nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Taxpayers to cough up  £65.6 million for nuclear “industry-informed” education in British universities

University of Derby helps drive UK nuclear skills expansion

The University of Derby is part of two university consortia that have been awarded funding to lead new doctoral training programmes designed to develop the UK’s future nuclear workforce. The Government has announced a £65.6 million investment for a bespoke nuclear Doctoral Focal Award

Delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and match-funded by industry, the programmes will train more than 500 doctoral students at universities across the country, over the next four academic intakes. The University of Derby is a partner in two of the six new national doctoral training programmes announced.

The first consortium, led by Bangor University, has secured funding to establish PANDA (the Programme for Accelerating Nuclear Development and Applications), which will train up to 100 doctoral researchers. PANDA will be delivered in partnership with the UK National Nuclear Laboratory and the universities of Bristol, Birmingham, Cambridge, Derby, Imperial College London and Manchester. Together, these partners will support a new generation of researchers equipped to meet the UK’s future nuclear and clean‑energy needs, including a specific focus on defence.

Derby is also a partner in the STAND-UP (Skills and Training driving availability of National Defence Assets UP skilling) programme, led by the University of Strathclyde, which will train 80 Engineering Doctorate researchers.

This programme aims to develop the next generation of nuclear engineers and support the transition to ‘net zero’. It will help strengthen the UK’s capabilities in nuclear engineering, advanced manufacturing, digital technologies and nuclear decommissioning, bringing together partner universities Cumbria, Lancaster, Nottingham, Birmingham and Surrey.

Professor Kathryn Mitchell, vice-chancellor and chief executive of the University of Derby, said: “Developing the skills and expertise of the next generation is essential to securing a sustainable talent pipeline for the nuclear sector. The University of Derby is committed to working with partners to drive bold action on the UK’s nuclear skills shortage.”

She continued: “Together with our partners, we are creating clear pathways into specialised careers, delivering industry-informed education, and supporting cutting edge research. Through this work, we are helping to build a stronger national workforce and ensuring the future success of this vital sector.”

The announcement follows the Nuclear Skills Plan, launched in May 2024, which contained a recommendation to quadruple the number of nuclear fission doctoral students to address the shortage of high-level nuclear skills across both civil and defence and replace an aging workforce.

Over 500 doctoral students will be trained at universities across the country in academic years 2026/27 to 2033/34, quadrupling today’s intake of nuclear doctoral students. These doctoral students will be equipped with a broad range of advanced technical skills essential for the UK’s future civil and defence nuclear programmes, supporting the UK’s economic growth, energy and national security, and ‘net zero’ objectives.

March 26, 2026 Posted by | Education, UK | Leave a comment

Trump’s $200 billion Iran spending request reveals scale of US war plans.

In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.

The $200 billion is a supplemental—on top of the $839 billion defense bill Congress already passed for fiscal year 2026, the largest military budget in American history. If approved, direct military spending this year will exceed $1 trillion. US President Donald Trump has called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a 50 percent increase.

Andre Damon, 19 March 2026, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/20/iuck-m20.html

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is seeking more than $200 billion to fund the war against Iran.

At a press briefing Thursday, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “why a package this large is necessary?” Hegseth not only confirmed the $200 billion figure but suggested it could grow. “I think that number could move,” he said. “It takes money to kill bad guys. So we’re going back to Congress to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future.”

And what, exactly, are these unspecified things the administration “may have to do”?

In 2003, when 150,000 American soldiers invaded and occupied Iraq, Congress appropriated $51 billion—a quarter of what the Trump administration is requesting before a single ground soldier has entered Iran. At the height of the 2007-2008 surge, when nearly 170,000 American soldiers occupied the country, the war cost roughly $144 billion a year.

In reality, the $200 billion is not about “what we may have to do in the future” but about what the White House is actively conspiring to do in the present. The budget request comes as the administration prepares a ground invasion of Iran, deploying 5,000 Marines from the Pacific to the Middle East amid demands by the Wall Street Journal and leading Republicans for the seizure of Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the Trump administration has discussed sending ground forces to seize Kharg Island, the hub for 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, and has separately discussed deploying US forces to secure Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium. They are operational plans for the invasion and occupation of Iranian territory—and they explain why the administration is demanding more money than was appropriated for any single year of the Iraq invasion.

Just as with the months and years of planning that preceded the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the ground invasion is being prepared behind the backs of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose the war. Trump called the war an “excursion.” Vice President JD Vance promised it would not become a “quagmire.” At the same briefing where he confirmed the $200 billion request, Hegseth told reporters: “The media wants you to think, just 19 days into this conflict, that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a Forever War or a quagmire. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.

The administration sees the Iran war as a prelude to an effort to subjugate China, the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity. As former Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry put it on ABC’s This Week, the wars in Venezuela and Iran are “targets of opportunity to reshape the world.” He added: “Venezuela was in service to American energy dominance. The issue with Iran was a target of opportunity… The results here will mean that, with China, the president’s hand will be enhanced.”

The $200 billion is a supplemental—on top of the $839 billion defense bill Congress already passed for fiscal year 2026, the largest military budget in American history. If approved, direct military spending this year will exceed $1 trillion. US President Donald Trump has called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a 50 percent increase.

And $200 billion is only what the administration will admit to. In 2002, Bush’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired for estimating the Iraq war would cost $100 to $200 billion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the figure at “something under $50 billion.” When told outside estimates ran to $300 billion, Rumsfeld replied: “Baloney.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. The actual cost, including veterans’ care, disability payments and interest on the debt, is now estimated by Brown University’s Costs of War Project at more than $8 trillion.

The waging of continuous wars, combined with the 2008 and 2020 bank bailouts, has produced an explosion of US debt. In 2000, before the Iraq war, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. By 2010, after the Iraq surge and the $700 billion TARP bank bailout, it had reached $12.3 trillion. By 2020, after $4.6 trillion in COVID bailouts, it hit $27 trillion. It now stands at $39 trillion—nearly seven times what it was a quarter century ago.

The United States credit rating has been downgraded three times—by Standard & Poor’s in 2011, Fitch in 2023 and Moody’s in 2025—each time because of military spending and the refusal of either party to cut the military budget. The Vietnam War destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and produced the inflation of the 1970s, which the ruling class broke through the Volcker shock—mass unemployment to crush wages. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were waged alongside tax cuts for the wealthy and the gutting of public services.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed last July, imposed $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade, $536 billion in cuts to Medicare and $186 billion in cuts to food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the largest cut to food aid in American history. The fiscal year 2026 budget slashed domestic spending by 22.6 percent—cutting the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by 44 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by 44 percent and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $18 billion—while increasing the military budget by 13 percent.

Within 24 hours of the administration confirming it is seeking $200 billion for the war, the Postmaster General testified to Congress that the United States Postal Service (USPS) could run out of cash as soon as October—with just $8.2 billion in reserves, enough to cover 33 days of operations. The USPS employs more than 500,000 workers and holds billions in pension and retirement obligations. The manufactured insolvency is a pretext for raiding those funds—taking workers’ pension money and spending it on the war.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represent trillions more. The ruling class sees these programs as money to be seized. The administration does not see pensions and healthcare as social programs. It sees them as collateral.

Trump has promised the economic pain will be a temporary “blip.” This will not pass in weeks. It will mean a permanent reduction in working-class living standards, just as the Iraq war did.

The struggle to defend Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, pensions and public services cannot be separated from the struggle against war. They are the same struggle. The $200 billion the administration demands is money taken from the programs working people depend on to survive.

The Democrats have systematically enabled Trump’s wars. In January, as Trump declared that a massive armada was steaming toward Iran, every leading Democrat in Congress voted for the $839 billion military budget—Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Whip Dick Durbin all voted in favor. Their criticism of the war has centered on procedural issues, along with demands that US imperialism direct its fire at Russia and China.

Opposition must come from below—from workers in the United States, in Iran, across the Middle East and around the world—organized independently of both capitalist parties, armed with a socialist and internationalist program, and fighting to build the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as the revolutionary leadership of the working class. The fight against imperialist war is the fight against the capitalist system that produces it.

March 25, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK’s Astute nuclear submarine timeline is very unlikely to be met.

Brief Update on the SSN Programme

17.03.2026, https://www.nuclearinfo.org/article/brief-update-on-the-ssn-programme/

The Astute project has the objective of delivering conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy, otherwise acronymised as SSNs. Seven submarines are planned to be delivered, with five currently operational: HMS Astute, HMS Ambush, HMS Artful, HMS Audacious, and HMS Anson. During February, HMS Anson arrived in Australia at HMAS Stirling. This visit was intended to be for maintenance and a symbolic demonstration of the trilateral AUKUS partnership between the UK, US, and Australia, which aims to develop nuclear-powered submarines with advanced conventional capabilities. AUKUS submarines are planned to succeed the Astute class. The sixth Astute-class submarine, HMS Agamemnon, was commissioned into the Royal Navy and completed its first dive last year, while HMS Achilles is currently under construction. The seven Astute submarines were once hoped to be delivered by the end of this year, but this timeline is very unlikely to be met.

This reflects the persistent challenges that have long bedevilled submarine construction in the UK, including delays, technical issues, accidents, and rising costs. HMS Anson itself for instance was delayed (among other factors) due to setbacks with HMS Audacious, while the 2024 fire in Barrow, the main shipyard for manufacturing the UK’s nuclear submarines, will further delay progress on the final Astute submarine. Also, AUKUS may generate geopolitical tensions among its partners. A US Congressional report earlier from this year has raised the possibility of withholding submarines from Australia due to concerns that the sale may divert US submarine capacity from a potential conflict with China. Meanwhile, some analysts question the strategic trade-offs of deploying HMS Anson to the Indo-Pacific, given the UK’s defence commitments in Europe and the Atlantic. These issues point to dual risks facing the SSN programme: first, achieving successful and timely delivery, and second, achieving agreement among allies over its strategic objectives and operational use.

March 25, 2026 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Deregulation – DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator

ProPublica, by Avi Asher-Schapiro, March 20, 2026

Reporting Highlights

  • Fast Nuclear Buildout: The Trump administration is rapidly rewriting rules to support the development of nuclear power plants.
  • Aligning With Industry: Staffers from DOGE are revamping rules in ways to ease regulations and provide financial breaks for industry.
  • “No Longer Independent”: Nuclear Regulatory Commission veterans say the administration is limiting oversight in dangerous ways.

Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the U.S. government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology.

On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant experience in nuclear law or policy; he had just entered government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.

As Cohen led the group through a technical conversation about licensing nuclear reactor designs, he repeatedly downplayed health and safety concerns. When staff brought up the topic of radiation exposure from nuclear test sites, Cohen broke in.

“They are testing in Utah. … I don’t know, like 70 people live there,” he said.

“But … there’s lots of babies,” one staffer pushed back. Babies, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups are thought to be potentially more susceptible to cancers brought on by low-level radiation exposure, and they are usually afforded greater protections.

“They’ve been downwind before,” another staffer joked.

“This is why we don’t use AI transcription in meetings,” another added.

ProPublica reviewed records of that meeting, providing a rare look at a dramatic shift underway in one of the most sensitive domains of public policy. The Trump administration is upending the way nuclear energy is regulated, driven by a desire to dramatically increase the amount of energy available to power artificial intelligence.

Career experts have been forced out and thousands of pages of regulations are being rewritten at a sprint. A new generation of nuclear energy companies — flush with Silicon Valley cash and boasting strong political connections — wield increasing influence over policy. Figures like Cohen are forcing a “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley ethos on one of the country’s most important regulators.

The Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in its attacks on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the bipartisan independent regulator that approves commercial nuclear power plants and monitors their safety. The agency is not a household name. But it’s considered the international gold standard, often influencing safety rules around the world.

The NRC has critics, especially in Silicon Valley, where the often-cautious commission is portrayed as an impediment to innovation. In an early salvo, President Donald Trump fired NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson last June after Hanson spoke out about the importance of agency independence. It was the first time an NRC commissioner had been fired.

During that Idaho meeting, Cohen shot down any notion of NRC independence in the new era.

“Assume the NRC is going to do whatever we tell the NRC to do,” he said, records reviewed by ProPublica show. In November, Cohen was made chief counsel for nuclear policy at the Department of Energy, where he oversees a broad nuclear portfolio.

The aggressive moves have sent shock waves through the nuclear energy world. Many longtime promoters of the industry say they worry recklessness from the Trump administration could discredit responsible nuclear energy initiatives.

“The regulator is no longer an independent regulator — we do not know whose interests it is serving,” warned Allison Macfarlane, who served as NRC chair during the Obama administration. “The safety culture is under threat.”

A ProPublica analysis of staffing data from the NRC and the Office of Personnel Management shows a rush to the exits: Over 400 people have left the agency since Trump took office. The losses are particularly pronounced in the teams that handle reactor and nuclear materials safety and among veteran staffers with 10 or more years of experience. Meanwhile, hiring of new staff has proceeded at a snail’s pace, with nearly 60 new arrivals in the first year of the Trump administration compared with nearly 350 in the last year of the Biden administration…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Meanwhile, some staff members, other career officials say, are afraid to voice dissenting views for fear of being fired. “It feels like being a lobster in a slowly boiling pot,” one NRC official who has been working on the rule changes told ProPublica, describing the erosion of independence.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. “Nuke Bros” in Silicon Valley

One Trump administration priority has been making it easier for so-called advanced reactor companies to navigate the regulatory process. These firms, mostly backed by Silicon Valley tech and venture money, are often working on designs for much smaller reactors that they hope to mass produce in factories.

“There are two nuclear industries,” said Macfarlane, the former NRC chair. “There are the actual people who use nuclear reactors to produce power and put it on the grid … and then there are the ‘nuke bros’” in Silicon Valley.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-nuclear-power-nrc-safety-doge-vought

March 25, 2026 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

No Good Exit

21 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media

John Mearsheimer sees war with Iran as a strategic folly, arguing it is unwinnable, will not destroy Iran’s nuclear knowledge, and could, instead, boost Iran’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

No stranger to irony, or paradox, Dr Mearsheimer does not mince words. The West Point graduate and former Air Force Captain, now a distinguished scholar at Cornell, has spent two decades documenting exactly how an American Eagle could get sucked into the vortex of wars that serve its bovver-boy, or Middle-East proxy, Israel, and its bellicose aspirations at enormous cost.

When Mearsheimer speaks about a US military adventure in Iran, he is not waffling. He is quoting from the autopsy he wrote in advance. And Mearsheimer’s verdict on Operation Epic Fury, is that Trump has dug himself into a deep hole; an opinion all the more damning for its formal, almost courteous understatement:

“I think President Trump has put himself in a situation where he really doesn’t have a good exit strategy.”

Trump’s catastrophe may be complex and irretrievable, but it was not inevitable. It was predicted, in detail, by experts whose job it was to predict it, and who were systematically ignored, discredited or sacked for saying so. Trump ignored the experts. This is how he can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The pretext for the attack doesn’t bear scrutiny. Before the first double-tap Tomahawk missile crushed and burned alive 168 schoolchildren on 28 February, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi was announcing what could have been a diplomatic coup: Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, had accepted full IAEA verification, and was prepared to irreversibly downgrade its enriched uranium to the lowest level possible.

Peace, he said, was “within reach.” Further talks were due to resume on 2 March.

Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement.

……………………………………….. Many missile strikes in the war’s opening phase are seen by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes under the Rome Statute. At least a million Lebanese people have been displaced.

https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?gdpr=0&client=ca-pub-3072351457465524&output=html&h=280&adk=2235633406&adf=387799125&w=678&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1774125889&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=5956714339&ad_type=text_image&format=678×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheaimn.net%2Fno-good-exit%2F&host=ca-host-pub-2644536267352236&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=170&rw=678&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&fa=27&uach=WyJXaW5kb3dzIiwiMTkuMC4wIiwieDg2IiwiIiwiMTQ2LjAuNzY4MC44MCIsbnVsbCwwLG51bGwsIjY0IixbWyJDaHJvbWl1bSIsIjE0Ni4wLjc2ODAuODAiXSxbIk5vdC1BLkJyYW5kIiwiMjQuMC4wLjAiXSxbIkdvb2dsZSBDaHJvbWUiLCIxNDYuMC43NjgwLjgwIl1dLDBd&abgtt=7&dt=1774125788538&bpp=1&bdt=3727&idt=0&shv=r20260318&mjsv=m202603170101&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3Dd85616c6c9bd2a6c%3AT%3D1770448449%3ART%3D1774125788%3AS%3DALNI_MbtaAxRxG9MqgIcWMShV7avYd9mzg&gpic=UID%3D000011f58c2d07ec%3AT%3D1770448449%3ART%3D1774125788%3AS%3DALNI_MasvLU7CXh2jEp0EwTeqK932dwU3A&eo_id_str=ID%3D1b13a2c219278375%3AT%3D1770448449%3ART%3D1774125788%3AS%3DAA-AfjYkqjLrM9kIjGmfRgvZ6J5n&prev_fmts=0x0%2C678x280%2C678x280%2C1265x585%2C1265x122%2C678x280%2C678x280%2C678x280%2C678x280&nras=10&correlator=6552144162929&frm=20&pv=1&u_tz=660&u_his=2&u_h=720&u_w=1280&u_ah=672&u_aw=1280&u_cd=32&u_sd=1.5&dmc=8&adx=117&ady=5250&biw=1265&bih=585&scr_x=0&scr_y=2914&eid=95378429%2C95384535%2C42533294%2C95383746%2C95386039%2C95379823&oid=2&psts=AOrYGslFnD4MCobWfWWaTnZO58i7aVt7D29MIFScmcewoQBVZjRgX1f3b9NwGtVkwcGa5Z-1eoPb2VtruRZFG8PO7KJlApj9H8fZyI5zqVkCG4CmXvZmwQ3Box5rCHMTD73x%2CAOrYGslqDhuWvVFLDi_GZC5QcWZeq0_skU9KxspMCRk4eB7tugVH2yaIxi5G3F9O2Lf92rq8U8mMNGoqiazmp1b23UZ4BdLvnwQ3WxWxgRykEZSB%2CAOrYGskeRH4aNaTYW0JyG3hzeADf9iRr0p5FcMslU9tcjQOmsfMxJqNzQgBma4wHaEq5_EyPCfryTvgRCXzrdNA6zXpsYzi2aGa6YBEEsIrD4jk%2CAOrYGsnZlMGylK-NV6L01yQbFeOM_0OyuT3kK6KdRWPAa0ZJ-_fUiqW2vcAZvsE7G9PHnZ_OKbVa1uJ56Zi1H-BaO31G2fiS7gxE7wk%2CAOrYGskrNVCKFAP1enIxqXLvS3enuTJ1vSXSpDKMa_FTU_LIa3i733aUFije2OhcKHUesjN9G6616z_zZ30fUvobJwp9R63Myz8XDtyBjjQdpDmpSw%2CAOrYGsnrFCx6HaDRyuw7FJgzshe7poT_x7bpz6edsQFJsiawAUvVj1cdcmwj8C0dhnUgTtbxVbGZiUsGMRomL8AnScaaQ9jMiTGt-38YWkcIDhQ%2CAOrYGsmGx2dhmzE4w3QV-X9NmiFCpDNgjknMYKowrNLwx0eLRev6mAN_VRDxDLeClYOlXHDvSoaiEQKey8wTUJbgVV1DbfGqHw1h5d1Wiu7sDg&pvsid=5130612622751585&tmod=1337930814&uas=1&nvt=1&fc=1408&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1280%2C0%2C1280%2C672%2C1280%2C585&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=128&bc=31&bz=1&pgls=CAEaBTYuOS40~CAEQBBoHMS4xNzQuMA..&num_ads=1&ifi=8&uci=a!8&btvi=8&fsb=1&dtd=M

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, on his Truth Social, calls Iran “militarily ineffective and weak.”…………………………………………………………………………………..

Trump is demanding NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz. NATO is, to put it charitably, otherwise engaged.

Retreat? Mearsheimer is equally clear-eyed. Declare victory and withdraw, and it will be “perceived as a humiliating defeat for the US.” And that assumes Iran cooperates. “They have many cards to play,” he notes. “They can inflict significant losses. Therefore, even if we retreat, it’s unclear whether this will solve the problem.”

Trump promised a generation of winning. He has delivered a generation’s worth of losing, compressed into twenty days. And let’s not forget his Latin American fiasco. El Presidente, who endeared himself to millions south of the border with his talk of “shithole” countries, has rather a lot of Venezuelans on the warpath after his regime change curdled almost on contact into a neocolonial farce, with Maduro gone, sovereignty shredded and the gringos already with their fingers in the till.

Cuba could be next on Hegseth’s hit-list? Trump does need to keep the distractions going. Meanwhile disinformation is being pumped as vigorously as the Ford plumbing. And with similar effect.

Fox News cheerleaders and the Netanyahu communications office have been carefully not telling the American public: Iran is not the isolated, backward, sanction-crippled military of the pre-war briefings.

It is fighting with Russian eyes and Chinese precision. Together, those two contributions have changed the strategic calculus in ways that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv appear to have seriously gamed………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Netanyahu Factor: Closing Every Window

Mearsheimer’s analysis cuts deepest on the question of diplomacy.

On Day 19, Israeli strikes killed two of Iran’s most consequential figures: security chief Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani. Larijani’s death was not a military decapitation strike in the conventional sense. It was the targeted elimination of Iran’s most experienced nuclear negotiator; a pragmatic, sophisticated operator whom analysts had consistently identified as one of the few figures capable of opening a negotiated exit.

Israel killed the man who could have brokered the ceasefire Netanyahu claims to want.

Netanyahu told Sean Hannity that Operation Epic Fury “will usher in an era of peace that we haven’t even dreamed of” and create conditions for Iranians to form “their own democratically elected government.” He said something substantially similar about Iraq in 2003. About Libya in 2011. The script is laminated. The outcomes are identical. The lesson is never drawn.

He is currently in a bunker, hinting with characteristic coyness that perhaps the Iranian regime survives after all. Of course it does. The Islamic Republic has outlasted everything the West has thrown at it: the Iran-Iraq war, decades of sanctions, assassination campaigns, Stuxnet, and the twelve-day bombing campaign of last June………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Intelligence Scandal Underneath It All

One more thread demands to be pulled. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, has been accused of altering her Senate testimony on Iran; specifically, of omitting intelligence details that contradicted Trump’s claim that Tehran posed an imminent threat. The IAEA had found no evidence Iran was moving toward a nuclear weapon. Oman had just brokered what its foreign minister described as a breakthrough agreement……………………………….

What Australia Needs to Ask

An Iranian projectile struck near Australia’s military headquarters in the UAE this week. Anthony Albanese confirmed it. Then said nothing else useful.

Pine Gap is almost certainly providing targeting intelligence that has enabled strikes now characterised by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes. Under laws amended by the Howard government in 2001 and never restored, the Prime Minister can take Australia to war on Cabinet agreement alone, no parliamentary debate, no public mandate, no vote. Nobody in the national media is asking whether that authority has been invoked. Nobody is asking whether it should be.

The question Mearsheimer asks about Washington; what’s the exit, and who owns the consequences, deserves to be asked in Canberra. With the same urgency. And considerably more honesty than we are currently getting.

……………………. Trump got his war with Iran, on the urging of a foreign government, on the basis of intelligence his own Director of National Intelligence allegedly falsified, over a diplomatic resolution that was days from signature.

History won’t be interested in who did the urging. He owns this. Every schoolgirl in Minab. Every barrel at Ras Laffan. Every day the Hormuz stays closed.

It has, as Mearsheimer warned, no good exit. https://theaimn.net/no-good-exit/

March 25, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump ready to put boots on the ground in Iran

Pentagon draws up plans to seize strategic Kharg Island after US president calls Nato allies ‘cowards’

Benedict Smith US Reporter, in Washington. Henry Bodkin Jerusalem Correspondent, 21 Mar 26

Donald Trump is considering putting American troops on the ground in Iran.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans that could involve seizing Kharg Island,
Iran’s key oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. Mr Trump’s top spokeswoman
confirmed the details to The Telegraph but cautioned that the president had
not made a final decision.

 Telegraph 21st March 2026,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/20/us-launch-offensive-reopen-strait-of-hormuz-iran-war-drones/

March 25, 2026 Posted by | UK, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tremors in MAGA: Joe Kent, the Iran War and the Antisemitism Smear

21 March 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/tremors-in-maga-joe-kent-the-iran-war-and-the-antisemitism-smear/

Joe Kent, the now former US Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, always seemed a bit off, especially to liberals. As a combat veteran of MAGA pedigree, he found favour with President Donald J. Trump, who rewarded him for his conspiracy blustering in a manner befitting other nominees baptised in the truth repelling River of Fox News. But the mindless adventurism in attacking Iran in league with Israel was a step too far.

In his resignation letter, Kent asserted that he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” Till June 2025, the President had “understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”

Then came the machinations of “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” with their “misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.” From there came the “echo chamber” that deceived Trump “into believing Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.” The same tactics had been used by Israel in drawing the US “into the disastrous Iraq War that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

Israel comes in for a further lashing for having left its personal mark on Kent’s life. “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

The portrait of Kent is an unremittingly spiky and jarring one. Even before the resignation, he was already under investigation by the FBI’s criminal division for alleged leaks of classified information, which should commend him to the fifth estate. (Such leaks in any administration, and most certainly one like the Trump administration, should be treasured, not abominated.) Former deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich was of the view that Kent was “often at the centre of national security leaks” and “spent all his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the President of the United States.”

The language of the resignation note was also bound to stir the blood of those willing to see antisemitism rearing its vast, deformed head. This was made easier given Kent’s checkered history, a point made by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) during last year’s confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. In a February 2025 statement, the ADL noted his tendency to promote “multiple conspiracy theories” and forge links “with individuals who have extremist ties, including to groups such as the Proud Boys, Groypers and Three Percenters, some of which have a history of violence.”

In a June 2025 joint letter authored with the Western States Center, the SPLC similarly noted a past heavily salted with conspiracy theorising and links to right wing extremism and white supremacists. Kent had not only “embraced discredited anti-government conspiracy theories – including that the FBI and the intelligence community were involved in the January 6, 2021 deadly attacks at the US Capitol” but had “connections with bigoted individuals, far right violent extremists, and anti-democratic movements.” He had, for instance, discussed social media strategy with the white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes and conducted an interview with Greyson Arnold, a live streamer who thought Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

The ADL and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who nakedly operate as open fronts of Israeli opinion, were bound to play the ad hominem game in attacking the man over opinion. According to the ADL, Kent’s letter trafficked “in old-age antisemitic tropes.” It was hardly a “surprise that he would blame Israel and the media for pushing the President into war against the Iranian regime.” Refusing to consider the pathological lunacy underlying the pre-emptive war on Iran, Ilan Goldenberg of the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J Street could only see “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”

These inane airings are unsurprising. The ADL refuses to acknowledge the sheer depth of Israeli involvement and support in the US 
 political and religious establishment, much of it unhealthy and a good deal of it undemocratic. Suggestions that Israel might be distorting the perspective of US strategists and policy makers are shouted down in frothing fury. The organisation can barely stomach the term “Israel lobby,” something evidenced in the organisation’s travesty of a review of a work bearing that name by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. Here was, in the words of the ADL’s unlettered hatchet job, “a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control.” Unmissable here is that Mearsheimer and Walt had, like Kent, also noted the poisonous hold Israel had exerted over the Washington establishment in encouraging the pre-emptive, illegal war waged against Iraq in 2003. The lie of the imminent threat has some form.

Kent also had another handicap from the past that was bound to be exploited by the administration. On that platform of handy bile and venom called Truth Social, Trump posted a tweet from January 2020 in which Kent encouraged attacking Iran. “We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq – they are only targets now.” The post on what was then Twitter was made in the aftermath of Trump’s order to assassinate the Iranian commander of the Quds force, General Qassem Soleimani. “No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”

As the letter itself indicates, Kent may have changed his mind. He even acknowledged that Soleimani’s assassination was a decisive application “of military power without getting us drawn into never ending wars.” (MAGA is for slaying foreign officials, as long as the operation is scrupulously limited.) For the dogmatist followers of the Trump MAGA brand, something deeper is underfoot. The prospects for conscientious objections to the war by service members reluctant to serve in the conflict have also improved. Prolonging the absurd, illegal, and increasingly catastrophic war against Iran will prove telling in that regard. And just because it is deemed such by a person as sketchy as Kent is hardly a reason to ignore the premise.

March 25, 2026 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Russia summons Israeli envoy over missile strike on journalists in Lebanon- Zakharova: “Cannot be called accidental”

Russia has told Israeli envoy Oded Joseph that Moscow wanted an investigation into the attack in southern Lebanon wherein two Russian state TV journalists were injured.


Sharangee Dutta, India Today, Fri, 20 Mar 2026, https://www.sott.net/article/505250-Russia-summons-Israeli-envoy-over-missile-strike-on-journalists-in-Lebanon-Zakharova-Cannot-be-called-accidental

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Israeli envoy Oded Joseph on Friday to lodge a formal protest over an Israeli missile strike in southern Lebanon in which two Russian state TV journalists were injured, TASS reported. Moscow has told Joseph that they want an investigation into the attack, which happened on Thursday, and want assurances that such incidents would not be repeated.

A video of the strike, which landed barely 10 metres away from the filming location of RT correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida, was captured on the latter’s camera. Sweeney ducked for cover just in time with the viral clip showing how the strike turned the site into a massive ball of fire.

Both of them survived the attack and received treatment at a local hospital. In one of the videos posted by Rida, doctors are seen removing shrapnel from Sweeney’s arm. The cameraman alleged that Israel intentionally struck the area despite their jackets displaying press credentials.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, echoed Ali Rida, and condemned the strike. Taking to Telegram, she posted that the attack on the journalists wearing press jackets “cannot be called accidental” considering the killing of 200 correspondents in Gaza.

“Especially since the rocket did not hit a ‘significant strategic military facility’, but rather the location where the report was being filmed,” Zakharova wrote on the social media platform, adding that Moscow was waiting for a response from the international organisation.

Sweeney and Rida were filming near a local military base in southern Lebanon, close to the Al-Qasmiya Bridge. The site is a crucial crossing point over the River Litani, which has faced constant Israeli strikes over the past few days. Israel has claimed that the river crossings are being used by the Iran-supported group Hezbollah to move fighters and weapons amid the war.

In response, Israel said that it had repeatedly given warnings for civilians and residents to move out of the area and that the strike was launched after adequate time had passed. It also stressed that Tel Aviv does not target civilians or journalists and functions in accordance with international law.

March 25, 2026 Posted by | Israel, media, Russia | Leave a comment

This Infamous Radioactive ‘Tomb’ Is Leaking, And Experts Are Worried

20 March 2026, ByJess Cockerill, https://www.sciencealert.com/this-infamous-radioactive-tomb-is-leaking-and-experts-are-worried

A gaping hole was left on a small island in the Pacific Ocean when the United States military released an 18-kiloton nuclear blast in 1958, known as the ‘Cactus‘ test.

After the blast took place on the Marshall Island’s Runit Island, the military filled it in with contaminated soil and debris, creating a ‘tomb’ of nuclear waste known now as the Runit Dome.

Almost 50 years after the dome’s construction, experts are concerned that cracks in the concrete-capped radioactive landfill indicate just how vulnerable the site is to rising seas encroaching upon the narrow island’s shores.

The 115-meter (377 feet)-wide dome, built between 1977 and 1980 as part of military cleanup efforts, rests above more than 120,000 tons of material that were contaminated by US nuclear testing across Enewetak Atoll, including lethal quantities of plutonium.

The dome was intended as a temporary solution to contain material left behind by the nuclear tests, some of which exceeded the magnitude of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1,000 times over.

But since its construction, groundwater has penetrated the otherwise-unlined crater, beneath which there lies a bed of porous coral sediment. So far, this is the main source of leaks, but there are concerns that layers of the dome intended to sit above sea level are not going to stay above water much longer.

In 2020, following a major report by the Los Angeles Times, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute marine radioactivity expert Ken Buesseler pointed out that radioactive leaks from the Runit Dome are, so far, “relatively small,” in an interview for the institute’s journal

“As long as the plutonium stays put under the dome, it won’t be a large new source of radiation to the Pacific Ocean,” Buesseler told journalist Evan Lubofsky at the Los Angeles Times.

“But a lot depends on future sea-level rise and how things like storms and seasonal high tides affect the flow of water in and out of the dome. It’s a small source right now, but we need to monitor it more regularly to understand what’s happening, and get the data directly to the affected communities in the region.”

Columbia University chemist Ivana Nikolic-Hughes has been involved in ongoing research into the persistent contamination of the Marshall Islands following nuclear testing, and recently told journalist Kyle Evans at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that she saw the dome’s cracks first-hand while taking soil samples on the island back in 2018.

In her research, Nikolic-Hughes has found elevated radiation levels and significant quantities of five radionuclides in soil samples from the island, outside the dome.

This could be evidence of the nuclear tomb leaking – though it may also be the result of the haphazard nature of the cleanup efforts, which also resulted in much waste being dumped into the lagoon.

Either way, the presence of plutonium-239, a component of nuclear weapons that remains dangerous for more than 24,000 years, warrants grave concerns about its vulnerability to rising sea levels and climate change.

“Given that sea levels are rising and there’s indications storms are intensifying, we worry the integrity of the dome could be in jeopardy,” Nikolic-Hughes told Evans.

“Runit is about 20 miles from where people live and they use the lagoon, so the implications are potentially devastating.”

In 2024, the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory conducted an investigation into the potential impacts of climate change on the Runit Dome site, finding that storm surges and gradual sea level rise would indeed be the biggest factor in spreading radionuclides through the atoll.

Most of Runit Island sits just 2 meters (6.5 feet) above sea level.

Viewed from above, it is easy to imagine what an impact just 1 meter of extra water could do to the atoll and Runit Island’s crumbling nuclear tomb. That is the amount of sea level rise climate scientists predict for the Marshall Islands by 2100.

Related: Parts of The Marshall Islands Are Now More Radioactive Than Chernobyl, Study Finds

Nikolic-Hughes and her fellow researcher Hart Rapaport have previously urged the United States to take responsibility for proper cleanup of nuclear waste on the islands, as one part of ensuring a safe future for Marshallese residents.

As United Nations special rapporteur Paula Gaviria Betancur said back in 2024: “Legacies of nuclear testing and military land requisitions by a foreign power have displaced hundreds of Marshallese for generations, while the adverse effects of climate change threaten to displace thousands more.”

March 24, 2026 Posted by | OCEANIA, wastes | Leave a comment

The Nightmare of Fukushima 15 Years Later

SCHEERPOST, By Joshua Frank,  March 20, 2026

“…………………………………………………………………………………… The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, built by General Electric (GE) in the mid-1960s, was designed to withstand natural disasters, but its creators never foresaw an earthquake like that. When the plant’s sensors detected the quake, its reactors automatically shut down. That emergency shutdown (or scram) halted its fission process, triggering backup power to keep cold seawater flowing through the reactors and spent-fuel containers to prevent overheating. Things at Fukushima were going according to plan until that massive tsunami battered the plant, washing away transmission towers and damaging electrical systems. There were backup generators in the basement, but those, too, had been inundated by waves of seawater, and an already bad situation was about to get far worse.

A power outage at a nuclear power plant is known as a “station blackout.” As you might imagine, it’s one of the worst scenarios any nuclear facility could possibly experience. If all electricity is lost, that means water is no longer being pumped into the reactor’s scalding-hot core to cool it down. And if that core isn’t constantly being cooled, one thing is certain: disaster will ensue. The fission process itself may be complicated, but that’s basic physics. To make matters worse, there were three operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Luckily, three others had already been shut down for maintenance. If power wasn’t restored in short order, that would mean that all three of Fukushima’s reactors were in very big trouble.

We would later learn that no one — not at TEPCO, GE, or among Japanese regulators — had ever considered the possibility that all the reactors might lose electricity at once. They had only drawn up plans for one reactor to go down, in which case the others could keep the plant running. But all of them offline, and every generator out of commission? There was no precedent or playbook for that.

The nuclear industry has a reasonably polite name for a disaster like the one that was rocking Fukushima. They refer to it as a “beyond design-basis accident” because no single nuclear plant design can account for every possible problem it might encounter in its lifetime. The fact that there’s a term for this should make you anxious.

Meltdowns and Fallout

Over the next several days, the emergency at Fukushima Daiichi only worsened. Every effort to restore power to its reactors hit a dead end. On-site radiation-detection equipment, which would have triggered warnings and guided evacuation efforts for those in danger, was no longer functioning. Plans to pump water into the reactors to cool them had faltered. Their cores kept overheating, and the boiling pools of spent fuel were at risk of drying out, potentially triggering a massive fire that would release extreme amounts of radiation.

Within three days, following a series of fires, hydrogen explosions, and panic among those aware of what was happening, Fukushima’s Units 1, 2, and 3 experienced full-scale core meltdowns. Over 150,000 people within an 18-mile radius had already been forced to evacuate, and radiation plumes would take two weeks to spread across the northern hemisphere, although the Japanese government wouldn’t admit publicly that any meltdown had occurred until June 2011, three months later.

The only good news for the 13 million people living 150 miles south in Tokyo was that, during and immediately after the meltdowns, prevailing winds carried much of Fukushima’s radioactive material away from the smoldering reactors and out to sea. It’s estimated that 80% of the fallout from Fukushima ended up in the ocean, meaning most of it headed east rather than toward population centers to the south and west. The other fortunate news was that the spent fuel containers had somehow survived it all. If their water levels in the pools had been drained, far more radiation would have been released.

But Tokyo wasn’t completely spared. After years of research, scientists discovered that cesium-rich microparticles had blanketed the greater Tokyo area, an unpopular discovery that drew backlash and threats of academic censorship. Areas around the Fukushima exclusion zones recorded the highest radiation levels. Japanese government officials continually downplayed the dangers of the accident and were reluctant to even classify the event as a Level 7 nuclear disaster, the highest rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which would have placed it on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Japanese officials have also failed to conduct long-term epidemiological studies that would include baseline measurements of cancer rates, which has cast doubt on thyroid screenings that found troubling incidents of cancer far higher than researchers expected.

Radioactive Fish

Prior to the earthquake, the ocean’s cesium-137 levels near Fukushima were 2 Becquerels (a unit of radioactivity) per cubic meter, well below the recommended drinking water threshold of 10,000 Becquerels. Just after March 11, 2011, cesium-137 levels there spiked to fifty million before decreasing as sea currents dispersed the radioactive particles away from the coast. The ocean, however, had been poisoned.

In the years that followed the Fukushima nuclear disaster, researchers documented a frightening, yet predictable trend. Radioactive isotopes in seawater were taken up by marine plants (phytoplankton), which then moved up the food chain into tiny marine animals (zooplankton) and, eventually, to fish.

Cesium-137 consumed by fish can reside in their bodies for months, while Strontium-90 remains in their bones for years. If humans then eat such fish, they will also be exposed to those radioactive particles. The more contaminated fish they eat, the greater the radioactive buildup will be.

In 2023, over a decade after the incident, radiation levels remained sky-high in black rockfish caught off the Fukushima coast. Other bottom-dwelling species have been found to be laden with radioactivity, too, including eel and rock trout. Further concerns have been raised about the treated radioactive water that TEPCO continued to release into the ocean, prompting China to suspend seafood imports from Japan. Aside from those findings, there have been very few studies examining the effects of Fukushima’s radiation on ecosystems or on the people of Japan.

“Japan has clamped down on scientific efforts to study the nuclear catastrophe,” claims pediatrician Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “There is hardly any literature, any publicized research, on the health effects on humans, and those that are published come from a small group of researchers at Fukushima Medical University.”

Recognizing such levels of radiation, even if confined to the waters near Fukushima, would cast the country’s nuclear industry as a significant threat — not only to Japan but globally. Any admission that Fukushima’s radiation is linked to increased cancer rates would raise broader concerns about nuclear power’s future viability. Radiation exposure is cumulative and, although Fukushima didn’t immediately cause mass casualties, it wasn’t a benign accident either. It took decades before it was accepted that Chernobyl had caused tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths. It may take even longer to completely understand Fukushima’s full effects. In the meantime, the still ongoing cleanup of the burned-out facilities may cost as much as 80 trillion yen ($500 billion).

It’s been 15 years since Fukushima’s reactors experienced those meltdowns and we still don’t fully understand their long-term repercussions. Nuclear power advocates will argue that Fukushima wasn’t a serious incident and that nuclear technology is still safe. They’ll minimize radiation threats, remain optimistic that new reactor designs will never falter, dismiss the fact that there’s simply no permanent solution for radioactive waste, and overlook the inseparable connection between nuclear power and atomic weapons. After all, among other things, we’ll undoubtedly need nuclear energy to help power the artificial intelligence craze, right?………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. With nine nuclear-armed nations and roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet, worries about nuclear war are unavoidable. However, the danger of a nuclear disaster at a seemingly “peaceful” nuclear facility is often ignored. The future of atomic energy remains uncertain, but it is our duty to eliminate this hazardous energy source before another Fukushima triggers a war-like catastrophe all its own.mhttps://scheerpost.com/2026/03/20/searching-for-solace-in-a-nuclearized-world/

Joshua Frank, a TomDispatch regular, is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming Bad Energy: AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off Our Future, both with Haymarket Books. 

March 24, 2026 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Macron slams ‘unacceptable’ Israeli attacks on Lebanon

The French president stressed that the Jewish state’s military operation violates international law and will not enhance its security.

20 Mar, 2026, https://www.rt.com/news/635660-macron-condemns-israel-lebanon-attacks/

Israel’s ongoing military operation in Lebanon violates international law, French President Emmanuel Macron has said. 

Speaking at a European Council press conference in Brussels on Thursday, Macron also criticized the attacks on Israel being carried out by Lebanese-based militant movement Hezbollah, which has vowed to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. 

Macron rejected the notion that a third party could resolve the conflict with the Iran-linked group through force, emphasizing that only Lebanese authorities have the legitimacy to address the issue.

“We don’t think that the fight against Hezbollah and the removal of its weapons can be carried out by a third power,” Macron told reporters. “We believe that Israel’s ground military operation and bombardments are inappropriate and even unacceptable in terms of international law and the interests of both the Lebanese and Israel’s long-term security.”

Macron also pointed out that Israel has conducted similar operations in Lebanon for years without ever producing the “expected results.”

The French leader’s comments come as Israel has expanded its military campaign against Hezbollah following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran that began late last month. The Israel Defense Forces announced “limited and targeted ground operations against key Hezbollah strongholds” earlier this week, escalating cross-border hostilities that have already claimed hundreds of lives.

Lebanese authorities report that Israeli strikes have killed over 880 people over the past two weeks, with more than 2,000 injured and over 1 million displaced. The strikes have targeted residential districts, a UN peacekeeping position, and a Russian cultural center in the southern city of Nabatieh.

On Thursday, RT correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were also injured in what appeared to be a deliberate Israeli airstrike on their filming position, despite them wearing clearly labeled press uniforms.

Moscow has condemned Israel over the strike, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressing that the attack on journalists wearing press markings “cannot be called accidental given the killing of two hundred journalists in Gaza.”

March 24, 2026 Posted by | France, Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Iran’s Retaliation Reignites Discontent With US Military Bases in Middle East

The US spent decades building an empire of military bases throughout the Middle East. Now they’re under attack.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar , Truthout, March 20, 2026

n Thursday, March 19, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Prince Faisal warned Iran that tolerance for its regional attacks was running short — and that the Saudi regime has “the right to take military actions if deemed necessary.” He elaborated that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have “very significant capacities and capabilities that they could bring to bear” if the attacks continue. This came a day after Iranian attacks on Gulf energy sites in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, which Iran said was in retaliation for an Israeli strike on an Iranian gas field.

Over the past three weeks of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, Iran has increasingly targeted sites across the Gulf, further regionalizing the war. Among its prime targets are U.S. military bases in the region: Iran has targeted, and damaged, at least 17 U.S. sites in the region, 11 of which are military bases. The two largest bases, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, host 10,000 and 9,000 U.S. military personnel, respectively — of an estimated 50,000 U.S. military personnel across the region.

The existence of these military bases should alert us to a larger problem — that the U.S. has come to dominate the region militarily, building relationships with local regimes that further encourage repression and domination. Now, Iranian retaliation against these bases spurred by U.S.-Israeli attacks is reigniting a divide between Gulf leaders and their populations……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

But the real expansion of U.S. military bases across the Middle East began in the early 1990s during and after the Gulf War, with the establishment of permanent U.S. bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain, as well as sites in Saudi Arabia that the U.S. would use for long stretches. Though many expected U.S. global military presence to decrease after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 1990 Gulf War saw a seismic expansion of U.S. troops in the Middle East along with the start of a unipolar world order dominated by the U.S. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. was now the world’s sole superpower, and the Middle East would experience its military might. 

Following the 1990-’91 Gulf War, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE all signed public, formal defense agreements with the U.S., granting the U.S. access to each country’s bases and other facilities. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, U.S. military presence was now well-known rather than discreet. And soon after the U.S.-led campaign ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, the U.S. played a role in bringing the Palestinian First Intifada to an end, pushing for first the Madrid Conference and then the Oslo Accords to contain and end the uprising that challenged Israel’s brutal status quo. 

In the wake of the Oslo Accords, the U.S. also facilitated neoliberal transitions throughout the Middle East, accelerating privatization, deregulation, and the selling off of state assets — thereby reversing the nationalization policies of earlier decades and aligning the region with U.S. political and economic interests through a set of reforms and interventions commonly called the Washington Consensus. Thus, in the few years after the fall of the USSR, the U.S. managed to restructure the Middle East according to its designs; its military bases represented one pillar of its dominance and control over the region.

An Empire of Bases and Local Authoritarian Regimes

In 2001, the U.S. expanded its military bases even further, creating an “empire of bases” in the region as it launched its endless “war on terror.” During its wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. held more than 1,000 installations in those two countries alone. New bases were established and old ones expanded in Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, and Jordan.

Though international and regional dynamics have changed over the past two-and-a-half decades, U.S. bases still dominate the region. The presence of these bases has also further encouraged U.S. support for authoritarian regimes capable of suppressing popular opposition to U.S. imperialism and support for the Palestinian cause. This is particularly obvious in the case of Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and some 9,000 U.S. troops — the second largest base in the region after Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base — and is thus seen as a crucial base in the region…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The US-Israeli war on Iran and the regionalization of the war highlight both the U.S.’s historic domination of the region, and the extent to which the region’s regimes have normalized relations with the U.S — straying far from the anti-imperialist sentiments that dominated the region in the 1950s and ‘60s. Instead, it is a reactionary status quo that is entrenched across the Middle East. While Bahraini people dare to protest against their regime, the U.S., and Israel, the Gulf states’ ruling regimes double down in their reliance on U.S. military support, making their alignment clear. Qatar in particular has used its military base to cozy up to Trump.

And yet it is this U.S. military presence itself that has pulled them into the increasingly regionalized war. Still, the large U.S. military presence remains in tension with the wishes of the vast majority of the population in most countries in the region, and it remains to be seen if the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and Iran’s widespread retaliation against this network of bases, will once again reshape the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. https://truthout.org/articles/irans-retaliation-reignites-discontent-with-us-military-bases-in-middle-east/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=accdbb6382-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_03_20_06_50_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-1f909890d7-650192793

March 24, 2026 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, politics international | Leave a comment

A MAN and woman have been arrested after attempting to enter Faslane naval base.

20th March, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25954299.man-woman-arrested-attempting-enter-faslane-naval-base/

The incident, which took place at around 5pm on Thursday, saw the pair reportedly ask if they could enter.

They were refused permission and were then arrested shortly after. It is understood the pair did not try to force their way into the base.

According to the PA news agency, the man is understood to be Iranian.

The Faslane naval base, also known as HM Naval Base Clyde, is located on the eastern shore of Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute.

It is home to the core of the UK’s submarine fleet and the Trident nuclear deterrent.

A Police Scotland spokesman said: “Around 5pm on Thursday, 19 March, 2026, we were made aware of two people attempting to enter HM Naval Base Clyde.

“A 34-year-old man and 31-year-old woman have been arrested in connection and enquiries are ongoing.”

A Navy spokesperson said: “Police Scotland have arrested two people who unsuccessfully attempted to enter HM Naval Base Clyde on Thursday 19 March.

“As the matter is subject to an ongoing investigation, we will not comment further.”

March 24, 2026 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

The Warmongers Will Never Admit They Were Wrong And Will Never Learn From Their Mistakes

Cait;in Johnstone, 20 Mar 26, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/WhctKLcDqcPgHJwXCXxhJgcDpJZFXpkgKlZRLMBbTfNgLndgLLjFjSMrWXffFBwHrWcdXkb

Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has a tweet that’s got me absolutely fuming right now.“In 2018–2019, I made the case for regime change in Iran as often as I could. Voices in Trump’s orbit often cited Iran’s capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz as a reason against regime change. Trump has been fully aware this is a possibility, and yet did not prepare,” Bolton posted.

Can you believe this shit? Dude’s like “Hey, Trump should have known this war would be hard because people tried to warn him not to listen to me!”

Motherfucker THIS WAS YOUR WAR. You were THE “bomb Iran” guy! You made it your entire personality for DECADES. Over the years I’ve used your name God knows how many times whenever I needed an example of a Beltway swamp monster who’s got a throbbing hard-on for war with Iran. Now you’ve finally got it and it’s going exactly as badly as everyone said it would, and you’re like “Yeah well he should’ve known better, people tried to warn him about the Strait of Hormuz”? Fuck you.

These professional warmongers never, ever learn from their errors. Many years after the Iraq invasion turned out to be a disaster, John Bolton was still out there telling the media he believed it was a “resounding success,” conceding only “mistakes that were made subsequently” to the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

They never admit they were wrong. They never admit that their war was a bad idea. They only ever acknowledge that it didn’t happen in exactly the way they imagined it happening in their minds. They live in this fantasy world where all their war agendas would unfold beautifully so long as they could personally control every molecule of matter involved in how it happens, completely ignoring that this is impossible and any war is always going to have an unfathomable number of moving parts you can’t control.

In their eyes the wars are never wrong, they’re only ever executed incorrectly. US military interventionism can never fail, it can only be failed.

Bolton doesn’t even seem to have any idea what Trump could have done differently to stop Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz. I listened to an NPR interview the other day where he slammed Trump for not having “done the planning in advance” to prevent the Iranian blockade, but he never at any time outlined what Trump could have done to accomplish this. He just said there was “a huge hole in the planning” and that “they apparently didn’t take as seriously as they should have the potential to mine the Strait of Hormuz,” without ever saying what they could have done.

These are the kinds of minds they have spearheading the US empire’s wars.

All the worst people are getting exactly what they want, and it turns out they don’t even want it, like Elon Musk tweeting “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about” last month. They’re getting everything they asked for and it’s making everyone miserable, and it’s not even making THEM happy.

The imperial status quo elevates the worst among us. The least wise. The least insightful. The least compassionate. The least deserving. The least qualified.

We need drastic revolutionary change, and we need it now.e doesn’t know. He himself, Mister Iran War, had no plan for how to carry out this war without disastrous consequences for the US and its allies. He’s spent his entire blood-soaked career pushing for a war he never had any idea how to actually carry out.

March 24, 2026 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Conscientious objector and human rights defender Yurii Sheliazhenko detained.

20 March 26 https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2026/urgent-conscientious-objector-and-human-rights-defender-yurii-sheliazhenko-detained

The undersigned organisations are shocked by the detention and deprivation of liberty of human rights defender Yurii Sheliazhenko, today March 19th, by the Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv. This is just weeks after a joint call to the authorities to withdraw from such persecutions of conscientious objectors and withdraw their ongoing persecution of Mr. Sheliazhenko.1

According to the information available, Mr. Sheliazhenko was apprehended by officers of the Pechersk District Police in Kyiv without a proper legal basis and without compliance with the procedural safeguards required by Ukrainian law. In particular, there are indications that:

– no detention protocol was drawn up;
– no clear legal grounds for the deprivation of liberty were provided;
– access to legal counsel was obstructed;
– contact with the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation was obstructed;
– he was transferred, or intended to be transferred, to a Territorial Centre of Recruitment and Social Support (TCC) without due legal procedure.

We note that any involvement of the TCC does not exclude the responsibility of law enforcement officers for the initial deprivation of liberty. These actions may constitute violations of the Constitution of Ukraine and the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular Article 5 (right to liberty and security), and Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Yurii Sheliazhenko is a well-known conscientious objector, publicly declared since 1998, a pacifist and a human rights defender. He is also an academic, the executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement (member organisation of War Resisters International), Director of the Institute of Peace and Law in Ukraine, and a Board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection and of World Beyond War.

Tragically, he has previously reported on the cruel practices of “busification”, forced conscription and compulsory military registration occurring in Ukraine, which in some cases have even led to tortures and deaths in military recruitment centers.2

We strongly condemn all these actions as grave human rights violations that have no place in democratic countries.

We urge the Ukrainian authorities to immediately release Yurii Sheliazhenko and cease all procedures of forced conscription.

We remind that his case has been previously included in a Communication by the Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; the Special Rapporteur on minority issues and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.3 The case of Mr. Sheliazhenko, the communication of the Special Rapporteurs and the response of the Ukrainian authorities were highlighted also by the OHCHR, in its report concerning Conscientious objection to military service, and particularly in the chapter titled “Refrain from unduly restricting the human rights of those representing or advocating for the rights of conscientious objectors”.4 His case has been highlighted also in Amnesty International’s Annual Report 2023/2024.5

We repeat our call to the international community to exercise all proper actions to ensure that human rights defenders and peace activists are not criminalised for their actions for peace and nonviolence; moreover, that the right to conscientious objection is fully implemented in line with international standards and that conscientious objectors are provided with the necessary protection against persecution in their country of origin, also with asylum.

Connection e.V.

European Bureau for Conscientious Objection

International Fellowship of Reconciliation

War Resisters’ International

  1. https://ebco-beoc.org/press-release/2026-01-23-yurii-sheliazhenko-conscientious-objector-to-military-service-and-human-rights-defender-under-immediate-threat ↩︎
  2. https://ebco-beoc.org/ukraine/2024 ↩︎
  3. AL UKR 1/2023, 8 November 2023, p. 5-6. https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=28562 ↩︎
  4. A/HRC/56/30, 23 April 2024, para. 45. https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/56/30↩︎
  5. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol10/7200/2024/en/ p. 385↩︎

March 24, 2026 Posted by | civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »