Tag: nuclear weapons

Interpreting The Times’ Report About A Ukrainian Think Tank’s Nuke Proposal

The top takeaway isn’t that Ukraine might soon develop nukes, which it couldn’t make any progress on without Russia detecting it, but that Ukraine might soon build its own long-range ballistic missiles and thus lead to Russia compromising on its goal of demilitarizing Ukraine if it’s unable to stop this.

The Times sent tongues wagging after their report last week about a Ukrainian think tank’s proposal advising their country to accelerate the construction of crude nuclear weapons if Trump cuts off aid. This follows similar comments from Zelensky last month that he then swiftly backtracked and which were analyzed here. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied any such intentions and Zelensky’s top advisor Mikhail Podoliak claimed that such a plan wouldn’t deter Russia even if it was successfully implemented.

The abovementioned developments were newsworthy in their own right, but it’s regrettable that other aspects of The Times’ report were drowned out by the sensationalism of this story. The present piece will therefore draw attention to three points that most folks might have missed if they didn’t read the original report and instead only relied on others to inform them of the gist about it. The significance of what was left out from this story will then be analyzed too since it’s arguably the most important part.

The first point that many missed is that the director of the think tank that produced the report claimed near the end of The Times’ article that his country is just six months away from producing its own long-range ballistic missiles, which could reach as far as 1,000 kilometers/621 miles. That could place Moscow in Ukraine’s crosshairs if such missiles are launched from west of the Dnieper or St. Petersburg if they’re launched from Chernigov Region. He might just be bluffing, but it’s still worth pointing out.

The second point is that the aforesaid director and the report’s author agreed that “should the US abandon Ukraine, Britain could honour its security obligation under the Budapest memorandum by helping Ukraine to develop a nuclear deterrent.” And finally, the author claimed that “the threshold for developing a nuclear rearmament programme would be Putin’s troops reaching the city of Pavlohrad”, after which Dnipro and Kharkov could then be captured by Russia before nukes are developed.

Pavlograd is only around 96 kilometers/60 miles from the front and directly on the highway between Pokrovsk, which Russia might soon lay siege to or capture, and Dnipro on that eponymous river’s banks. Unlike what he claimed about Kharkov, however, Russia’s capture of Pavlograd would actually make it easier to then lay siege to or capture nearby Zaporozhye to the south than that northern city. In any case, Russia’s victory in the impending Battle of Pokrovsk could lead to the collapse of the entire front.

To review, most news outlets that reported on this story didn’t mention that: 1) Ukraine claims to be just six months away from producing its own long-range ballistic missiles; 2) some in the country want the UK to help them rapidly develop nukes; and 3) they’re worried that the entire front might soon collapse. Whether any of this is true or not, it might be meant to pressure Trump into perpetuating or even escalating the conflict in order to avert Ukraine and the West’s supposedly impending strategic defeat.  

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Russian Nuclear Weapons Are Keeping NATO Troops Out Of Ukraine: Top Admiral

A top NATO military official said that NATO forces would have deployed to Ukraine to drive Russian soldiers from the country if Russia did not have nuclear weapons. 

Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, explained to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Prague Defense Summit in the Czech Republic that Russia’s nuclear weapons are deterring a NATO deployment to Ukraine.

“I am absolutely sure if the Russians did not have nuclear weapons, we would have been in Ukraine, kicking them out,” he stated. 

Bauer said the challenge for the West is finding where Russia’s redlines on nuclear use are, noting that Washington mistakenly miscalculated that sending tanks and F-16s to Ukraine were the Kremlin’s redlines. 

Admiral Bauer was discussing the difference between the Ukraine conflict and other NATO wars such as the Afghanistan occupation. He stated the main difference between Moscow and Kabul is Russia’s nuclear stockpile.

In Afghanistan, American and NATO forces quickly forced the Taliban from Kabul in 2001. Then, the Western alliance engaged in a two-decade nation-building project while the Taliban fought using insurgent tactics. 

The top NATO official went on to say the Afghan War was not of strategic importance. “Afghanistan was never of strategic importance. If we’re really honest Afghanistan was not of strategic importance.”

He continued, “We spent 20 years there and we did a lot of things and people lost their lives but if you ask the question, ‘was it of strategic importance?’ In Afghanistan, the answer is no.”

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World’s deadliest spot: the horror of Lake Karachay

Standing for just one hour at the shore of Russia’s Lake Karachay (“black water”) in 1990 would have killed you. Before it was buried beneath concrete and stone, the lake held an apocalyptic secret: over 50 times more radioactive material than was released in the Chernobyl disaster.

For decades, the Soviet Union’s Mayak nuclear facility — built in secrecy between 1946-1948 as part of Stalin’s nuclear weapons program — used this small lake in the Ural Mountains as a convenient dumping ground for its most dangerous nuclear waste, creating what the Worldwatch Institute would later describe as “the most polluted spot on Earth.” To spread the good cheer, the 1957 Kyshtym Disaster (an explosion in underground storage vats) forced officials to start dumping the radioactive schmutz in other areas, including the nearby Techa River.

The lake became even more deadly when it started drying up in 1968, exposing radioactive sediment on the shoreline. Winds swept up the contaminated dust and carried it across the countryside, irradiating half a million people. In nearby villages like Metlino, doctors worked overtime treating what they could only call the “special disease”— the compassionate servants in the Politburo forbade them from mentioning radiation in their diagnoses.

The lake bed itself was a monument to nuclear horror — its sediment, nearly 11 feet deep, was composed almost entirely of high-level radioactive waste. Between 1978 and 1986, as the deadly reality of the situation became clear, workers risked their lives to dump almost 10,000 hollow concrete blocks into the lake to keep the radioactive sediment from shifting. The project to finally bury the lake completely would take until 2015, when the last layer of rock and soil transformed Lake Karachay from a liquid nightmare into what officials euphemistically termed “a near-surface permanent and dry nuclear waste storage facility.”

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US Air Force’s Election-Night ICBM Test

While everyone’s attention will be on who the next U.S. president will be, the U.S. Air Force will test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a dummy hydrogen bomb on the tip from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 

The missile will cross the Pacific Ocean and 22 minutes later crash into the Marshall Islands. 

The U.S. Air Force does this several times a year. The launches are always at night while Americans are sleeping. 

This is what nightmares are made of. Between 1946 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, and the result is that the Marshallese people have lost their pristine environment and face serious health problems. 

The environment around Vandenberg is threatened as well. Not only did the indigenous Chumash people lose their sacred land to Vandenberg Air Force Base, but also America’s Heartland presently has around 400 ICBMs stored in underground silos equipped with nuclear warheads that are ready to launch at a hair trigger’s notice. Named “MinuteMen III,” after Revolutionary War soldiers who could reload and shoot a gun in less than a minute, ICBMs not only put Americans at risk of accident, but they put all life on Earth in danger. 

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INTEL DROPS: Huge Iranian Geopolitical Error on Alliance with HAMAS’ Terrorists stealthily led by CIA-Mossad

An Iranian reader wrote that Tehran does not have nuclear warheads but is satisfied with the powerful Intercontinental hypersonic ballistic missiles, as Fattah.

Those that have already heavily hit American bases in Iraq on 2020 as revenge for the shameful assassination of General Qasem Soleimani (the commander of Quds Force, Iranian special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – IRGC or Pasdaran), ordered by the then US President Donald Trump (in memory of those who think he is the candidate for the next November elections for Peace…), despite the Iranian late general defeated the Isis in Syria and Iraq.

All the sources I have, as well as many official signals that have been leaked, lead one to believe that Tehran already has at least some nukes.

It would be an act of ignorant presumption to be able to build them thanks to the uranium enrichment program that has been increasingly strengthened in recent years and decide not to do them at a time when the ONLY REAL DETERRENCE in the world military field is precisely the NUCLEAR POWERS.

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‘Secret’ Clause of Zelensky’s ‘Victory Plan’ – Join NATO Through Nuclear Blackmail

For the last several weeks, the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky has been pitching the much-touted “victory plan” to his overlords in the political West. It didn’t impress them, to put it mildly. Despite this, on October 16, he finally decided to go public with it, revealing the main points in an address to the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament). The document contains five publicly available points and three additional “secret” ones, allegedly “shared only with certain partners”, as CNN reports. Zelensky stated this “would be a bridge toward future peace talks with Russia”. However, among the main points of the “victory plan” is more of the same – NATO membership. CNN claims it also outlines “provisions to strengthen Ukraine’s defense and implement a non-nuclear strategic deterrence package”.

However, already the next day, CNN’s claim was denied by none other than Zelensky himself. Namely, he stated, in no uncertain terms, that if the Neo-Nazi junta isn’t allowed to join NATO, its “only option” will be to acquire nuclear weapons. So much for a “non-nuclear strategic deterrence package”. To make matters worse, he said this during a press conference following his speech in Brussels. He also made a false claim that “Ukraine was the only one who gave up its nuclear weapons” and that “this is why it’s fighting today”. However, this is patently false. Only one country dismantled its own nuclear arsenal completely and that was South Africa (officially in 1994). At around that time, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the transfer of Soviet thermonuclear weapons back to Russia, the sole successor state of the USSR.

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German News Publication Claims Ukraine Could Have Nuclear Weapons WITHIN WEEKS — Report

German news publication Bild reported Thursday that Ukraine could have nuclear weapons within weeks, citing a statement they reported Ukrainian ruler Vladimir Zelensky said.

“Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then they will be our defense. Or we have to enter into a kind of alliance. Apart from NATO, we do not know any effective alliances today,” Zelensky allegedly said while in a conversation with Donald Trump a few weeks ago, according to Bild and translated from German into English.

According to RT, Zelensky claimed that Trump agreed with him on the Ukrainian nuclear desire, although no evidence exists to indicate Trump actually agreed with it, as Trump only spoke of ending the war to avoid nuclear war, a contradiction to Zelensky’s claim.

According to Bild and translated to English from German, a high-ranking Ukrainian official specializing in arms procurement ‘hinted’ to Bild, politicians and officials a few months ago that the technical requirements to accomplishing this atomic goal are present.

“We have the material, we have the knowledge. If there is an order, we will only need a few weeks until the first bomb,” the source allegedly said according to Bild.

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Iran warns Israel: Nuclear doctrine may shift if its nuclear facilities are attacked

A senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has suggested that the country may revise its nuclear doctrine if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities.

In an interview with Iran’s Fars News Agency on October 9, Brig. Gen. Rasoul Sanaei-Rad warned Israel against targeting these facilities.

“These days, there is talk of approaching zero hour and the reaction of the Zionists,” he said, emphasizing that even officials in the United States have been advising Israel to avoid such escalatory actions, indicating that the potential repercussions of striking Iran’s nuclear sites must be carefully considered.

Sanaei-Rad articulated that an attack on Iran’s nuclear centers could significantly alter the strategic landscape and lead to changes in Iran’s nuclear policies. He declared that targeting these facilities would cross “regional and global red lines” and reminded that there are established protocols regarding nuclear facilities that must be respected during wartime.

Iran’s primary nuclear facility is located in Natanz, a central city in Isfahan Province. The facility has previously been a target of cyberattacks attributed to Israel.

In April 2021, Iran accused Israel of carrying out a devastating cyberattack at Natanz that damaged its centrifuges. Later that month, Iran announced that it had enriched uranium to 60 percent, a level closer to weapons-grade material. Additionally, Iran attributed a drone strike on a military facility in Isfahan to Israel in April.

Sanaei-Rad cautioned that Israel must “reflect on Iran’s possible reaction,” warning that any attack on Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure could impact global fuel prices and energy security.

“The rational advice is not to take any action that will lead to the development of tension. If they want to take action, they should consider these issues,” Sanaei-Rad said.

He highlighted that Israel’s infrastructure is densely concentrated in a relatively small area, making it more vulnerable to a potential Iranian response. 

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First Plutonium Pit For Nuclear Warhead Produced In The U.S. In 35 Years Is Now “Weapon-Ready”

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced the completion of the first weapon-ready example of a vital component for the W87-1 warhead. The component, called a “plutonium pit,” is the radioactive component that acts as a first stage ‘trigger’ apparatus used to initiate the detonation of the thermonuclear device. Plans call for the W87-1s to be used in the future LGM-35A Sentinel nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), a program that is massively over budget and faces numerous issues.

The NNSA calls this “an important milestone for the United States’ nuclear weapon stockpile modernization” as it phases out the aging W78 warheads, one of two types that are placed atop LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBMs currently stationed in silos. The other is the W87-0.

“The W87-1 nuclear warhead will replace the W78 nuclear warhead, which was first introduced in 1979 and represents the oldest weapon in the U.S. nuclear stockpile that has not undergone a major life extension or replacement,” the Government Accountability Office noted. “The W87-1 will be carried on the Air Force’s Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and is slated for deployment in the early 2030s.”

The W87-0s will initially be installed on Sentinels, but those will eventually be phased out as well.

To make any of this happen, however, NNSA needs new plutonium pits. A good description of how the pits play a critical role in a nuclear warhead can be found at the Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, stating:

“Pits are the hollow plutonium cores of the fission “primaries” (triggers) of two-stage modern warheads. A warhead explosion would begin with the implosion of the pit to supercriticality, which would enable an exponentially growing fission chain reaction in the plutonium. That fission explosion—“boosted” by neutrons from a fusion reaction in tritium-deuterium gas injected into the middle of the hollow pit just before implosion—would ignite a much more powerful “secondary” nuclear fission-fusion explosion.”

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Israel’s 1981 Attack on Nuclear Facility “STARTED” Iraq’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Biden announced that Washington doesn’t support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which to some knowledgeable observers, given Biden’s record, makes that more likely. 

There are many other hypocrisies and fallacies, but obviously the first thing to be said about Israel’s propaganda regarding Iran’s nuclear program being weaponized is that Israel has its own massive nuclear weapons program that both it and the US government have refused to acknowledge for decades, as I’ve long documented.

But one myth is little known and important to understand as Israel seems to be eyeing striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Telegraph yesterday claimed: “Israel did the world a historic favour when it bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.”

Bullshit.

Israel would claim in 1981: “From sources whose reliability is beyond any doubt, we learn that this reactor, despite its camouflage, is designed to produce atomic bombs.” Which seems to be a case of projection given their deceit regarding their Dimona facility.

In fact, Richard Wilson, who was Mallinckrodt research professor of physics at Harvard University, visited the Osirak Iraqi reactor in 1982 after it was bombed by Israel. He told me back in 2006: “Many claim that the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor delayed Iraq’s nuclear bomb program. But the Iraqi nuclear program before 1981 was peaceful, and the Osirak reactor was not only unsuited to making bombs but was under intensive safeguards. Certainly, Saddam Hussein would clearly have liked a nuclear bomb if he could have had one, but the issue is whether there were enough procedures for that reactor in place to prevent him from doing so and all the indications are that there were enough procedures.

“The Osirak reactor was destroyed in June 1981. It was not until early in July 1981 that Saddam Hussein personally released Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar from house arrest and asked him to start and head the clandestine nuclear bomb program. The destruction of Osirak did not stop an Iraqi nuclear bomb program but probably started it. Worse still, the Israelis were so pleased with themselves that it appears that neither they nor the CIA looked for and understood the real direction of the Iraqi nuclear bomb program.

“In the international discussions with Iran, this must be borne in mind. Bombing a peaceful program, rather than controlling it, is very dangerous. But, alas, this is not the lesson that many people, who have not studied the technical evidence, have gained.” Wilson died in 2018. See his piece in New Outlook: “Iraq’s uranium separation: the huge surprise.”

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