In addition to the widening of the war on Iran to the whole Middle East and beyond, this conflict risks deliberate use of nuclear weapons, write Peter Kuznick and Ivana Nikolic Hughes.
Smoke rising from a refinery in Sitra Island, Bahrain, after it was struck during the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. (Raja Abdulrahim /The New York Times/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC0)
By Peter Kuznick and Ivana Nikolic Hughes
Al Jazeera Arabic
President Donald Trump has been on quite a roll.
Since just the beginning of the year, he has kidnapped the Venezuela president, threatened to invade Greenland and Colombia and has dragged the U.S. – and seemingly much of the Middle East — into a new war by joining with Israel to attack Iran, something that even the biggest hawks among recent U.S. presidents have managed to avoid.
That’s on top of bombing seven countries in 2025.
The 2024 campaign promises of a peace president who will end the forever wars have evaporated, only to be replaced by unrestrained use of military force and a seeming disdain for diplomacy. As the U.S. comedy show Saturday Night Live put it, Trump, along with his U.N.-replacing Board of Peace, got “bored of peace.”
Breaking international law seems to be a feature, and not a bug, of Trump’s actions, consistent with his admission that he is expressly not guided by international law, norms, traditions, or common decency, but by “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump’s power-drunk top advisors are just as out of control. Secretary of War Pete “Kill Them All” Hegseth stated that his goal is to “unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy” and to “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signing a custom 155mm high-explosive artillery shell at a General Dynamics plant in Camden, Ark., on Feb. 27 as part of his weapons manufacturing tour. (DoW /Alexander Kubitza)
At the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State “Little Marco” Rubio bemoaned the end of the era of colonialism and called for returning to “the West’s age of dominance.” Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen “Genghis” Miller declared, “We live in a world … that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
In addition to hegemonic actions in the conventional military realm, Trump has been escalating when it comes to nuclear weapons.
He rejected President Vlaqdimir Putin’s invitation to extend the New START Treaty for another year, making possible an unconstrained nuclear arms race alongside an ongoing modernization race. He has also announced that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing.
Even without the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and tensions with China, these actions and threats would be destabilizing and dangerous.
Trump is the mean and out-of-control bully on the global playground. Except that this bully has the sole authority to launch thousands of nuclear warheads.
Trump at the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas, for an address on energy policy on Feb. 27, the eve of the U.S.-Israel launch of airstrikes on Iran. (White House /Molly Riley)
It would be the ultimate expression of Trump’s unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo, which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years — detonating a nuclear weapon.
There are many indications that, despite the U.S. and Israel’s ability to bomb Iran at will, this war may not be going well for them. But that need not be the pretext for using a nuclear weapon.
In Trump’s mind, the more unprovoked, outrageous and unnecessary something is, the better. Given his fragile ego and rapidly deteriorating mental powers — going off on bizarre rants about poisonous snakes in Peru or the White House drapes — the more unhinged he is, the more he thinks it demonstrates his dominance.
Since the end of the Cold War, many people who pay attention have worried about an accidental or a miscalculated stumble into nuclear war.
But with Trump breaking every taboo domestically and internationally, demonstrating that he is above the law and can do as he pleases at every turn, the ultimate taboo waiting to be broken is the nuclear one.
This may in fact be part of the reason why Presidents Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping have muted their response to the attacks on Iran. They know how dangerous Trump is and they don’t want to provoke him.
There are reports from U.S. Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, that his organization has received calls from more than 200 soldiers on over 50 military bases, that “have one damn thing in freaking common …the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘end times’ as vividly described in the New Testament book of Revelation.”
The commander of one combat unit told non-commissioned officers “that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was ‘anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.’”
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned in June that we were “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.” We might be a lot closer than even she realized.
Ivana Nikolic Hughes is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a senior lecturer in chemistry at Columbia University. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Peter Kuznick is professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of numerous books and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of The Untold History of the United States.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
‘deliberate use of nuclear weapons’?
I was unaware that that could happen in any other way than ‘deliberately’!
And, ‘taboo’? That thing the US imposed on other powers after the US had been the only country to ever use nuclear weapons on fellow human beings? They obviously have never operated under any taboo!
Taboo ?
One wonders what the answer would be if one asked Babu ?
I cannot think of a worse situation than thousands of nuclear weapons in the hands of eschatological madmen, and of course that is the world we are living in today.
The Roman Empire stole monotheism as a useful weapon to defame the entire planet to use as a way to dominate from a male missionary position of powerful weaponry for profit motives.
President Harry S. Truman, Democrat, broke the nuclear taboo. Twice.
As always, Americans erase the past by simply drawing a line and saying ‘since’. The nuclear taboo has been broken twice. Both times by the United States of America. Wikipedia acknowledges “killed 150,000 to 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians.” But, Americans like to forget that part, and only focus on the all the times they’ve restrained from nuking human beings in the years since. We are the Good People because we haven’t turned human beings into shadows on the wall in such a long time. We just got our 80 year nuclear crime free chip.
It’s important to Americans, because attacking civilians in a war is still a war crime. One that America violated massively in both Europe and Japan in World War II, and never got held accountable because they were the judges and prosecutors in the trials. Americans, like most gangsters, don’t like to acknowledge the crimes that they got away with because they knew the judge.
America has been threatening the world with nuclear weapons for some 80 years. America is in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as it is not involved in negotiations to move towards a nuclear weapon free world. That was the world-wide deal, that no new nations get nukes, and those with them move to get rid of them. America broke that deal, like most others since the treaties with the Indians.
But, Americans do love to look shocked when they figure out what their own policy has been for their entire lifetimes. At least we used to march in the streets against it in a no nukes movement.
Someone with their sanity intact needs to do whatever is necessary to remove these lunatics from power. Humanity is in the most danger of total annihilation than it has ever been and those with the power to bring about the end of life on earth cannot be trusted not to do so. Are we to sit back and watch them destroy all life on this miraculous planet because they personally are insane? There is nothing we can do except hope? Who is more insane? The rulers or us?
What kind of sickness possesses a man to sign a bomb which will kill people. Has it been diagnosed or given a name.
The same sort of man who gets tattoos honoring “crusaders” who killed people.
I don’t know the psychiatrist definition, but I’m pretty sure the cure used to be confinement in mental asylums. However, under Reagan we kicked all those people out into the world to save money. Ever since they’ve been forced to fend for themselves.
Back when he was in the military, how many Democrats voted for those ever rising Pentagon budgets that funded his training and activities. It does have an effect on the mental state of the people involved. Hillary and Biden almost certainly cast ‘yea’ votes for helping to make him this way today. And the mental health from the VA usually seems to be under-funded.
If Russia and China had a backbone they would say that any nation using a nuclear device would immediately be attacked with nuclear devices. Maybe that would focus the minds of the cockroachs running USrael. MAD.
It isn’t about ‘backbone’; it is about a lot more. Russia and China play a different game, a long one, and they manoeuvre differently. Don’t you think they haven’t told the US quietly what they might do if it used nukes? I’d be very surprised if they hadn’t.
One of the reasons they don’t publicly make those kinds of threats is to remove the media and political spin and rhetoric. Look at how Western mainstream media picked up and distorted Putin’s public statements during the Ukraine conflict, twisting them out of proportion.
The US knows that to use nukes would be to put it in danger of starting a nuclear WWIII, which would mean the US being nuked by Russia, China and North Korea. Russia has more nukes and better delivery systems than the US, so while both countries would be virtually destroyed, the US would suffer more damage.
The biggest danger at present is Israel using nukes against Iran. It is taking a severe pounding from missiles and has little defence against them. Nobody knows its breaking point.
“Confirmed by military documents as well as official statements, both the US and Israel contemplate the use of nuclear weapons directed against Iran. In 2006, U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) announced it had achieved an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons. This announcement was made after the conduct of military simulations pertaining to a US led nuclear attack against a fictional country (David Ruppe, “Preemptive Nuclear War in a State of Readiness: U.S. Command Declares Global Strike Capability,” Global Security Newswire, December 2, 2005).
Continuity in relation to the Bush-Cheney era: President Obama has largely endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons formulated by the previous administration. Under the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Obama administration confirmed ‘that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran’ for its non-compliance with US demands regarding its alleged (nonexistent) nuclear weapons program. (“U.S. Nuclear Option on Iran Linked to Israeli Attack Threat,” Inter Press Service (IPS), April 23, 2010). The Obama administration has also intimated that it would use nukes in the case of an Iranian response to an Israeli attack on Iran. (Ibid). Israel has also drawn up its own ‘secret plans’ to bomb Iran with tactical nuclear weapons:
‘Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said’ (“Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran,” Times Online, January 7, 2007).”
Source:
Michel Chossudovsky, “Towards a World War III Scenario? The Role of Israel in Triggering an Attack on Iran – Part II: The Military Road Map,” Centre for Research on Globalization (GlobalResearch), Aug. 13, 2010
Trump might do it, but my money would be on Netanyahu to be the first to go nuclear. He sees Israel as being existentially threatened and would not hesitate to take the Mideast as well as the whole world down with it. In Israel, that’s known as the “Samson option.” In the U.S., I think that cooler heads than Trump would understand the long term economic consequences of sending the Persian Gulf up in smoke and would stay the President’s hand in one way or another. At least I hope they would.
Trump might do it, but my money would be on Netanyahu to be the first to go nuclear. He sees Israel as being existentially threatened and would not hesitate to take the Mideast as well as the whole world down with it. In Israel, that’s known as the “Samson option.” In the U.S., I think that cooler heads than Trump would understand the long term economic consequences of sending the Persian Gulf up in smoke and would stay the President’s in one way or another. At least I hope they would.