda and ISIS and all their offshoots and rebrandings, while Iran has mostly supported militia resisting occupations in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Gaza.

Though formed in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah was only designated a terrorist organization by the European Union in 2013, for instance. Though founded in 1987, the EU did not view Hamas as a terrorist group until 2001.

Then Trump said of Iran:

“They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate.” 

This is a bizarre statement that can only be related to attacks by militia against U.S. occupation forces in Iraq after the U.S. 2003 invasion. But only some of these groups were Iranian-backed and they killed not a thousand, but 169 U.S. soldiers, whom Trump referred to as “our people,” as if they were tourists and not an occupying army. 

Trump’s thousand U.S. victims appears to come from propaganda put out by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which calls itself “a leading independent research institute, serving as Israel’s global embassy for national security and applied diplomacy.”

It combats what it calls “apartheid antisemitism.” It falsely called the 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump withdrew from “a deal that would allow Iran to become a nuclear-armed state.” In 2015, Haaretz named Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s principal donor, “one of the main financers of JCFA in recent years.”

Israel had to cut short its ambitions to conquer Iran (at least overtly) and agree to a ceasefire because it was running out of interceptor missiles; it’s economy, already weakened by Gaza, was threatened at $200 million a day; and it sustained far more damage than it will admit.

Now that there is a ceasefire, Trump is back to square one. The New York Times reported: 

“Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, welcomed news of a cease-fire. In a social-media post, he said he has invited Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi to meet to discuss a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program.”

That solution would be a return to 3.67 percent enrichment and Iran giving up its 60 percent stockpile, in other words, returning exactly to the deal Trump tore up to plunge the region into extreme danger with his bombing stunt.

Where will he turn now?

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. 

June 27, 2025 Posted by | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Iran Shows Us Why The US And Israel Should Not Be Allowed To Have Nukes.

Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 25, 2025

Well it’s been a crazy couple of days.

Trump bombed Iran’s civilian nuclear energy facilities in an attack that CNN reports did no lasting damage, and Iran exercised extraordinary restraint with symbolic retaliatory strikes on US military bases coordinated to avoid American casualties — a move many are comparing to Iran’s non-lethal response to the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

After pumping out deception and fake diplomacy for weeks in order to assist Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran and launch an unprovoked attack on his own, Trump took to social media to proudly celebrate his administration’s facilitation of a ceasefire to the war he himself needlessly started, like an arsonist giving himself a trophy for extinguishing one of his own house fires.

And, for the moment at least, the ceasefire appears to be holding. Which is good. There are a lot of terrible people who did everything they could to get Iran to kill US troops and spark a horrific war, but Iran didn’t take the bait. Iran doesn’t want war at all. Trump found out that Americans disapproved of the airstrikes and opposed war with Iran. And Israel found out that fighting an actual military force is a lot less easy than fighting hospital patients and children.

So for now we’ve got a ceasefire.

We have never been shown any evidence that Iran was working on obtaining nuclear weapons, which given the US empire’s extensive history of lying about this sort of thing means we should assume it was not. But it has certainly been given every incentive to obtain them now, given that that’s probably the only thing that can stop the US and Israel from casually committing these egregious acts of aggression whenever they feel like it.

And isn’t it interesting how Iran keeps demonstrating a degree of restraint that we all know we’d never see from the United States or Israel if another country bombed their energy infrastructure or assassinated their military leaders, and yet Iran is the country we’re told can never be trusted with nuclear weapons?

The US empire and Israel both exist in a perpetual state of war and attack other countries constantly; Iran never invades other countries and avoids war like Melania Trump avoids missionary position. But we’re meant to accept that it’s fine for the US and Israel to have nukes and do anything necessary to prevent Iran from getting any?

Even if you accept the evidence-free premise that Iran would do crazy and reckless things if it became a nuclear-armed state, there is no rational argument that Trump and his handlers have been going about preventing this outcome intelligently. As Joe Lauria explains in Consortium News, the Iran nuclear deal was a remarkable achievement of international diplomacy that was working fine until Trump shredded it in 2018. Iran was following all the agreed upon rules and its nuclear enrichment was capped at 3.67 percent, but Trump killed it because the Zionists and warmongers who brought him to power want more aggression toward Iran instead of less.

It’s so intensely stupid that we have to keep doing this horrifying dance every few years just because there are too many war-horny freaks with way too much power inside the US empire. And every time they get closer to getting their wish. Iran is being given more and more reasons to view the US and Israel as an existential threat, more and more motive to obtain nuclear weapons, and less and less reason to negotiate anything with Washington.

These bastards keep pushing us toward something very ugly. Let’s hope people keep waking up to the depravity of Israel and the US empire before the warmakers succeed in obtaining their long-sought prize.

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June 27, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

  Trump rejects leaked intelligence that says strikes did not destroy Iran nuclear programme.

 Donald Trump insists nuclear sites in Iran were
“completely destroyed” by US military strikes, despite an intelligence
report casting doubt on their success The leaked damage assessment from the
Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency estimates the attack only set Iran’s
nuclear programme back “a few months”

 BBC 25th June 2025,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c20xel1e97gt

June 27, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Policy Exchange launches its new high level international Nuclear Enterprise Commission today

Policy Exchange launches its new Nuclear Enterprise Commission today, which will study how the Government should combine and amplify its civil and military nuclear programmes.

The Commission will be chaired by former Cabinet Secretary Rt Hon Simon Case CVO – a leading authority on the nuclear deterrent – and will include other internationally renowned nuclear experts.

As many nuclear states seek to update their capabilities, the Commission will examine the UK’s force posture in a multipolar world, the future of the NATO Nuclear Planning Group, the US nuclear shield and tactical nuclear weapons.

The overlapping civil and military benefits of expanded nuclear capacity must be encouraged, and Policy Exchange’s Commission will address how the Government can break-out of over-regulation to get building.

The Commission will bring together internationally renowned experts on civil and military nuclear, with representation from the UK, America, Europe, and Asia. The programme will run for six months, holding public and private events and publishing Research Notes on the key themes pertaining to the nuclear enterprise.

To mark the launch of the commission, Policy Exchange today publishes two studies on the history of the UK’s civil and military nuclear programmes.

Policy Exchange 24th June 2025, https://policyexchange.org.uk/policy-exchange-launches-new-nuclear-enterprise-commission/

June 27, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Why do we pretend heatwaves are fun – and ignore the brutal, burning reality?

 An estimated 600 people will die as a result of this one heatwave. Those
kinds of numbers from a virus would spark at least a localised lockdown,
and in a plane crash, a national day of mourning.

But it’s hard to respond to climate fatalities proportionately without confronting global
heating and taking on the underlying inequalities that make some people
more vulnerable than others. High temperatures are much more dangerous when
you’re disabled, when you’re homeless, when you’re incarcerated, when
you’re old. It would be pretty rum to be squeezing disability benefits at
the same time as worrying about whether disabled people are at greater risk
from the weather, and need more care – better to imagine this an act of
God, in which the deaths cannot possibly be prevented.

 Guardian 23rd June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/23/why-do-we-pretend-heatwaves-are-fun-and-ignore-the-brutal-burning-reality

June 27, 2025 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

‘Conspicuous’ Small Modular Nuclear Reactors need fresh police funding model, security expert warns

23 Jun, 2025 By Tom Pashby  New Civil Engineer 23rd June 2025

A proliferation of small modular reactors (SMRs) across England and Wales, expanding the number of reactors and types of locations they are deployed in, means the country needs a fresh police funding model for SMR security, an expert has said.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/conspicuous-smrs-need-fresh-police-funding-model-security-expert-warns-23-06-2025/

June 27, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

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