Latest news with #nucleardisarmament
Free Malaysia Today
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Cold War over, but nuclear weapons more dangerous now, says Tok Mat
Foreign minister Mohamad Hasan delivering his opening remarks at the SEANWFZ Commission meeting. KUALA LUMPUR : Foreign minister Mohamad Hasan has warned that nuclear weapons are even more dangerous today than during the Cold War, as new technologies and global tensions raise the risk of escalation. Mohamad said the convergence of the nuclear age with the information age, marked by cyber warfare, artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing, had created 'humanity's most volatile period'. 'Whether you know this era as a post-information age, the post-industrial revolution, or the age of AI, one thing is certain – the Cold War may be over, but nuclear weapons are even more dangerous now than they were back then,' he said in his opening remarks at the Meeting of the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) Commission. Mohamad said current nuclear disarmament mechanisms 'appear to be struggling to fulfil their purpose', especially with ongoing wars like the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Israel's recent strike on Iran. He condemned Israel's attack as a 'blatant agitation for war' and a breach of international law, noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found no evidence Iran was developing nuclear weapons. 'Thirty years after the initial ratification of the SEANWFZ treaty, it has, therefore, never been more urgent to uphold the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime,' he said. Mohamad also said Asean had made important progress in promoting peaceful uses of nuclear technology, especially in agriculture, medical diagnostics, and food safety, in collaboration with the IAEA. 'Yet, as we celebrate these achievements, it is deeply concerning that Southeast Asia remains the only, I repeat, the only nuclear weapon-free zone that has not been formally recognised by the nuclear weapon states through the signing and ratification of the treaty's protocol.' The SEANWFZ, which was signed in 1995 and came into force in 1997, commits Asean member states to not develop, manufacture, acquire, possess, or control nuclear weapons. The treaty also includes a protocol that invites the five recognised nuclear weapon states – China, Russia, the US, the UK, and France – to commit to not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against SEANWFZ parties. It has been reported that China and Russia may be willing to sign the protocol, while the US is said to be continuing with its review.
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
British nukes are back – and so are CND's middle-class campaigners
'Gather round everybody, we're going to do some chanting. And the first one we're going to do is: 'We want the nukes out now.'' It's a scorching hot day in Norfolk, and outside RAF Marham, Sophie Bolt, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and a vivid floral dress, megaphone in hand, is getting things underway. The 30 or 40 people gather in front of the base's entrance sign, partially obscured by a banner so it now reads: 'Royal Air Force: Welfare not Warfare', while the handful of photographers covering the event take their positions. ' We want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out NOW!' It's a few days after the Nato summit in the Hague, where Keir Starmer had announced that Britain was to purchase 12 American F-35A jets, which are capable of carrying conventional munitions and also the US B61-12 gravity bomb. US nuclear weapons have not been stored in the UK since the last left RAF Lakenheath in 2008 – while Britain has not had its own air-launched nuclear weapons since 1998. Now the planes and the bombs are coming back, to be stationed at RAF Marham. So it was that the word had gone out from the CND to groups, as far flung as Lewisham and Norwich, to assemble at the gates. 'We want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out NOW!' 'I think that's very good on the chanting front,' Sophie says, 'so give yourself a big cheer.' Now the group assembles for a photograph, behind another banner – 'Remember Hiroshima'. The B61-12 gravity bomb, that will be stored perhaps a few hundred yards from where we are standing, has the explosive power of more than three times the weapon dropped on the Japanese city in 1945. A man wearing a Starmer mask holds up two model bombs. Others hold up placards bearing the symbol of the CND, which in the 1960s and beyond became the universally recognised peace sign. Founded in 1958, the CND claims to be Europe's largest single issue campaign, and the longest running. A year earlier, in 1957, Britain had tested atomic and hydrogen bombs for the first time, becoming the third atomic power after the US and the USSR, and spurring rising public anxiety about the dangers of nuclear weapons and proliferation. 'The case is quite simple,' Bertrand Russell, the philosopher and pacifist who was the CND's first president, wrote. 'We think that the policy which is being pursued by the western powers is one which is almost bound to end in the extermination of the human race. Some of us think that might be rather a pity.' Other prominent members included the Rev John Collins, founder of Christian Action and one of the four founders of the charity War on Want, and Donald, Lord Soper, the Methodist minister and pacifist, who was known as 'Dr Soapbox', and who preached at Speakers' Corner and Tower Hill, against war, poverty, drink, gambling, slave labour, racial inequality and capital punishment. Its unofficial headquarters was in a Soho cafe, 'filled with bearded men playing chess', the writer Barry Miles once recalled, but the cause energised a constituency far beyond the Left, students and the clergy. Its annual marches at Easter from London to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire, which began in 1958, with music provided by a trad jazz band and a skiffle group, drew tens of thousands of people. 'The marchers were mainly middle class and professional people,' The Daily Mail wrote of the first march. 'They were the sort of people who would normally spend Easter listening to a Beethoven concert on the Home Service, pouring dry sherry from a decanter for the neighbours, painting Picasso designs on hard-boiled eggs, attempting the literary competition in the weekly papers, or going to church with the children. Instead, they were walking through the streets in their old clothes. They were behaving entirely against the normal tradition of their class, their neighbourhood, and their upbringing.' It is difficult to conceive, perhaps, how real and present the fear of nuclear annihilation was at the time. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened a mere 13 years earlier, and the Cold War was at its height, the threat of nuclear apocalypse looming in everyone's minds. As an 11-year-old grammar school boy at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, I can vividly remember reading the newspaper accounts of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev to turn round the ships steaming towards Cuba, and going to bed wondering if I would wake up next morning. Or what I would wake up to, if I did. The fear receded, if never going away, and the interest in the CND with it. But now Sophie says, the organisation is seeing an upsurge in membership, driven by a higher level of awareness of the nuclear threat, and events in Ukraine and the Middle East. The spectre of nuclear warfare seems to be permeating public consciousness, with the film Oppenheimer and video games like Fallout and Atomfall. Last October, the BBC screened Threads, the apocalyptic war drama first shown in 1984, depicting the horrifying effects of a nuclear apocalypse on Sheffield. A new contemporary adaptation for TV is being produced by Warp films, the company that made the critically-acclaimed Adolescence. Unrest is in the air. Everyone has something to protest about nowadays, and most demonstrations have the appearance of a vortex drawing in all manner of causes from Extinction Rebellion to Stand Up to Racism. But the protest at RAF Marham has a single-mindedness of purpose that makes it seem all the more virtuous. There are no Free Palestine flags or SWP placards. Nobody storms the gates. Nobody glues themselves to the road. Nobody shouts or throws anything. Nobody is arrested. Most are veterans of anti-nuclear protests going back more than 40 years who, one imagines, if not as in an earlier era, pouring sherry from a decanter for their neighbours or painting Picasso designs on hard-boiled eggs, would otherwise be spending a quiet Saturday afternoon on their allotment, or volunteering at their local charity shop. People shelter under a tree for shade, spreading themselves on the grass, or sitting in picnic chairs. There are sandwiches, flasks and sun cream. A small group of shirt-sleeved police stand on the other side of the road, watching incuriously and talking among themselves. Off-duty airmen and women stroll through the gate in their shorts and T-shirts with nary a word being said. A car drives by, sounding its horn in support. Now Sophie hands the microphone to anyone who wants to come up and say a few words. Glen Borrill, 57, has driven the 85 miles from Mansfield to join the protest, after his wife had read about it on social media. He's never been involved with the CND before, he says, 'but with everything that's going on in the news, I thought if I don't get involved now, when that big bang comes around, I'll have only got myself to blame because I've not done anything to stand against it. 'I've not felt so anxious about what could happen since back in the 1980s when everything was kicking off then.' He's watched Threads recently, he says. 'It's based in a city not that far from Mansfield, and it was in a similar situation in the Middle East to what's happening now. That's how frightening it's become. It's like déjà vu. That was just a film, but the actual reality seems to be playing out as that film did.' He points to the guard standing on the other side of the fence. 'Even these lads here, when the bombs come, they're not going to let them in the bunkers.' A woman from Norwich says that people living around RAF Lakenheath are being given iodine to guard against radiation fallout from the base. I have no idea if this is true or not. She has her own chant – 'Starmer, Starmer is an evil re-armer'. A man who worked for the BBC at the time of the Iraq war accuses the corporation of telling lies, and says the mainstream media cannot be trusted. Several people say that. David Pybus is 75, a tall, rangy man with gentle eyes peering out from beneath a bush hat. He's come from Peterborough, an hour and a half by bus. 'Generally speaking,' he says, 'the media just give you what the Government is saying. You only get that narrative, and they roll out some former generals and people with military ties, and that's what you get in the mainstream media.' He has been a member of the CND since 1980 when Margaret Thatcher first announced that ground-launched nuclear weapons would be based at RAF Greenham Common and RAF Molesworth. 'Being a person of Christian faith, I felt I was faced with something very evil that was contrary to that, and it was very important to try and do something if you could to oppose that.' The bombs at Lakenheath and Molesworth had gone, he says, '[and] there was a sense that things were becoming more peaceful. But now they're coming back and the threat has increased again, so here I am.' In the small copse of trees, children from the service housing across the road have been playing hide and seek and watching the gathering with curiosity. The protest has lasted for two hours, but now the steam has run out of it and the heat is taking its toll. People begin to take down the signs on the gate, carefully unpicking the last of the gaffer tape and putting it in a refuse sack. They are packing up their banners and belongings, folding their picnic chairs, and swapping telephone numbers and handshakes. I ask Sue Wright how many protests she had attended over the years. 'Lost count,' she says with a laugh. She is 75, a retired primary school teacher, wearing a CND cap and a T-shirt with the CND symbol made of interlocking flowers. She first became involved with the CND in 1968 when she was student and, when she retired at the age of 60, became more actively involved with Norwich CND. 'It was quite small, all older than me – I was the youngster. And eventually they asked me to be the chair.' The oldest member is 84, 'but he's protesting somewhere else today'. All afternoon, the quiet voice of fatalism and doubt has been whispering in my ear. After more than 60 years of protest, the world still has nuclear weapons, the threat of annihilation is closer than ever, and the future lies in the hands of those far more powerful than the small hardy band gathered at the gates. In the absence of multilateral disarmament, it is Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, that has kept the peace – such as it is. 'MADness, I call it,' Sue says. 'Total madness. But it's not assured at all. Just one use can set off a chain reaction.' Does she ever feel as if she's banging her head against a brick wall? 'Sometimes. Especially when it doesn't get reported in newspapers and on the TV, and it doesn't get a mention unless someone breaks the law, and we're committed to not breaking the law.' But that, she says, does not mean she was going to stop. She joined the CND when she was 18, she says, 'because I was terrified. I thought that nuclear weapons are so destructive that they should not exist. And I'm terrified now. 'I have a new grandson who will be two weeks old at about 10 o'clock tonight, and I fear for his future. I have seven other grandchildren and I want them to grow up in a peaceful world. I want them to grow up and to have a world to live in. I will do all I can to make people see the madness of it.' David comes up and quietly slips a postcard printed with the World Peace Prayer into my jacket pocket: 'Let peace fill our hearts. Our world, our universe'. His lift to King's Lynn seems to have left without him. We drop him off at the station, he sits down in the shade of the bus shelter, waiting for the bus, and the hour and a half journey back to Peterborough.
The Independent
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Hiroshima mayor invites Trump to visit after ‘that hit ended the war' crack comparing WWII atom bomb to Iran strike
The mayor of Hiroshima has invited President Donald Trump to visit the city after his comments comparing the atomic bombing of 1945 to his own decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 preceded the end of the Second World War, with the U.S. and its allies defeating Japan. As he attended the NATO summit in the Netherlands last week, Trump compared the American strikes on Iran to the nuclear attack on Japan. 'That hit ended the war. I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing,' said Trump. 'That ended that war and this ended' this war, he added. Trump's comments incited an angry backlash in Japan, with Hiroshima's city assembly passing a resolution condemning statements that 'justify the use of atomic bombs.' Survivors also held a small protest at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The mayor of the city, Kazumi Matsui, has pushed for nuclear disarmament for years. 'It seems to me that he does not fully understand the reality of the atomic bombings, which, if used, take the lives of many innocent citizens, regardless of whether they were friend or foe, and threaten the survival of the human race,' he told reporters on Wednesday, according to The Japan Times. 'I wish that President Trump would visit the bombed area to see the reality of the atomic bombing and feel the spirit of Hiroshima, and then make statements,' Matsui added. About 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki from the bombings and the effects of radiation. Last month, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, issued a warning against the use of nuclear weapons after visiting Hiroshima. 'I recently visited Hiroshima in Japan and stood at the epicenter of a city that remains scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945, 80 years ago,' she said in a video shared on social media. 'It's hard for me to find the words to express what I saw, the stories that I heard, the haunting sadness that still remains. This is an experience that will stay with me forever,' she added. Gabbard faced criticism from Trump after saying that Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon ahead of the U.S. strikes. She subsequently said that Iran would be able to build a weapon within weeks. In October last year, the Japanese anti-nuclear weapon group Nihon Hidayanko was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The group consists of survivors from the bombings. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said at the time that the group was given the award 'for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons' and for 'demonstrating, through witness testimony, that nuclear weapons must never be used again.' Nuclear weapons are yet again a source of unease across the world amid conflicts in the Middle East and between Ukraine and Russia, one of the world's foremost nuclear powers. "The nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare," the committee said in October. "At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen."
NHK
25-06-2025
- Politics
- NHK
Hiroshima governor planning to visit former nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan
Sources have told NHK that arrangements are underway for the governor of Japan's Hiroshima Prefecture to visit a former nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, in mid-July. They say Governor Yuzaki Hidehiko hopes to visit Kazakhstan's capital Astana to discuss peacebuilding policy and other topics with senior government officials. The sources say he also plans to travel to the former Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site in the country's northeast and visit a museum documenting the experiments. More than 450 nuclear tests were conducted at the site during the Cold War, and an estimated 1.5 million people are believed to have suffered health issues. Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The country has been working to rid the world of nuclear weapons. In March, it chaired the third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This year marks eight decades since the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War Two. Analysts say Hiroshima Prefecture hopes the governor's visit will boost relations with Kazakhstan and deepen collaboration in pursuit of the abolition of nuclear weapons.
New York Times
17-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Live Updates: Trump Returns to D.C. as Israel and Iran Trade Attacks
News Analysis President Trump is weighing a critical decision in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America's biggest 'bunker buster,' dropped by American B-2 bombers, can reach. If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr. Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr. Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing. Mr. Trump had at one point encouraged his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and possibly Vice President JD Vance, to offer to meet the Iranians, according to a U.S. official. But on Monday Mr. Trump posted on social media that 'everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran,' hardly a sign of diplomatic progress. Mr. Trump also said on Monday that 'I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table, they want to make a deal.' The urgency appeared to be rising. The White House announced late on Monday that Mr. Trump was leaving the Group of 7 summit early because of the situation in the Middle East. 'As soon as I leave here, we're going to be doing something,' Mr. Trump said. 'But I have to leave here.' What he intended to do remained unclear. If Mr. Vance and Mr. Witkoff did meet with the Iranians, officials say, the likely Iranian interlocutor would be the country's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration and knows every element of Iran's sprawling nuclear complex. Mr. Araghchi, who has been Mr. Witkoff's counterpart in recent negotiations, signaled his openness to a deal on Monday, saying in a statement, 'If President Trump is genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential.' 'It takes one phone call from Washington to muzzle someone like Netanyahu,' he said, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. 'That may pave the way for a return to diplomacy.' Image Iranian missiles have struck several Israeli cities, including Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. Credit... Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times But if that diplomatic effort fizzles, or the Iranians remain unwilling to give in to Mr. Trump's central demand that they must ultimately end all uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, the president will still have the option of ordering that Fordo and other nuclear facilities be destroyed. There is only one weapon for the job, experts contend. It is called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or the GBU-57, and it weighs so much — 30,000 pounds — that it can be lifted only by a B-2 bomber. Israel does not own either the weapon or the bomber needed to get it aloft and over target. If Mr. Trump holds back, it could well mean that Israel's main objective in the war is never completed. 'Fordo has always been the crux of this thing,' said Brett McGurk, who worked on Middle East issues for four successive American presidents, from George W. Bush to Joseph R. Biden Jr. 'If this ends with Fordo still enriching, then it's not a strategic gain.' That has been true for a long time, and over the past two years the U.S. military has refined the operation, under close White House scrutiny. The exercises led to the conclusion that one bomb would not solve the problem; any attack on Fordo would have to come in waves, with B-2s releasing one bomb after another down the same hole. And the operation would have to be executed by an American pilot and crew. This was all in the world of war planning until the opening salvos on Friday morning in Tehran, when Mr. Netanyahu ordered the strikes, declaring that Israel had discovered an 'imminent' threat that required 'pre-emptive action.' New intelligence, he suggested without describing the details, indicated that Iran was on the cusp of turning its fuel stockpile into weapons. Image President Trump in Kananaskis, Alberta, on Monday. He has to weigh whether he wants to involve the United States in the conflict between Iran and Israel. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times U.S. intelligence officials who have followed the Iranian program for years agree that Iranian scientists and nuclear specialists have been working to shorten the time it would take to manufacture a nuclear bomb, but they saw no huge breakthroughs. Yet they agree with Mr. McGurk and other experts on one point: If the Fordo facility survives the conflict, Iran will retain the key equipment it needs to stay on a pathway to the bomb, even if it would first have to rebuild much of the nuclear infrastructure that Israel has left in ruins over four days of precision bombing. There may be other alternatives to bombing it, though they are hardly a sure thing. If the power to Fordo gets cut, by saboteurs or bombing, it could damage or destroy the centrifuges that spin at supersonic speeds. Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Monday that this might have happened at the country's other major uranium enrichment center, Natanz. Israel took out the power supplies to the plant on Friday, and Mr. Grossi said that the disruption probably sent them spinning out of control. Mr. Trump rarely talks about Fordo by name, but he has occasionally alluded to the GBU-57, sometimes telling aides that he ordered its development. That is not correct: The United States began designing the weapon in 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, specifically to collapse the mountains protecting some of the deepest nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea. It was, however, tested during Mr. Trump's first term, and added to the arsenal. Mr. Netanyahu has pressed for the United States to make its bunker busters available since the Bush administration, so far to no avail. But people who have spoken to Mr. Trump in recent months say the topic has come up repeatedly in his conversations with the prime minister. When Mr. Trump has been asked about it, he usually avoids a direct answer. Image Soldiers on Sunday in Rehovot, Israel, which was hit in an Iranian missile attack. Credit... Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Now the pressure is on. The Israeli former defense minister Yoav Gallant, who resigned in a split with Mr. Netanyahu, told CNN's Bianna Golodryga on Monday that 'the job has to be done, by Israel, by the United States,' an apparent reference to the fact that the bomb would have to be dropped by an American pilot in an American airplane. He said that Mr. Trump had 'the option to change the Middle East and influence the world.' And Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina who often speaks for the traditional, hawkish members of his party, said on CBS on Sunday that 'if diplomacy is not successful' he will 'urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that, when this operation is over, there's nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program.' 'If that means providing bombs, provide bombs,' he said, adding, in a clear reference to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, 'whatever bombs. If it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.' But Republicans are hardly united in that view. And the split in the party over the decision of whether to make use of one of the Pentagon's most powerful conventional weapons to help one of America's closest allies has highlighted a far deeper divide. It is not only about crippling the centrifuges of Fordo; it is also about MAGA's view of what kinds of wars the United States should avoid at all costs. Image The Grand Bazaar in central Tehran on Monday. Credit... Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times The anti-interventionist wing of the party, given its most prominent voice by the influential podcaster Tucker Carlson, has argued that the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is nothing but downside risk in getting deeply into another Middle East war. On Friday, Mr. Carlson wrote that the United States should 'drop Israel' and 'let them fight their own wars.' 'If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so,' he continued. 'It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases. But not with America's backing.' In the Pentagon, opinion is divided for other reasons. Elbridge A. Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon's No. 3 post, has long argued that every military asset devoted to the wars of the Middle East is one diverted from the Pacific and the containment of China. (Mr. Colby had to amend his views on Iran somewhat to get confirmed.) For now, Mr. Trump can afford to keep one foot in both camps. By making one more run at coercive diplomacy, he can make the case to the MAGA faithful that he is using the threat of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator to bring the conflict to a peaceful end. And he can tell the Iranians that they are going to cease enriching uranium one way or the other, either by diplomatic agreement or because a GBU-57 imploded the mountain. But if the combination of persuasion and coercion fails, he will have to decide whether this is Israel's war or America's. Reporting was contributed by Farnaz Fassihi in New York and Patrick Kingsley in Jerusalem.
