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nuclear weapons
The US and Israel Make a Farce of Landmark UN Nuclear Conference
As the US-Israeli war on Iran actively unravels 50 years of progress toward nuclear nonproliferation, this moment perfectly captured the backwardness of international nuclear policy.
May 29, 2026
Less than three weeks after President Donald Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” on Truth Social, representatives of the United States—the only country to ever deploy nuclear weapons on another country—took the mic at the United Nations headquarters to lecture the rest of the world about nuclear-weapons safety. As the US-Israeli war on Iran actively unravels 50 years of progress toward nuclear nonproliferation, this moment perfectly captured the backwardness of international nuclear policy.
From April 27 to May 22, representatives of over 200 countries and diplomatic organizations convened at the UN headquarters in New York City for the 11th review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Signed in 1970, the NPT remains the pièce de résistance of international nuclear policy, and poses three main rules: States that do not have nuclear weapons will not seek to acquire them; states that do possess nuclear weapons will commit to disarmament instead of engaging in arms races; and all states have the right to utilize nuclear energy. These conferences are held by the UN roughly every five years to ensure the treaty’s tenets are upheld and encourage debate on any possible updates.
This year’s conference, if not the NPT itself, was a farce from the beginning thanks to the United States and Israel. Within the first three hours of the first meeting on April 27, the United States condemned Iran—a country it was actively attacking—for pursuing peaceful enrichment of uranium, the right to which it is guaranteed under the third tenet of the NPT.
From that point on, the contradictions only became more embarrassing. The United Kingdom and France, two other nuclear-armed states, immediately joined the United States in condemning the representative of non-nuclear Iran who had just been elected a vice president of the conference.
When the Africa Group—composed of 54 African nations—used the NPT conference as a platform to call for a new nuclear-free zone for the Middle East, that should be seen as perhaps the most promising proposal to come out of the conference.
When they attacked Iran in February, the United States and Israel sent a clear message to the world that utterly extinguishes any legitimacy of the NPT: The treaty-defined right to peaceful enrichment is a myth, and nuclear-armed states like the United States and Israel will wage wars of aggression and destruction to ensure the nuclear balance of power remains in their favor.
This message is just a reiteration of what the world has known since the beginning of the War on Terror, if not before: As long as the United States is involved, diplomacy is dead. Colin Powell killed it with his speech to the UN Security Council about fictitious WMDs in Iraq. Barack Obama killed it by bombing and seizing $30 billion from Libya, which had already abolished its nuclear weapons program and signed the NPT. And now Donald Trump has killed it again by attacking Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including nuclear facilities which are protected under the NPT.
With the United States as the presiding power, treaties and territorial sovereignty can be torn up at any time. These are the exact political conditions that led a country like North Korea to avoid signing the NPT altogether and develop nuclear weapons. If there is no incentive of safety for following the rules, then it becomes perfectly rational to not follow them.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the United States-based nuclear watchdog that hosts the famous “Doomsday Clock,” quickly responded to the fact that the legitimacy of the NPT was disintegrating in real time at the UN. Before the conference ended, they published the bluntly titled report Iran’s Positions at the NPT Review Conference Are Rational. Ignoring Them Would Weaken the Treaty. With this report, the international nuclear experts at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are practically begging on their knees for the United States to adopt a nuclear policy that isn’t hellbent on illegal wars, mass punishment of civilians, and nullifying of international treaties.
There was good news at the NPT conference too. Although the illegal, bloodthirsty US-Israeli war on Iran has threatened the survival of the nonproliferation policy pushed by the UN, some non-nuclear states used the conference to propose more modest nuclear treaties that may ultimately prove to be more reliable.
In addition to the NPT, there are international treaties establishing “nuclear free zones” in five regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, signed in 1967; the South Pacific, signed in 1985; Southeast Asia, signed in 1995; Africa, signed in 1996; and Central Asia, signed in 2006. The Treaty of Tlatelolco, covering Latin America and the Caribbean, even predates the NPT by three years. These nuclear-free zones have arguably outperformed the NPT in producing nuclear-free outcomes in their respective sections of the globe.
Simply put, these treaties are underrated. Over the past 50 years, the United States has spread its nuclear arsenal to NATO allies including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. And just earlier this spring, Japan’s prime minister floated the possibility of hosting nuclear weapons on behalf of the United States too. Likewise, Russia stations nuclear weapons in its neighbor Belarus. This form of proliferation, dubbed “nuclear sharing,” is essentially a violation of the NPT—it puts nuclear weapons in states that otherwise wouldn’t have them. But while nuclear powers have destroyed the legitimacy of the NPT by engaging in nuclear sharing arms races, non-nuclear countries have shown real leadership on nuclear policy by establishing these nuclear-free zones that effectively and reliably curtail proliferation.
So when the Africa Group—composed of 54 African nations—used the NPT conference as a platform to call for a new nuclear-free zone for the Middle East, that should be seen as perhaps the most promising proposal to come out of the conference. With this suggestion, the Africa Group is stating the obvious: The United States and Israel, with their land-theft operation in Lebanon and their war of terror on Iran, are starting and escalating conflicts in the Middle East faster than the rest of the world can keep up with. The international community might as well try to keep nuclear weapons out of these conflicts.
There’s one problem with this proposal, and it’s not Iran’s alleged nuclear program.
Israel is reported to possess at least 90 nuclear warheads. Unlike Iran, Israel is not a cooperating party to the NPT, so its nuclear arsenal is not monitored by international watchdogs like the International Atomic Energy Agency. To this day, the United States does not acknowledge that Israel’s weapons exist at all.
A nuclear free zone in the Middle East will not be actualized any time soon because Israel is already violating it. But with this proposal the Africa Group is forcing the hand of the US and allies regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal. This isn’t an adversarial action at all; it’s a necessary, good-faith move toward nuclear policy that is honest and proven to work. That same week, 30 members of Congress signed a letter demanding the United States acknowledge Israel’s warheads.
Even as the United States falsely claims to be eliminating a nuclear threat in the Middle East, it is simultaneously creating a new nuclear threat by proposing to station warheads in Japan, escalating toward a new war with China. Every single one of these escalations brings the world closer not only to all-out nuclear war, but also to imperialist wars of aggression backed by nuclear arsenals, such as the imperialist wars on Iraq, Libya, and Iran.
In 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu, then a member of the Zionist parliament for the Likud party, warned that Iran may develop a nuclear bomb within three to five years. The United States, its media, and its allies have believed and peddled these lies for over 30 years, but the rest of the world has caught up.
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Mad King Donald Leads a MAD World
Mutually Assured Destruction may have kept the world free of nuclear war for the last eight decades, but it hasn’t kept the world free of Donald Trump.
May 28, 2026
If nothing else, Donald Trump pushes the nation’s—the world’s—thought process beyond anything that feels normal and comfortable. Consider the “MADness” of the last eight decades: You know, how “mutually assured destruction” has kept humanity from nuking itself into oblivion because... uh, mass murder could have consequences.
Thus, the planet’s nine nuclear powers have refrained (so far) from unleashing a nuclear assault on an enemy for fear of getting nuked back. Hey, what a solid foundation for building peace! Of course, the nuclear nine have spent billions of dollars over the years expanding and developing the nuclear arsenals they will allegedly never use. But they’ve also made it clear that no other nation on the planet is “authorized” to possess nukes.
This has been the foundation for the pseudo-peace—the avoidance of nuclear omnicide—that has existed throughout my lifetime, and also Donald Trump’s lifetime. (Little known fact: He’s two months older than me). Thus humanity, or at least its global leaders, haven’t had to take on the difficult task of envisioning “peace” beyond militarism. Nor has the media. Military-industrialism maintains its assumed dominance over Planet Earth: We’ll always have war, no matter how many people suffer horrifically from it, no matter how many devote their lives to ending it.
But then along comes Donald Trump, bringing something unique to his position as most powerful person on the planet: his own personal madness. I am not referring to “mutually assured destruction,” but the other kind of mad: He’s losing it mentally. Here’s how members of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War put it, in a statement entered into the US Congressional Record a month ago:
It is our professional opinion, based on previous and ongoing assessments, that Donald Trump’s mental state since our 2024 statement has deteriorated even further. In keeping with our professional ethics, and for those of us who are physicians, with the Declaration of Geneva—the successor to the Hippocratic Oath that binds us to the humanitarian principles of medicine since the Nuremberg trials—we are compelled to warn of a President of the United States who is increasingly a danger to the public.
Among his symptoms: rambling digressions and frequent confusion when he speaks; grandiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility and unlimited authority (for instance, his release of AI-created pictures and videos, such as a video depicting himself as a combat pilot dropping feces on No Kings protesters); and his reckless threats of violence (such as his social media post to Iran last month: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back”).
The physicians conclude:
It is our professional opinion that the behaviors of Donald Trump, tragically, are neither momentary lapses nor political theater. It is our professional opinion that they reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline. If we were called upon under the 25th Amendment to judge the President’s present ability to discharge the duties of his office, we would have to conclude that he lacks the capacity to do so.
For the reasons cited above, emphasizing that he presents a clear and present danger to our country and to the world, it is our expert opinion that Donald J. Trump is mentally unfit to be the President of the United States, and that steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency, with vital responsibilities on the shoulders of those in positions of leadership
Psychotherapist John Gartner put it a bit more directly in a recent interview:
Trump’s going full Hitler... demonizing minorities, putting them in concentration camps, seizing control over elections, destroying free speech, using the government to go after his enemies, purging government of people who aren’t lackeys... He’s doing it at a manic pace, on all fronts, so we can’t even focus our outrage.
But Trump, in his unfitness for office, in his grandiosity and self-worship—though he may be a lost soul—is not wrong about the amount of power he has. This is what stuns me beyond comprehension: that the world we have created is open to him. It’s now his for the taking. Mutually Assured Destruction may have kept the world free of nuclear war for the last eight decades, but it hasn’t kept the world free of Donald Trump.
Has the world evolved to its own endpoint? I don’t know. But we have definitely evolved to a state of complex, unanticipated danger. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—whose Doomsday Clock is now set at 89 seconds to midnight—recently published a piece urging that the US pass a law taking the decision to use nukes away from the president alone, requiring the agreement of at least two people before it can be acted on.
How amazing that such a law doesn’t already exist. Even more amazing is that calls for nuclear disarmament are hardly in the news these days. If humanity wants to continue evolving, we have to envision a world beyond nuclear war... beyond all wars.
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After Offering 'No Tangible Concessions' in Iran Peace Talks, Trump Issues Latest Violent Threat
"The only realistic path to a diplomatic breakthrough would require Washington to engage more directly with the structure and substance of the Iranian proposal itself," said a national security expert.
May 17, 2026
With the economic impact of the war on Iran linked to President Donald Trump's plummeting approval rating, the president issued his latest threat to destroy the Middle Eastern country Sunday as he demanded negotiators "get moving, FAST" to end the conflict the US and Israel began by choice in February.
"For Iran, the Clock is Ticking," said the president in a Truth Social post, adding that if a peace deal is not reached soon, "there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”
Trump rejected Iran's latest peace proposal last week; the country has reportedly offered significant concessions on its uranium enrichment, but seeks to have separate nuclear talks after achieving peace and reaching a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians effectively closed in retaliation for the US-Israeli attacks.
Since launching the conflict, Trump has demanded the dismantling of Iran's missile arsenal as well as its nuclear program, which Iran has said is not for military purposes, and has called for the country to cut ties with its regional allies.
Iran's Mehr news agency said Sunday that Trump had offered "no tangible concessions" in his response to the Iranians' latest proposal.
"The United States," said the news outlet, "wants to obtain concessions that it failed to obtain during the war, which will lead to an impasse in the negotiations."
Trump told Fox News in Beijing over the weekend that the Iranians are "crazy, and you know what? Because of that, they cannot have a nuclear weapon," explaining why he viewed it as "unacceptable" for nuclear talks to take place separately after a peace deal is brokered.
Trump reportedly spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday about the possibility of renewing strikes on Iran, which would break a ceasefire that was reached more than a month ago.
Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, said Sunday that "the only realistic path to a diplomatic breakthrough would require Washington to engage more directly with the structure and substance of the Iranian proposal itself."
"Iran’s priorities remain consistent: ending what it views as economic siege conditions, reopening maritime access and reducing pressure in the Gulf, negotiating an end to the broader conflict, and only afterward addressing the nuclear issue," said Citrinowicz. "At the present moment, it is difficult to see the Iranian leadership agreeing to any framework that does not meaningfully engage with those core demands."
As with Trump's earlier threats of violence, including one in April in which he declared that Iran's entire civilization would die, "never to be brought back again," Iranian officials said the president's latest comments—which followed his posting of an image of himself on a military ship accompanied by the words, "It was the calm before the storm"—would not be tolerated.
A spokesperson for Iran's armed forces, Abolfazl Shakarchi, told Mehr that "repeating any folly to compensate for America’s disgrace in the Third Imposed War against Iran will result in nothing but receiving more crushing and severe blows."
Reporting for Al Jazeera, correspondent Almigdad Alruhaid said that the "kind of language" displayed by Trump on Sunday "is not acceptable here in Tehran. They are projecting defiance rather than [giving] an immediate response to this kind of rhetoric."
“Behind all of this rhetoric, there is awareness that the diplomatic window right now is narrowing,” said Alruhid.
Meanwhile, US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urged Trump to "hurt them more" in order to force a deal, calling on the president to go through with bombing Iran's energy infrastructure as he's threatened to in recent months.
Uber-warmonger Lindsey Graham calls on Trump to bomb Iran's energy infrastructure.
The reason why Trump didn't do this during the war - despite threatening it - was because he realized Tehran would retaliate and take out the energy infrastructure in the GCC states. This would… pic.twitter.com/rvrewkavNr
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) May 17, 2026
"The reason why Trump didn't do this during the war—despite threatening it—was because he realized Tehran would retaliate and take out the energy infrastructure in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] states," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "This would lead to a far worse oil crisis—one rooted in production problems, not just a bottleneck in the Persian Gulf."
"The global economy would be thrown into a deep recession. Fuel shortages would lead to food shortages worldwide. Trump's presidency would be destroyed," he said. "None of this matters to Lindsey. He'll burn the entire planet as long as he gets his war. Trump's biggest mistake has been to listen to Lindsey and his allies."
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