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nuclear nonproliferation treaty
New START’s Expiration: A Threat to Humanitarian Disarmament
When major powers abandon restraint in the nuclear field, they send a dangerous message: that international commitments are optional, norms are negotiable, and humanitarian principles can be sidelined.
Feb 05, 2026
In January 2026, I published an article warning that the world was approaching the final hours of the New START Treaty. On February 5, 2026, that warning has become reality. For the first time since the early 1970s, no legally binding limits exist on US-Russian strategic nuclear forces. This moment is not only a failure of arms control; it is a profound threat to human security, humanitarian disarmament, and the credibility of multilateral commitments across all fields.
New START was the last surviving pillar of bilateral nuclear restraint. Its expiration removes the ceilings on deployed strategic warheads and delivery systems, eliminates inspections and data exchanges, and forces both sides to operate in an environment of opacity and worst‑case assumptions. In my earlier article, I argued that this collapse would deepen the crisis of credibility facing the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT), especially the long‑neglected obligations under Article VI. That analysis stands even more firmly today. A world without New START is a world where the NPT’s disarmament pillar is no longer eroding slowly—it is cracking openly.
But the consequences extend far beyond the nuclear domain. The end of New START is a blow to humanitarian disarmament as a whole. Treaties such as the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CMC) were built on the belief that international law can restrain the most harmful weapons and protect civilians. When major powers abandon restraint in the nuclear field, they send a dangerous message: that international commitments are optional, norms are negotiable, and humanitarian principles can be sidelined when politically inconvenient.
This erosion of respect for international commitments is not isolated. It is part of a wider pattern visible in multiple conflicts, where the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, attacks on medical facilities, and disregard for civilian protection have become disturbingly normalized. The collapse of New START reinforces this trend by weakening the broader culture of compliance that humanitarian disarmament depends on.
Strengthening humanitarian disarmament—from nuclear weapons to landmines, cluster munitions, and all weapons that devastate civilian life—is now an urgent moral responsibility.
The humanitarian and medical consequences of this moment cannot be overstated. Nuclear weapons are not abstract strategic tools; they are instruments of mass suffering. Their use—even once—would overwhelm health systems, destroy infrastructure, contaminate environments, and inflict irreversible harm on generations. The expiration of New START increases the likelihood of miscalculation, escalation, and arms racing at a time when global humanitarian systems are already stretched beyond capacity.
This is why the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has gained renewed relevance. Its humanitarian logic—grounded in the lived experiences of survivors and the realities of medical response—offers a principled alternative to the paralysis of traditional arms control. As nuclear‑armed states retreat from their obligations, the TPNW stands as a reminder that disarmament is not only a legal duty but a moral imperative.
Today’s moment demands more than observation. It requires action.
Governments must restore restraint and rebuild trust in multilateral commitments.
Civil society must raise its voice with renewed urgency.
Humanitarian and medical organizations must continue to highlight the human cost of nuclear policies.
And the media must stop treating nuclear risks as distant or technical; they are immediate threats to human life and dignity.
The expiration of New START is not the end of arms control—but it is a warning. A warning that the international system is drifting toward a world where the most destructive weapons are unconstrained, humanitarian norms are weakened, and global commitments lose their meaning.
Strengthening humanitarian disarmament—from nuclear weapons to landmines, cluster munitions, and all weapons that devastate civilian life—is now an urgent moral responsibility, more than ever.
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US Warship Downs Iranian Drone, Heightening Risk of 'Illegal and Catastrophic War'
"Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy," Phyllis Bennis of Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.
Feb 03, 2026
Amid recent reports that war is "imminent," the US military shot down an Iranian drone on Tuesday as it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, according to a US official who spoke with Reuters.
Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told the Associated Press that the drone “aggressively approached” the Lincoln with “unclear intent," and kept flying toward the aircraft carrier “despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters."
It came after another tense encounter earlier in the day, during which the US military said Iranian forces "harassed" a US merchant vessel sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Lincoln is part of an "armada" that President Donald Trump on Friday said he'd deployed to the region in advance of a possible strike against Iran, which he said would be "far worse" than the one the US conducted in June, when it bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
After initially stating his goal of protecting protesters from a government crackdown, Trump has pivoted to express his intentions of using the threat of military force to coerce Iran into negotiating a new nuclear agreement that would severely limit its ability to pursue nuclear enrichment, which it has the right to do for peaceful means.
"Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted," Paul R. Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University, said in a piece published by Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday.
Other international relations scholars have said the US has no grounds, either strategically or legally, to pursue a war, even to stop Iran's nuclear development.
For one thing, said Dylan Williams, vice president of the Center for International Policy, Trump himself is responsible for ripping up the old agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which required Iran to limit its enrichment of uranium well below the levels required to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief from crippling US sanctions.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was tasked with regularly inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities, the country was cooperating with all aspects of the deal until Trump withdrew from it, after which Iran began to once again accelerate its nuclear enrichment.
"There was 24/7 monitoring and no [highly enriched uranium] in Iran before Trump broke the JCPOA," Williams said. "Iran’s missile program and human rights abuses surged after he broke the deal."
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, marveled that "there is an amazing amount of folks who still think bombing Iran's nuclear program every eight months or so is a better result for the United States than the JCPOA, which capped Tehran's nuclear progress by 15-20 years."
With the Lincoln ominously looming off his nation's shores, Iran's embattled supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned on Sunday that "the Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war."
Trump responded to the ayatollah by saying that if “we don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right.”
Despite stating their unwillingness to give up their nuclear energy program, which they say is legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iranian envoys have expressed an openness to a meeting with US diplomats mediated by other Middle Eastern nations in Turkey this week.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on social media that he had instructed diplomats "to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency."
Trump is also pushing other demands—including that Iran must also limit its long-range ballistic missile program and stop arming its allies in the region, such as the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and the Yemeni group Ansar Allah, often referred to as the "Houthis."
Pillar pointed out that Iran's missile program and its arming of so-called "proxies" have primarily been used as deterrents against other nations in the region—namely, US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. With these demands, he said, "Iran is being told it cannot have a full regional policy while others do. It is unrealistic to expect any Iranian leader to agree to that."
That said, Pillar wrote that "President Trump is correct when he says that Iran wants a deal, given that Iran’s bad economic situation is an incentive to negotiate agreements that would provide at least partial relief from sanctions," which played a notable role in heightening the economic instability that fueled Iran's protests in the first place.
But any optimism that appeared to have arisen may have been dashed by Tuesday's exchange of fire. According to Axios, Iran is now asking to move the talks from Turkey to Oman and has called for a meeting with the US alone rather than with other nations present.
Eric Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, said: "This is exactly the kind of miscalculation—or intentional escalation, by hawkish bureaucrats aiming to scuttle talks—that can drag us into an illegal and catastrophic war in Iran."
Under the United Nations charter, countries are required to believe they are under imminent attack in order to carry out a strike against another sovereign nation.
In a comment to Common Dreams, Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New International Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, emphasized the massive difference between the US and Iran's military capabilities and actions.
"There is no question of Iran having equal military capacity to that of the US," she said. "Its military has never been anywhere close to the size, financing, or power; its own military capacity, and that of most of its allies in the region, were severely damaged in the Israeli-US attack last June. However the Iranian drone was 'acting,' the real escalation has been that of the United States."
"Sending what Trump called his 'massive armada' to threaten Iran stands in complete violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the threat or use of force," she continued. "That is the real 'escalatory' action. The US needs to pull back its warships, warplanes, and troops, and engage in serious diplomacy. Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy."
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Trump Is Dragging World Toward a New Nuclear Arms Race
We only have one planet on which to live and time is of the essence.
Feb 03, 2026
Among the critical issues facing our country today, nuclear arms control is seldom top of mind for most people, understandably, given our myriad political, social and economic crises. Recent books and films such as Annie Jacobsen’s 2004 non-fiction tome Nuclear War: A Scenario and last fall’s A House of Dynamite, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, garnered needed attention for the still-existential threat of nuclear weapons, yet the problem remains mostly absent from our political discourse.
Part of the fault for that lies with President Donald Trump, who while constantly touting his ability to “make deals,” is missing in action on a simple agreement that would make the US and the world safer. New START, the arms control treaty negotiated by President Barack Obama and extended by President Joe Biden, will expire on February 5. However, Russia offered last September a one year, or longer, extension of the treaty’s key limits of 1550 deployed, strategic nuclear warheads and 700 launch systems each.
Trump simply needs to say “Da” (yes) to the Russian proposal, which would cost very little politically at this time. While both countries, along with the seven other nuclear weapons states, are in the midst of dangerous and exorbitant nuclear weapons “modernization” programs, neither are in a position to rapidly exceed the current New START limits, nor should they, for global security and financial reasons. While both countries tout their in-development bombs and missiles that could end most if not all life on Earth, at the cost of more life-affirming investments in human needs and protecting our planet, the reality is these systems, such as the new Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), are boondoggles that mostly benefit the financial interests of the large weapons contractors rather than the Common Good.
Should Trump blow this chance, his global approval, already dismal, will doubtless decline further.
Then there is Trump’s fantasy of building a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield. Such a chimera is more properly seen as part of a potential offensive nuclear war fighting scheme rather than mere defense; that is if it works, which it is extremely unlikely to do. So it could be a lose-lose-lose scenario, whereby it spurs other countries to deploy more missiles and counter-measures to overcome such a missile “defense;” and it likely would not work to shoot down all incoming missiles (and would be useless against other forms of attack); and it could be used to argue arms control and disarmament treaties are unnecessary, because the shield will protect us, providing a dangerously false sense of security.
One does not need to engage in all the arguments against Golden Dome, or for investing in other, more economically productive pursuits, or think a nuclear weapons-free world is achievable any time soon, to agree that ditching the benefits of New START is a stunningly bad idea at this time.
The US and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) have had a series of treaties limiting and reducing nuclear weapons since 1972. If New START limits go away, we will enter a very dangerous brave new world.
Trump’s famously insatiable ego could be slaked by not only agreeing to the Russian proposal, but by challenging Moscow to initiate new talks to go lower. At the end of the Obama Administration and in its aftermath, there were conflicting claims by the US and Russia on which side whiffed at a chance to go lower, to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads each. So Trump could propose something his nemesis Obama failed to do. Such an agreement might take a sustained period of negotiation, or Trump could do as President George H. W. Bush did in 1991 in announcing a unilateral nuclear weapons cut, which was coordinated with and matched by Russia, with mutually agreed verification procedures.
Trust between Moscow and Washington is low for various reasons, but neither country can afford, politically or economically, to engage in a futile, costly new arms race, and global public reprobation would be deservedly harsh for both countries. And it would further erode any credibility for the US to insist China engage in arms reduction talks regarding its arsenal, which is still much smaller than those of Russia and the US. Even at the height of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union and United States competing for global dominance and engaging in deadly “proxy wars” and armed interventions around the globe, the two sides saw the wisdom of not blowing up the planet, and collaborated on a series of treaties that dramatically reduced their nuclear arsenals, which made the world safer.
Should Trump blow this chance, his global approval, already dismal, will doubtless decline further. Upcoming international review conferences of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) this spring and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) this fall, both at the United Nations in New York, will likely lay the blame for a renewed arms race at his feet.
It is not (yet) too late. A coalition of US peace and disarmament organizations is mobilizing public action to press Congress and the White House to accept the Kremlin’s offer, if not by Thursday’s deadline, then as soon as possible. For more information on how to raise your voice on this critical issue, concerned individuals can consult Peace Action’s FaceBook page.
Time is of the essence. We only have one planet.
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Trump’s Nuclear Testing Threat: Playing with More Than Dynamite
We have to hope that there is sufficient wisdom and leverage hidden in the cracks of the Trump administration to convince Trump that he needs to reverse course.
Nov 11, 2025
The thriller House of Dynamite, playing in theaters and streamed into our homes, leaves its audiences hanging as an unprepared US president must decide humanity’s fate after a surprise nuclear attack. Now picture the real president, Donald Trump, whose uninformed and garbled statement about resuming nuclear testing may have sounded the starting gun for an existentially dangerous multinational nuclear arms race. We can hope that those who may be able to influence this unstable and ill-informed president will devise a face-saving way for him to walk back the threat. But we can’t count on that happening.
In a recent track II session with US, Russian, and European former arms control diplomats, military officials, and analysts, there was something like a consensus that Trump misunderstood one or more reports about recent Russian nuclear activities. The claim is that either Russia or China conducted explosive, rather than subcritical, tests, a claim rejected by the head of the US Strategic Command. Not wanting to be out done by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump made his threat. When questioned about it, Trump reiterated the threat. This has caused profound uncertainty and confusion, leading the Kremlin to request clarification about US nuclear weapons testing policy.
Worth noting is that this brouhaha comes at a time when significant forces within the Republican Party advocate renewed testing. The Kremlin has yet to receive that clarification or another one in response to its offer to extend the most essential elements of the New START Treaty beyond its February expiration date.
Among senior arms controllers, there is an understanding that if the US or Russia resume testing, it will open the gates for extremely dangerous nuclear weapons proliferation. Among the candidates for a nuclear breakout are South Korea, where a majority of the population wants their nation to develop nuclear weapons out of fear of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and growing uncertainties about Seoul’s military alliance with the United States. Other breakout candidates include Saudi Arabia, which recently concluded a military alliance with nuclear Pakistan and near-nuclear Iran. Despite Trump’s claims of having destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program, Tehran moved its highly enriched uranium prior to the Israeli and US missile strikes against its nuclear infrastructure. And as history teaches us, knowledge is not easily destroyed.
In our various nations we can use our people’s power to name, shame, isolate, and insist on no new nuclear weapons testing.
While Russia is reported to be in a position to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing in relatively short order, this is not the case for the US. While the Pentagon could detonate a nuclear weapon as a show of terrorizing force, it would take several years to install highly advanced nuclear testing technologies into the Nevada test site. Similarly, nations that aspire to join the nuclear powers will not immediately be able to test these “weapons of the Devil.”
However, the seminally important Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has successfully limited nuclear weapons proliferation and thus the dangers of nuclear war, will be at risk if Trump persists with the threat to resume nuclear weapons testing. Despite the US and China having yet to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, with the exception of North Korea nuclear powers have respected the moratorium on kinetic testing since the CTBT was negotiated 30 years ago in 1996. Fears abound that if Trump does not reverse course before the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which begins at the United Nations in late April, he could torpedo the treaty. Despite the treaty’s double standards and failure to lead to the elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals as prescribed in Article IV, the treaty remains a powerful diplomatic barrier to nuclear weapons proliferation. Dangerously, the last two Review Conferences were deemed failures for their inability to negotiate and issue a final declaration. The probability is that a commitment to resume nuclear weapons testing would sink the third RevCon.
In the tradition of three strikes and you’re out, a third successive NPT RevCon failure would likely doom the NPT, if not immediately then over the course of several years. In the mistaken belief that nuclear deterrence can provide national security, some states would withdraw from the treaty, become nuclear powers, and the resulting collapse of the treaty would “end the world as we know it.”
Where does this leave us? First and foremost, we have to hope that there is sufficient wisdom and leverage hidden in the cracks of the Trump administration to convince Trump that he needs to reverse course. In our various nations we can use our people’s power to name, shame, isolate, and insist on no new nuclear weapons testing. And with the NPT Review Conference approaching, we can organize to insist that the treaty’s Article IV commitment to nuclear weapons abolition, and previous implementation agreements, be respected.
Along the way we can remind people that even as we are enter and resist a new US-Russia-China Cold War, that arms control agreements between great power rivals can be negotiated, as was the case during the first Cold War. We can urge the US to join with Russia to extend the elements of the New START Treaty beyond the treaty’s February expiration. And we can join efforts to use the new Netflix film House of Dynamite to teach new generations about the existential threat of nuclear weapons and war and the reality that, as the Hibakusha teach, “Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.”
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Trump’s Iran Attack Was a Dangerous Showcase of Why Nuclear Apartheid Must End
Counterproductively, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran may hasten Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state.
Jun 29, 2025
Over many years, I have had the extraordinary privilege of working with Japanese and other atomic and hydrogen bomb survivors. These are people who have endured and transformed the worst imaginable physical and emotional traumas into the most influential force for nuclear weapons abolition. Their fundamental call is that “human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.”
Their courage, their call, and their steadfast advocacy of nuclear weapons abolition earned them the Nobel Peace Prize last December. In awarding the Hibakusha the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Committee sent the world a powerful message. With the possible exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world is closer to the danger of catastrophic nuclear war than it has ever been, and we must act for nuclear weapons abolition.
There are just over 12,000 nuclear weapons in the nine nuclear weapons state’s stockpiles, 93% in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. The average strategic, or hydrogen, bomb is 20 times more powerful than he Hiroshima A-bomb, and some have been 1,000 times the power of the two comparatively small A-bombs that destroyed those two cities, killing 200,000 people almost immediately, and hundreds of thousands more as a result of radiation diseases.
As with the 1953 CIA led coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic Mosaddeq government, the attack’s negative impacts will be long lasting.
As Daniel Ellsberg, who was the principal author of Presidents John F. Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson’s nuclear warfighting doctrines, testified, the U.S. has repeatedly threatened to initiate nuclear war during wars and international crises. Presidents have used them in the same way that an armed robber uses a gun when it points it at his victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used. In my book Empire and the Bomb, I documented about 30 times that U.S. presidents have done this, most frequently to reinforce U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and Asia.
Each of the other nine nuclear weapons states has prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear war at least once. Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the U.S. nuclear playbook in his war in Ukraine.
I’ve been asked to say a little about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, one of the seminal treaties of the 20th century. Iran signed it, but following U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, the Iranian parliament has voted to stop cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and there is talk of leaving the treaty altogether. Israel refused to sign the treaty and lives outside its obligations.
In the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union recognized that the science creating nuclear weapons was no longer beyond the reach of many countries. They feared that as many as 40 countries could develop nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century. The treaty they negotiated with the vast majority of the world’s nations rests on three pillars: Nonnuclear weapons states forswear becoming nuclear powers and have the right to develop and use nuclear power for peaceful purposes—a flaw in the treaty. Article VI of the treaty obligated the initial five nuclear powers to engage in good-faith negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons: creating a nuclear weapons-free world.
I have had the privilege of working with several Nobel Peace Prize recipients. Joseph Rotblat, the only senior scientist who resigned from the Manhattan Project because of his moral objections, was clear that because no nation will long tolerate an unequal balance of power—in this case terror—unless nuclear weapons are abolished, proliferation and the nuclear war that would followed are inevitable. Mohamed ElBaradei, who led the IAEA, decried the double standard of nuclear apartheid. Like Rotblat, he insisted that the only way forward was nuclear weapons abolition.
And on the question of double standards, our government and media have long and consciously turned blind eyes to the one nuclear weapons state in the Middle East: Israel. Few know that during the 1973 war, Golda Meir threatened to use Israel’s “Temple Weapons” to extort Henry Kissinger to open the floodgates of weapons and spare parts to turn the tide of the war.
Do not forget that the bombings were grossly unconstitutional and should be grounds for an impeachment. Only Congress has the legal right to declare war.
Counterproductively, Trump’s and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran may hasten Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state. This in turn would trigger nuclear weapons proliferation across the Middle East. We need to remember the fatwa stating that possession of nuclear weapons is contrary to Islam. But we should also acknowledge the Shiite tradition of continuing revelation—not unlike the Mormons here in the U.S. Enriching uranium to 60%, almost to weapons grade, was certainly not necessary for nuclear power generation.
But diplomacy, not war, was and remains the way.
As some initially feared, the Iranian government apparently moved some of its fissile materials from Natanz and Fordow before the attacks. And contrary to President Trump’s claims that he obliterated Iran’s nuclear project, and pathetically that the bombing was equivalent to the Hiroshima A-bombing, the Pentagon reports that they do not know how much or where enriched uranium is now stored, if the fissile materials remain accessible should Iran now opt to develop a nuclear arsenal, or what if any radioactive fallout has occurred. And with Iran’s foreign minister traveling to Moscow, the multi-dimensional Iranian-Russian-Chinese-North Korean alignment may have been strengthened by the U.S. attack and lead to future nuclear collaboration between Teheran and Moscow.
The attacks will spur nuclear weapons proliferation. Knowledge about how to build a nuclear weapon has not been eliminated, and the attacks will likely redouble Iranian will to build a nuclear weapon, at the very least to defend its independence. Other nations will take the lesson that their sovereignty and independence require having a retaliatory nuclear arsenal, as was the case in North Korea.
As with the 1953 CIA led coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic Mosaddeq government, the attack’s negative impacts will be long lasting. Coming in the tradition of that coup, of U.S. support for Iraq in its calamitous 1980s war to overthrow the Iranian government, and Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement, the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure came a day before scheduled negotiations. This reinforces the lesson that the U.S. cannot be trusted, and the loss of trust in the U.S. word and commitments will not be limited to Iran. It is being learned or relearned by the nations and people of the world, with negative consequences for the U.S. people for decades to come.
Do not forget that the bombings were grossly unconstitutional and should be grounds for an impeachment. Only Congress has the legal right to declare war.
The bombings were gross violations of international law. They undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the increasingly fragile post WWII United Nations charter order. A world in which there is no respect for law and diplomacy opens the way to international chaos, autocracies, wars, and devastating human suffering.
Even as we must rally to prevent renewed and widening war and press for nuclear disarmament and abolition, we must not be diverted from the urgent work of stopping Israel’s brutal genocide in Gaza, its attacks across the West Bank, for an Israeli-Iranian cease-fire, and for a just and sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Common security is the only path and foundation for Israeli, Palestinian, and Middle East peace and security.
No War with Iran!
Work for a Just, Peaceful, and Nuclear Weapons Free World!
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No, Trump Doesn’t Deserve Credit for the Israel-Iran Cease-Fire
In truth, this was always a joint U.S.-Israeli war—one planned, executed, and justified under the pretext of defending Western interests while laying the groundwork for deeper intervention and potential invasion.
Jun 25, 2025
On June 24, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a truce between Israel and Iran following nearly two weeks of open warfare.
Israel began the war, launching a surprise offensive on June 13, with airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, missile installations, and senior military and scientific personnel, in addition to numerous civilian targets.
In response, Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles and drones deep into Israeli territory, triggering air raid sirens across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba and numerous other locations, causing unprecedented destruction in the country.
What we are witnessing is a staged political performance—a carefully orchestrated spat between two partners playing both sides of a dangerous game.
What began as a bilateral escalation quickly spiraled into something far more consequential: a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran.
On June 22, the United States Air Force and Navy carried out a full-scale assault on three Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—in a coordinated strike dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer. Seven B-2 bombers of the 509th Bomb Wing allegedly flew nonstop from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to deliver the strikes.
The following day, Iran retaliated by bombing the Al-Udeid U.S. military base in Qatar and firing a new wave of missiles at Israeli targets.
This marked a turning point. For the first time, Iran and the United States faced each other on the battlefield without intermediaries. And for the first time in recent history, Israel’s long-standing campaign to provoke a U.S.-led war against Iran had succeeded.
Strategic Fallout
Following 12 days of war, Israel achieved two of its goals. First, it pulled Washington directly into its conflict with Tehran, setting a dangerous precedent for future U.S. involvement in Israel’s regional wars. Second, it generated immediate political capital at home and abroad, portraying U.S. military backing as a “victory” for Israel.
However, beyond these short-term gains, the cracks in Israel’s strategy are already showing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not achieve regime change in Tehran—the real objective of his years-long campaign. Instead, he faced a resilient and unified Iran that struck back with precision and discipline. Worse still, he may have awakened something even more threatening to Israeli ambitions: a new regional consciousness.
Iran, for its part, emerges from this confrontation significantly stronger. Despite U.S. and Israeli efforts to cripple its nuclear program, Iran has demonstrated that its strategic capabilities remain intact and highly functional.
Tehran established a powerful new deterrence equation—proving that it can strike not only Israeli cities but U.S. bases across the region.
Even more consequentially, Iran waged this fight independently, without leaning on Hezbollah or Ansarallah, or even deploying Iraqi militias. This independence surprised many observers and forced a recalibration of Iran’s regional weight.
Iranian Unity
Perhaps the most significant development of all is one that cannot be measured in missiles or casualties: the surge in national unity within Iran and the widespread support it received across the Arab and Muslim world.
For years, Israel and its allies have sought to isolate Iran, to present it as a pariah even among Muslims. Yet in these past days, we have witnessed the opposite.
The message from Tehran is unmistakable: We are here. We are proud. And we will not be broken.
From Baghdad to Beirut, and even in politically cautious capitals like Amman and Cairo, support for Iran surged. This unity alone may prove to be Israel’s most formidable challenge yet.
Inside Iran, the war erased, at least for now, the deep divides between reformists and conservatives. Faced with an existential threat, the Iranian people coalesced, not around any one leader or party, but around the defense of their homeland.
The descendants of one of the world’s oldest civilizations reacted with a dignity and pride that no amount of foreign aggression could extinguish.
The Nuclear Question
Despite the battlefield developments, the real outcome of this war may depend on what Iran does next with its nuclear program.
If Tehran decides to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—even temporarily—and signals that its program remains functional, Israel’s so-called “achievements” will be rendered meaningless.
However, if Iran fails to follow this military confrontation with a bold political repositioning, Netanyahu will be free to claim—falsely or not—that he has succeeded in halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been.
A Manufactured Farce
Some media outlets are now praising Trump for supposedly “ordering” Netanyahu to halt further strikes on Iran.
This narrative is as insulting as it is false. What we are witnessing is a staged political performance—a carefully orchestrated spat between two partners playing both sides of a dangerous game.
Trump’s Truth Social post, “Bring your pilots home,” was not a call for peace. It was a calculated move to reclaim credibility after fully surrendering to Netanyahu’s war. It allows Trump to pose as a moderate, distract from Israel’s battlefield losses, and create the illusion of a U.S. administration reining in Israeli aggression.
In truth, this was always a joint U.S.-Israeli war—one planned, executed, and justified under the pretext of defending Western interests while laying the groundwork for deeper intervention and potential invasion.
Return of the People
Amid all the military calculations and geopolitical theater, one truth stands out: the real winners are the Iranian people.
When it mattered most, they stood united. They understood that resisting foreign aggression was more important than internal disputes. They reminded the world—and themselves—that in moments of crisis, people are not peripheral actors in history; they are its authors.
The message from Tehran is unmistakable: We are here. We are proud. And we will not be broken.
That is the message Israel, and perhaps even Washington, did not anticipate. And it is the one that could reshape the region for years to come.
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From Fordow to Fallout: Global Hegemony on Trial
The U.S. strikes on Iran must be seen as part of a broader strategy by a declining global hegemon to reassert authority over an increasingly fractured world order.
Jun 24, 2025
This article was written and submitted before the latest development in the Iran-Israel-U.S. crisis: the announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump of an agreed cease-fire between Iran and Israel, subsequently confirmed by Iranian state television. While the situation on the ground remains fluid (with continued missile exchanges and uncertainty about the durability of this truce), we have chosen to publish this analysis in its original form for two key reasons. First, the cease-fire itself aligns with one of the primary scenarios outlined in this piece: tactical deescalation driven by exhaustion, geopolitical recalibration, and the recognition of strategic costs. Second, the structural drivers, historical context, and geopolitical stakes detailed in the article remain critical for understanding both the path to this truce and the uncertainties that lie ahead. Rather than rendering the analysis obsolete, this new development reinforces the paper's central argument: that the confrontation is not simply a regional affair, but part of a broader crisis of global order and legitimacy in which militarized interventions are used to mask systemic decline. This moment, precarious as it is, remains a potential turning point. The following reflections aim to illuminate the forces that have shaped it and what may still come next.
The recent U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have fundamentally altered the geopolitical landscape of the ongoing Iran-Israel-U.S. confrontation. While the situation has been deteriorating since the escalation of Israeli hostilities in Gaza and subsequent Iranian retaliations, Washington's decision to bomb key Iranian sites (including the Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility, Natanz, and Isfahan) marks a game-changing shift. The strikes on Iran, justified under familiar pretexts of "non-proliferation," "peace," and "defense," serve as a warning to emerging multipolar blocs, particularly BRICS and China-led alliances, that deviation from Western geopolitical orthodoxy will not be tolerated, even when conducted within the boundaries of international law.
This piece examines the unfolding dynamics of the crisis, analyzes potential trajectories, and evaluates the broader implications for national sovereignty and global security in an increasingly fragmented world order marked by legal erosion, intensified conflict, and competing hegemonies.
Crisis as Strategy: Manufacturing Conflict in the Shadow of Decline
On June 22, 2025, the U.S. intervened in the Iran-Israel war by attacking Iran, through an operation dubbed "Operation Midnight Hammer," which involved the deployment of B-2 stealth bombers armed with GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs. It targeted sites previously thought impenetrable and marks the first time Washington has taken direct military action against Iran's nuclear infrastructure. American officials frame it as a limited, preventive measure designed to halt Iran's nuclear progress, signaling that no further strikes are currently planned. Yet such rhetoric must be critically evaluated. The scale and precision of the bombings, along with U.S. President Donald Trump's ambiguous "Make Iran Great Again" statement, raise suspicions about the administration's longer-term goals, including the possibility of engineered "regime change" by nontraditional means, escalating tensions, draining resources, and exploiting internal fractures.
What began as a regional confrontation has been instrumentalized into a global warning: a demonstration of force aimed at deterring the momentum of multipolar alternatives.
Iran's initial response has been carefully calibrated. Shortly after vowing retaliation, Tehran launched a limited missile strike on a U.S. military base in Qatar, likely coordinated in advance with Qatari and possibly even American authorities to minimize casualties. This symbolic yet pointed action appears designed to send a strategic message: Iran will respond, but not recklessly. The move suggests a preference for controlled escalation, signaling strength while leaving space for deescalation. Other retaliatory options remain on the table: cyber-attacks on U.S. infrastructure, disruption of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), or asymmetrical operations via allies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Hashd al-Shaabi. Each carries serious risks for Iran, the region, and global stability. Tehran's leadership seems intent on avoiding the U.S.' trap of full-scale escalation while assessing the fallout, recalibrating strategy, and consulting closely with allies like Russia and China to secure diplomatic backing and military preparedness. The U.S. response to this measured strike will shape the next phase of confrontation.
The Possible Scenarios Ahead
In the wake of the U.S. military strikes on Iran's key nuclear and military facilities, and the intensified hostilities between Iran and Israel, four major strategic trajectories now seem plausible. Each hinges on complex interactions between military calculations, geopolitical alignments, and domestic constraints. These are not mutually exclusive and may bleed into one another depending on evolving events.
Scenario A: Intensified but Contained Confrontation
This scenario envisions a continuation of calibrated escalation; Israel, backed by the United States, continues precision strikes on Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure, while Iran retaliates through means carefully modulated to avoid triggering direct U.S. engagement. Proxy confrontations across Iraq and the Red Sea may intensify, but red lines may be respected regarding attacks on American personnel or sovereign territory.
The strategic aim on all sides is to inflict sufficient costs to assert deterrence and save face, without tumbling into full-scale war. Israel preserves its posture as the self-designated regional enforcer, the U.S. projects its global policing role without deep involvement, and Iran upholds its position as a sovereign actor refusing to be subjugated. This scenario is already in motion.
Its durability, however, depends on multiple pressure points: the endurance of Iran's infrastructure and internal cohesion; Israel's appetite for military risk, enduring the already growingly backbreaking economic costs of the conflict and decreasing political gain; the U.S. election and economic calculus; and the reaction of regional and global powers. As weapon stockpiles diminish and war fatigue grows, the possibility of shifting into another scenario becomes more likely.
Scenario B: Direct Iran-U.S. Military Confrontation
This high-stakes scenario envisions a significant escalation whereby Iran targets U.S. military assets (such as bases in Iraq, Syria, Qatar, or Bahrain) or naval forces in the Persian Gulf. Any such action would almost certainly provoke a forceful U.S. military response, including sustained air and naval operations, with the potential to spiral into a broader regional war.
The recent limited Iranian missile strike on the U.S. base in Qatar, reportedly carried out with prior warnings to local and possibly American authorities, suggests that Tehran is testing this boundary carefully. It was likely intended as a symbolic gesture (assertive yet calculated to avoid immediate escalation), demonstrating Iran's capability while keeping the door open for deescalation.
The U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, despite Iran's continued NPT compliance, have shattered the perceived legitimacy of the global security architecture.
Despite this, the broader risk of uncontrolled escalation remains. Miscalculations, false-flag provocations, or misunderstood retaliatory acts could still trigger a more direct and sustained confrontation. A scenario where Iran disrupts the Strait of Hormuz or targets high-value U.S. assets without prior signaling would heighten the risk of full-scale conflict.
Strategically, this path remains the most perilous for Iran. A direct war would stretch its already burdened military apparatus, require multi-front engagement, and risk massive infrastructural and civilian losses. For this reason, both Iran and the U.S. appear reluctant to pursue it, but it cannot be ruled out. Should this scenario unfold, it may quickly slide into Scenario C: a prolonged war of attrition aimed not at conquest but at systemic destabilization and regime fatigue.
Scenario C: Shock Doctrine and "Soft Regime Change"
This scenario imagines a prolonged campaign of attritional warfare (military strikes, economic destabilization, disinformation, and psychological operations) aimed at gradually eroding the legitimacy and capacity of the Iranian state without formal invasion. The goal here is not decisive battlefield victory but strategic disintegration.
This would involve more calculated acts of destruction (such as the recent strikes on Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow), imposition of even harsher sanctions via mechanisms like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) snapback, and deliberate amplification of dissent within Iran. Western powers and Israeli intelligence would continue cultivating fractures within the Iranian elite and broader society, particularly among the disillusioned middle class and peripheral ethnic communities.
However, this is a dangerous gamble. Iran's memory of the 1953 coup and decades of resistance to imperial interventions has hardened its political institutions. The state has adapted to high-pressure conditions through robust security apparatuses, ideological cohesion, and crisis-driven legitimacy. Large sections of the Iranian public, despite the internal divisions, tend to consolidate around national sovereignty during times of external threat. Thus, while slow erosion remains a strategic goal for some in the West, the plan may backfire, further entrenching authoritarian reflexes and exacerbating regional volatility.
Scenario D: Exhaustion, Tactical Deescalation, and Renewed Covert Warfare
This scenario becomes increasingly plausible if the cumulative costs of confrontation (military, economic, and political) begin to outweigh perceived strategic gains for both Iran and Israel. For the United States, a prolonged regional conflict also carries serious geopolitical risks. While Washington becomes further entangled in a high-stakes escalation with no clear exit strategy, Beijing quietly consolidates its economic recovery and enhances its military capacity. The longer the U.S. remains embroiled in Middle Eastern entanglements, the more it risks losing strategic ground in its broader rivalry with China.
Within this context, signs of weapons fatigue, infrastructure degradation, and growing global disapproval could push the belligerents toward tactical deescalation. Iran, aware of the long-term humanitarian costs and the strategic risks of total war, may choose to delay or modulate its retaliation to maintain room for maneuver. Israel, facing mounting international criticism and potential strain on its domestic cohesion, may similarly reduce the intensity of its military operations. However, such restraint would likely represent a pause rather than peace, a recalibration rather than a sustainable resolution.
Such a pause would be fragile and conditional. It would not represent peace but rather a shift back from overt to covert conflict. Iran may strengthen its nuclear policy by shifting further into opacity, denying or limiting International Atomic Energy Agency access, decentralizing enrichment activities, and tightening information control. Western powers would find it easier to interpret this as nuclear escalation and would more decisively push for the reactivation of the JCPOA snapback mechanism that will lead to new layers of global sanctions. Internally, Iran would enter a phase of intensified securitization, i.e., greater surveillance, suppression of dissent, and policing of civil society. Externally, Israel and Western intelligence agencies would likely continue to support dissident networks, cyber operations, and economic sabotage.
Key Factors Determining the Next Phase
1. The Role of Great Powers
Russia and China have condemned Israel's unprovoked aggression and the recent U.S. strikes. Both countries have critical stakes in Iran: China relies on it for energy security and Belt and Road transit; Russia views it as a strategic partner in countering Western hegemony. While neither country seeks war, they may offer Iran advanced air defense systems, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic cover. Reports of Chinese cargo flights into Iran hint at a subtle but increasing strategic alignment.
2. Geoeconomic Implications
Oil prices surged after the strikes, with Brent crude nearing $75-80 per barrel. Financial markets responded with caution, as investors fear extended volatility. Inflationary pressures have intensified in Europe and Asia, driven by rising energy costs. Central banks in the West may now hesitate to cut interest rates, fearful of stagflation. This economic pressure acts as both a constraint on war and a bargaining chip: All actors now operate in a context where geopolitical decisions carry immediate economic costs.
3. Public Opinion
Trump's decision to strike Iranian facilities is a high-stakes gamble. It appeals to Republican hawks who view it as a show of strength, but most Americans remain wary of another Middle East entanglement. With public memory still shaped by Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump must appear decisive without triggering fears of endless war. His framing of the attack as "surgical" and "defensive" may hold for now. But a single U.S. casualty, oil price spike, or market shock could swiftly erode support, turning the move into a political liability in an already polarized election cycle.
4. Iran's Structural Resilience
Despite years of economic sanctions, internal unrest, and now direct military assaults, Iran's political structure has not fractured. The IRGC, Basij, and Artesh continue to demonstrate institutional cohesion and loyalty. While widespread discontent persists, no unified or credible opposition force has yet emerged with the capacity to rally the population against the state. The historical memory of foreign interventions still serves as a potent source of nationalist resilience. Many external analysts underestimate Iran's ability to endure crises, overlooking its layered, pluralistic, and historically adaptive modes of governance. However, the most serious threat to Iran's resilience may come not from external aggression but from within: decades of neoliberal structural adjustment have hollowed out public services, deepened inequality, and eroded economic sovereignty. By binding the national economy to global market fluctuations and dollar-based trade systems, these reforms have made Iran acutely vulnerable to inflationary shocks and currency instability. Above all, they have rendered international sanctions far more effective, magnifying their impact on everyday life and intensifying mass dissatisfaction. The current government continues to adhere to an economic model that prioritizes fiscal orthodoxy over redistribution or self-sufficiency. This approach is fundamentally ill-suited to the demands of wartime mobilization. It places the burden of conflict squarely on working people and makes the economic pressures of protracted confrontation increasingly unbearable.
Implications of the Crisis for Security and Sovereignty Beyond Empire
From a critical scholar-activist perspective, the current escalation must be seen as part of a broader strategy by a declining global hegemon to reassert authority over an increasingly fractured world order. Confronted with deep internal crises and the erosion of its unipolar dominance, the United States has exploited the Iranian nuclear issue, first by pressuring Iran into fruitless negotiations, then enabling its regional proxy, Israel, to manufacture escalation, ultimately militarizing the conflict as a calculated strategy to reassert geopolitical discipline. What began as a regional confrontation has been instrumentalized into a global warning: a demonstration of force aimed at deterring the momentum of multipolar alternatives, particularly the rising influence of China, the BRICS bloc, and other emergent alliances challenging Western supremacy.
Through this confrontation, Washington seeks to reassert the primacy of its security architecture and dollar-based economic order, even at the cost of further destabilizing international norms. Military action under the banners of "non-proliferation," "defense," or "regional stability" masks a deeper agenda: disciplining dissenting states, undermining autonomous alliances, disrupting China's Belt and Road Initiative, and reminding the Global South that any deviation from the unipolar script will be met with force. Yet this strategy is paradoxical; while aiming to halt decline, it simultaneously deepens the crisis of legitimacy facing global institutions, erodes faith in international law, and accelerates the very multipolar shifts it seeks to suppress.
This is not a time to restore a failed status quo. What's needed is a radical rethinking of security, sovereignty, and development, beyond the coercive logic of militarized capitalism.
The core issue is not whether Iran is building a nuclear bomb (there is no credible evidence that it is) but whether sovereign states are permitted to pursue energy independence, chart autonomous foreign policies, or forge alternative economic alliances. The strikes make clear that even legal adherence to international treaties offers no shield against coercion when a state resists the dominant script. What is being punished is not a violation of norms, but defiance of empire. And yet, resistance (both armed and diplomatic) endures.
The stakes are extraordinarily high. One misstep could ignite full-scale regional war, disrupt global energy markets, and deepen economic inequality. Yet beneath the immediate crisis, the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, despite Iran's continued NPT compliance, have shattered the perceived legitimacy of the global security architecture. The NPT's foundational bargain (non-nuclear states forgo weapons in exchange for peaceful technology and protection) has been exposed as hollow. Compliance has not shielded Iran from unilateral aggression, eroding faith in international law.
Amid this breakdown, new possibilities are emerging. Multipolar diplomacy, South-South cooperation, and grassroots transnational solidarity are rising as alternatives in a world long denied inclusive governance. This is not a time to restore a failed status quo. What's needed is a radical rethinking of security, sovereignty, and development, beyond the coercive logic of militarized capitalism. Whether we spiral into catastrophe or move toward a more just world depends on the courage and imagination of those who still believe another future is possible.
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Trump Strikes on Iran Nuclear Sites Called 'Devastating Blow' to Nonproliferation
"It's such a terrible precedent that could drive states to determine that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty no longer benefits their security," one expert warned during a virtual event on the conflict.
Jun 23, 2025
Experts said Monday during a webinar on the escalating Mideast crisis that U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran's civilian nuclear facilities—which were ostensibly under International Atomic Energy Agency protection—further exposed the United States as untrustworthy and severely damaged efforts to stop the global proliferation of nuclear weapons.
ReThink Media hosted Monday's webinar, during which host Mac Hamilton discussed issues including Saturday's U.S. attack on Iran with panelists Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War; Yasmine Taeb, the legislative political director at MPower Change; Kelsey Davenport, Arms Control Association's director for nonproliferation policy; and Arti Walker-Peddakotla, chair of the board at About Face: Veterans Against the War.
"Military action is not an effective long-term strategy for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran."
President Donald Trump ordered the attacks on the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, the Natanz Nuclear Facility, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center despite decades of U.S. intelligence community consensus—including his own administration's recent assessment—that Iran is not trying to develop nuclear weapons. Trump also disregarded international law, his own two-week ultimatum for Iran, and the fact that the three facilities were supposed to be safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"From a nonproliferation perspective, Trump's decision to strike Iran was a reckless, irresponsible escalation that is likely to push Iran closer to nuclear weapons in the long term," Davenport said during Monday's webinar. "The strikes did damage key Iranian nuclear facilities, like the underground Fordow enrichment site. But Tehran had ample time prior to the strikes to remove its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium to a covert location, and it's likely that they did so."
"This underscores that the strikes may have temporarily set back Iran's program, but military action is not an effective long-term strategy for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran," she continued. "Because technically, Iran has retained its nuclear weapons capability and critical aspects of the program."
"And politically, there's greater impetus now to weaponize," Davenport contended. "I mean, strikes are already strengthening factions in Iran calling for withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and strengthening arguments that nuclear weapons are necessary to deter further attacks."
Rejecting the president's claim to have "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's nuclear sites, Davenport said that "all Trump has destroyed is U.S. credibility, I think Iranians have less reason now to trust the United States to negotiate an agreement in good faith."
Davenport continued:
Iran has certainly learned the lessons of past history. I mean, [former Libyan Prime Minister] Moammar Gadhafigave up Libya's nuclear weapons program, and later was overthrown by Western-backed forces. Syria, its nuclear weapons program was bombed while it was still in its infancy. Decades later, [former Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad was overthrown.
The United States has demonstrated it is not interested in credible negotiations under the Trump administration, and that if a deal is struck there's no guarantee that the United States will abide by its commitments, even if Iran is abiding by its end of the bargain. That's what we saw in the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] scenario. So it really raises questions about U.S. nonproliferation policy going forward, and the risk of erosion, you know, to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, despite his own administration's assessment that Tehran was in full compliance with the agreement. Critics argued Trump's move was meant to satisfy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has boasted about being able to control U.S. policy and whose country has an undeclared nuclear arsenal and is not a party to the NPT.
Davenport highlighted the "uptick in conversation" in Tehran about quitting the NPT, given that "the treaty cannot preserve and protect civil nuclear activities."
"I think it is worth underscoring that the United States struck sites that were under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. These were not covert enrichment facilities," she stressed. "These were not sites where Iran was dashing to the bomb. You know, there's no evidence of that. These were safeguarded facilities that the IAEA regularly has access to."
"This is a devastating blow to the nonproliferation regime," Davenport said. "And I think over time, this is going to contribute to erosion of the treaty. It's such a terrible precedent that could drive states to determine that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty no longer benefits their security, that their civil programs can become targets without any evidence of weaponization, and drive further questioning of whether remaining in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is in their interest."
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi—who last week said there was no proof Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb—also warned during a Monday meeting of the body's board of governors in Vienna that "the weight of this conflict risks collapsing the global nuclear nonproliferation regime."
"But there is still a path for diplomacy," Grossi said. "We must take it, otherwise violence and destruction could reach unimaginable levels and the global nonproliferation regime that has underpinned international security for more than half a century could crumble and fall."
"Iran, Israel, and the Middle East need peace," he emphasized. "Armed attacks on nuclear facilities should never take place and could result in boradioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the state which has been attacked. I therefore again call on maximum restraint. Military escalation not only threatens lives, it also delays us from taking the diplomatic path."
"To achieve the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon and for the continued effectiveness of the global nonproliferation regime, we must return to negotiations," Grossi added.
Iranian officials and other observers have accused Grossi and the IAEA of complicity in U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. Last week, Iran filed a complaint against the agency's chief for allegedly "undermining the agency's impartiality."
This, following last week's IAEA board of governors approval of a resolution stating that Iran is not complying with its obligations as a member of the body, a finding based largely on dubious intelligence that skeptics compared to the "weapons of mass destruction" lies in the lead-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In an opinion piece published Monday by Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the peace group CodePink wrote that the U.S. and Israel "used Grossi" to "hijack the IAEA and start a war on Iran."
"Rafael Grossi should resign as IAEA director before he further undermines nuclear nonproliferation and drags the world any closer to nuclear war," Benjamin and Davies added.
On Monday, the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, began weighing legislation to suspend cooperation with the IAEA.
"The world clearly saw that the IAEA has failed to uphold its commitments and has become a political instrument," Majlis Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on the chamber floor Monday.
Qalibaf added that Iran would "will definitely respond in a way that will make gambler Trump regret" attacking Iran.
Later Monday, Iran fired a salvo of missiles at a military base housing U.S. troops in Qatar and, reportedly, at an American facility in Iraq. There have been no reported casualties or strike damage.
This was followed by Trump's announcement on social media of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Iran.
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Trump (and Biden) Could Have Forestalled War With Iran If They Wanted
There appears to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington against universal law-based approaches to nuclear nonproliferation through diplomacy in favor of unilateral military action.
Jun 20, 2025
The unprovoked attack by Israel against Iran and the tragic war that has resulted could have been avoided back in 2017 had President Donald Trump not broken off the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA—commonly known as the “Iran Nuclear Deal”—and if President Joe Biden hadn’t refused to return to it.
The agreement—signed by Iran, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China, and approved by the United Nations—reduced Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile by 98% and restricted the level of enrichment to 3.67%. Given that an enrichment level of 90% is needed to build a nuclear bomb, it made it impossible for Iran’s uranium to be weaponized.
Under the deal, Iran also reduced its number of centrifuges (used to enrich uranium) to a little more than 5,000, which is far below the number that would be needed to achieve anything close to the 90% level. Additionally, the agreement prevented Iran from commissioning its Arak reactor, which is capable of producing plutonium, and restricted research and development activities in other nuclear facilities. It also cut off all of Iran’s other potential pathways to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
In effect, the United States is demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid, where allied governments can develop nuclear weapons in defiance of international law while supporting the use of military force against countries like Iran which simply have the potential to develop nuclear weapons.
In short, the agreement made it physically impossible for Iran to build a single atomic bomb. The agreement also imposed one of the most rigorous inspection regimes in history, with international inspectors monitoring Iran’s nuclear program at every stage: uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel manufacturing, nuclear reactors, and spent fuel, as well as any site—military or civilian—they considered suspicious.
There were no requirements that Israel, Pakistan, India, the United States, or any other nuclear power reduce their arsenals in return. Iran agreed to this one-sided proposal only in return for some relief of draconian sanctions that had been imposed, with U.S. encouragement, by the international community. When Trump broke the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions—essentially forcing other nations to do so as well under threat of punishing any company or government that refused, resulting in devastating impacts on the Iranian economy—Iran no longer had any obligation or incentive to remain in compliance. While all the evidence seems to indicate that Iran’s nuclear program thus far is only for civilian purposes such as medicine and energy production, the abrogation of the agreement has allowed the country to process uranium to a level that today could potentially be diverted to military applications if Iran decided to go in that direction.
Trump insisted at the time that he could somehow make a better deal, but did not make any serious attempt to do so. In my 2019 meeting in Tehran with then-Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, he described how the JCPOA was the result of a decade of posturing and two years of intense, painstaking negotiations, during which he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met no fewer than 50 times to hammer out every line of the agreement. It is doubtful that Trump was ever serious about a negotiated settlement, preferring to set up talks which appear to have lulled Iran into thinking its military leaders and scientists were not at risk and thereby leaving them vulnerable to Israel’s initial devastating surprise attack.
In short, if Trump was really concerned about Iran getting a nuclear bomb, he would not have ended the agreement. And if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was really concerned about that possibility, he wouldn’t have supported Trump’s doing so.
So, Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Iran is not actually about stopping Iran from potentially developing a nuclear weapon. Indeed, Israeli strikes have been hitting scores of sites completely unrelated to Iran’s nuclear industry—including the studios of the national television station. It would appear to primarily be about weakening its stronger regional rival. As unpopular as the autocratic regime in Iran is among the Iranian people, they are uniting in opposition to the devastating attacks on their cities.
While some congressional Democrats have spoken out against any direct U.S. involvement in the war, their leaders have been lining up in support of Trump and Netanyahu. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who once opposed the JCPOA, insisted that, despite the fact that Israel started the war, “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Just over a week ago, he was criticizing Trump for even engaging in negotiations with Iran.
Similarly, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has refused to criticize the Israeli attack or call for a return to the JCPOA, echoing his 2023 statement: “Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad.” Although Iran has no capability of striking anywhere outside of the Middle East, Jeffries claimed, “The Iranian regime poses a grave threat to the entire free world.”
Other Democrats have also rushed to Netanyahu’s defense, with Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania posting on social media, “I fully support this attack. Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary—military, intelligence, weaponry—to fully back Israel in striking Iran.” Meanwhile, Representative Richie Torres of New York insisted on X, “Israel is not the aggressor. It is defending itself.”
This U.S.-backed war of aggression could push the regime to actually move towards developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future attacks.
These politicians have not taken such positions due to political pressure. A May 2025 poll regarding Iran’s nuclear program showed fewer than 15% of Americans, including less than a quarter of Republicans and only 5% of Democrats, supported military action. Overwhelming majorities of Americans have long preferred diplomacy.
Despite this, there appears to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington against universal law-based approaches to nuclear nonproliferation through diplomacy in favor of unilateral military action.
For example, Iran and many Arab states have gone on record supporting the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) for the entire Middle East, similar to already-existing NWFZs in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and Antarctica. The leadership of both political parties in Washington, however, have consistently opposed this, since it would require Israel to rid itself of its nuclear arsenal and prohibit the United States from bringing nuclear weapons into the region on its planes and ships.
Despite trying to justify targeting Iran due to its violations of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions regarding its nuclear program, the United States has blocked the United Nations from enforcing UNSC resolution 487, which requires Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the trusteeship of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
UNSC resolution 687, which laid out the international community’s demands for Iraqi disarmament in 1991, also called for “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.” Though Iraq was in full compliance of this resolution, as noted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the time, the Bush administration’s false claims they were not were used as an excuse to invade and occupy that oil-rich country in 2003.
Another United Nations agreement, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), normally allows countries to reprocess uranium, though the IAEA put special restrictions on Iran as punishment for not reporting certain research back in the 1990s. What few American politicians are willing to acknowledge, however, is that the NPT—in addition to preventing new countries from developing nuclear weapons—requires the existing nuclear powers “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” In other words, the United States—along with other nuclear powers—are themselves in defiance of the NPT.
In effect, the United States is demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid, where allied governments can develop nuclear weapons in defiance of international law while supporting the use of military force against countries like Iran which simply have the potential to develop nuclear weapons.
This will not prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Indeed, given that it is highly unlikely that Israel can completely destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities or kill all of its scientists, this U.S.-backed war of aggression could push the regime to actually move towards developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future attacks, which until now it has refrained from doing. They can only compare the fates of Iraq, which disarmed as required but was invaded anyway, with the regime in North Korea, which developed nuclear weapons and is still in power.
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UN Nuclear Chief Warns Israel's Bombing of Iranian Facility Risks Radiation Release
IAEA head Rafael Grossi implored "all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation."
Jun 16, 2025
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog cautioned Monday that Israel's bombing of Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility raises the risk of radiological and chemical contamination, a warning that came amid condemnation of such strikes and mounting civilian casualties on both sides of the widening war.
Addressing an emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors in Vienna, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that "military escalation threatens lives, increases the chance of a radiological release with serious consequences for people and the environment, and delays indispensable work towards a diplomatic solution for the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon."
"Last week the board adopted an important resolution on Iran's safeguards obligations," Grossi continued. "The resolution, while containing important proliferation-related provisions, also stressed support for a diplomatic solution to the problems posed by the Iranian nuclear program. Member states of the IAEA have a crucial, active role to play in supporting the urgent move away from military escalation towards diplomacy."
"Consistent with the objectives of the IAEA and its statute, I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation," he added.
Based on info available to the IAEA, this is the current situation at the Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow, Khondab, Bushehr, and Esfahan. pic.twitter.com/gTvJrYzPFW
— IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) June 16, 2025
The IAEA affirmed that Israeli strikes have damaged above-ground areas of the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and another nuclear site in Isfahan. Grossi said earlier that four buildings in Isfahan had been damaged by Israeli strikes on Friday, but noted Monday that there were no apparent signs of damage to another enrichment plant at Fordow, which is deep underground.
Experts say it would likely take intervention by the United States—which has more powerful bunker-busting bombs than Israel—to destroy the Fordow site. U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that "it's possible" that American forces could enter the fight, while the apparent deployment of what The Times of Israel on Monday called an "unprecedented" number of U.S. Air Force aerial refueling planes fueled speculation of deeper American involvement in the war.
Grossi's warning came amid widening Israeli bombing of Iran and retaliatory Iranian strikes against Israel. Iran's Ministry of Health said Monday that 224 people—90% of them civilians—have been killed and over 1,400 others wounded by Israeli attacks. Iranian media reported serious damage to a hospital in the western city of Kermanshah following Israeli bombing.
Last week, Israel began bombing Iranian government, military, and nuclear sites and assassinating numerous Iranian nuclear scientists. Some of these attacks have also killed targeted scientists' relatives, neighbors, and other civilians. The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is attacking Iran in order to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons. However, critics note that U.S. intelligence agencies concur that Iran is not trying to develop nukes.
As is the case with Gaza—where Israel is waging a war for which Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—numerous observers accuse the Israeli leader of creating a distraction from his ongoing criminal corruption trial in his own country.
On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said that Iran's legislative body, the Majlis, was drafting a bill that would withdraw the country from the landmark 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile, at least 23 Israeli civilians including women and children and Palestinian citizens of Israel have been killed by Iranian missile and drone strikes that have been condemned as indiscriminate. Hundreds more Israelis have been wounded. Responding to these attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz—who is accused of supporting genocidal policies in Gaza—said over the weekend that Iran's capital "will burn" if Iranian forces did not stop responding to Israel's bombing.
"The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon," he vowed.
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