Some NATO and Russian advisers think nuclear war is viable. Would a desperate Israel nuke Iran? Peter Kuznick, Rick Wolff, Ray McGovern. Watch the replay.
Guests: Peter Kuznick, Ray McGovern, Rick Wolff. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.
- Will Netanyahu Pull the Nuclear Trigger?
- Are NATO and Russia Headed Towards Atomic Armageddon?
- Are the Wars Merging Into a Giant Mushroom Cloud Threat?
Two intractable wars in which none of the sides can lose. The Iranians and the Russians consider it existential. For Israel and the United States it’s matter of pure humiliation. They cannot be seen to lose.
Wars begun in great confidence are failing? Can the U.S. and Israel admit defeat to Iran? Can the retreat be dressed up as some kind of “peace with honor” like the defeat in Vietnam?
Can NATO ever admit that the war it provoked against Russia has failed to bring down Vladimir Putin and to install its own puppet in Moscow, to strategically weaken Russia and to preserve Ukrainian territory? Instead NATO uses Ukraine to launch its long-range missiles into Russia and openly plans direct war with Moscow by 2030, despite the immense risk of nuclear disaster.
Can Putin give up in the face of this assault on Russian sovereignty? These two wars are ripe for a weapon that has been used twice in history, to devastating effect in Japan. But unlike today, no one else had a nuclear weapon then to return fire. Throughout the entire Cold War populations in both East and West were keenly aware of the universal destruction they faced. Where is that awareness today, as talk of nuclear war cheapens?
The bomb is the ace in an underground silo for Israel.
Israelis claim it’s to stop Iran from acquiring a device, something U.S. intelligence still says Iran has never atttempted to do. One analyst says Israel has stayed out of the latest round of war against Iran to provide the U.S. with plausible deniability if Israel should launch a nuclear-tipped missile at Iran in a desperate gambit to avoid the humiliation of defeat to Tehran.
Has the world ever been this close to nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis 64 years ago? Do the statesmen exist today to save it from potential armageddon on two fronts? Is there anything a disengaged population can do to stop their leaders from sleepwalking into annihilation?
To discuss this are our guests: Peter Kuznick, an American University historian and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute. Kuznick founded the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy, and co-founded the Nuclear Education Project. He is the author, with Oliver Stone, of The Untold History of the United States.
Richard Wolff is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs at The New School.
Ray McGovern is a former C.I.A. analyst who ran the Soviet desk for a time during the Cold War. He was present for the signing in Moscow in May 1972 of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. He also briefed Presidents Reagan and G.H.W. Bush at the White House.
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Oppenheimer, JFK, Khruchev and Niles Bore all understood what Tellers SUPER would be capable of, Nile Bore traveled the world in search of people who if willing listen to him, could prevent nuclear proliferation. Few did.
It all had to do with the Neutron Cross Section, Niels Bore found the answer of an extremely vexing problem having to do with the neutrons striking target fissionable bomb fuel for the most band for the buck. Teller and Israel were allowed by insiders at the United States Atomic Energy Commission to obtain the Special Nuclear Materials – fissionable plutonium and highly enriched U-235 to be diverted clandestinely to Israeli control illegally. The CIA stood by and turned their eyes and ears away.
I’m sure several present here for this discussion will agree with this statement.
JFK and the a fore mentioned individuals all knew once more than two or three countries obtained this weapon no mutually assured destruction policy would act as or become a deterrent.
Currently the United States, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea are nuclear weapons capable.
Look around does everyone understand what you have just heard. NATO and Russian advisors feel nuclear was is viable. Now google how many incidents have already occurred which were minutes away from just such an event.
Pass this on because idf allowed to happen you will never know what hit you and your families, exceptional or not.
What a revelation, at this juncture, : the illegitimate entity, Israel, was allowed to even ILLEGALY siphon off nuclear material, under the alert watch of the CIA, to a region that was hardly nuke-prone then. Now Trumpian USA is squandering enormous tax payer funds and shedding innocent lives to prevent a nuke-hesitant Iran from willy-nilly achieving any nuclear breakout by idiotically bombing out the spiritual Ayatullah who was very faithfully ensuring Iran won’t slip even inadvertently into such a breakout ! Now with the outbreak of incredibility and erosion of trust in every direction the calculated deployment of tactical nukes and even augmented neutron bombs not may but would be featured on the geo-strategic if not also the geopolitical menu of most extant and aspiring global powers.
I believe many of these people are haunted by the reality of climate change.
What are they thinking? “Hell, what is worse, an over populated planet loaded with starving, freezing, burning alive, hysterical masses killing each other.” Or. “Hell, let us just start killing any many of them we can and seal our (delusional) survival any way we( the elitist) can.
Congrats to Joe and CN for a tremendously brilliant panel. Such clear communication of our human condition by a collection brilliant analyst.
I’m 55 minutes in I’ll finish and return with more of a comment.
Be well! I believe I’ll sleep well to night feeling I’m staying in contact with great company.
Vietnam was more of a giving up B-52 war as ineffective plus the oil embargoes in the ME brought the military back to the risk to war fuel begun in WWI and the Ottoman empire.
Vietnam was MIC profits for LBJ & Texan Brown & Root, the future Halliburton as with the Iraq war.
Bombing North Vietnam helped LBJ and democrats one last. time before losing the South due to integration. to
Then Vietnam had to pay South Vietnam war debts to get back into western business status.
The military system as world wide protection racket always wins as a technological profession of the male dominance competition system. serving western religion of empires.
Karen Kwiatkowski and Brandon Weichert agree (8/2) that, re neutron bombs, Israel “keeps talking about them.” I know they talked once about them; well, Givr “nodded” once in approval. More than once just underlines the importance of this week’s topic. Once is enough to underline it as well.
If Iran had developed neutron bombs too (unlikely but hear me out) and both nations used them on each other, the likelihood of the west knowing what actually happened right away would not be great. But some protocols should be set up so that we DO know in order that we can pressure Congress and the president not to proceed as if the strikes were by regular nukes…using that as a justification for launching our regular nukes all over creation. TWTW’s panel is correct of course that, neutron bombs or no neutron bombs, we should already be pressuring the U.S. PTB not to step in even with any tactical nukes if Israel and Iran attack one another with regular nuclear weapons.
Some are still crazily arguing for a “first strike” on Iran; but, while it’s a sad thought, I think if Israel uses nukes, a couple other nations could decide to try doing just that thing against Israel.
David can you explain to me what you mean by neutron bombs?
The reason I ask is because the Hydrogen Bomb’s secret what the prodigious production of neutrons which ignite the fusion and the use of a common platic foam to reflec neutron back into the critical mass.
Myth: The Israelis tout having a device a Building friendly device which when detonated used the enormous production of High energy neutrons to kill humans but leaves building standing.
Truth the weapon is a low yeild explosive devie which will damage everything in close and the high energy neutrons activate materials in the human body making some very deadly high energy gamma radiation from which no escape exists. Those activated materials melt the body from the inside out. Your are not vaporized but melt to death over time. A terrible way to die slowly from internal neutron activation of the numerous materials in the body which become highly radioactive.
Time to brush up on those elements with in the human body which become lethal after neutron capture, sodium, chlorine, calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen for instance. The physics are brutal.
We are helplessly getting ever closer to the outbreak of at least theater-specific if not also an eventual global nuclear war. Many of the prerequisites for it are already appearing at various places but still it would require the inauspicious convergence of enlightened lunacy originating in more than a few disparate states and entities. Clearly the Doomsday Clock is tick-tocking as it is tik-toking away !
June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Strategy of Peace” commencement address at American University and signed the historic Equal Pay Act
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963
In November 1962, President John F. Kennedy’s Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, directed the American Zionist Council (AZC)—the precursor to major modern pro-Israel public affairs structures—to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) due to funding received from the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968.
At the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, after winning the state’s Democratic presidential primary.
He died the next day on June 6, 1968
“that was no coincidence.”
President Johnson persuaded the leaders of the Senate not to hold an inquiry into the assassination.
Any ideas why he would do that?
that was no coincidence.
….. *“Those Who Reign Supreme do so because — on November 22, 1963 — an American president who challenged their power was put to death in a very ugly public execution in a crime, that to this day, remains unpunished. Now today, we face the reality that came as a consequence of that crime in Dallas.”
“In fact, the Zionist elite & their allies in the upper reaches of the American ruling class, are “working tirelessly” … ‘assiduously to assure their own continued dominance & to assure that their fortunes remain in tact. All manner of legislation is coming down the pike, aimed at suppressing popular dissent in America.”
“The end result, in the Zionist grand $cheme, is the establishment of a global empire — ruled fm America, The New Jerusalem. In fact, according to the Zionists themselves, the concept that America is The New Jerusalem is the very foundation of Zionism in the 21st Century. That conclusion is inescapable. Is America more than just “The New Jerusalem”? Perhaps it is truly…The New Babylon.” Michael Collins Piper, 2004, “The New Jerusalem” first published 2005-American Free Press
…”MeMyself, Ladies & Gentlemen, “Keep It Lit!” TY.
And here is one of the xxxxing morons saying he would use nuclear bombs:
xxxx://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-says-hes-prepared-to-use-nuclear-weapons-to-defend-uk-13147192
British nuclear weapons have actually never been about defence. That is a lie put out by successive governments in order to mislead the British people.
What they are actually about is status.
The current Prime Minister of Britain, Andy Burnham, is a strong supporter of nuclear weapons and is currently making clear his commitment to them.
However, during the 2015 Labour leadership election, when he was beaten by Corbyn, he was asked about this issue by a member of the public. His response is very interesting:
When it was pointed out to Mr Burnham that only nine countries out of around 200 had nuclear weapons, Mr Burnham replied:
“Their history is different, isn’t it? In respect of their involvement in conflicts past and our membership of the security council gives us a leadership position on these matters.”
So, there we have it: For the likes of Burnham, national chauvinism requires Britain to have nuclear weapons.
What this means, of course, is that no British government is likely support the elimination of nuclear weapons unless made to do so by its own people.
“Andy Burnham confirms that he would renew the Trident nuclear weapons system in full”
The Independent, Thursday, 13 August 2015.
“What they are actually about is status”
It’s more like a primary target painted on their back. The first to go when someone flinches.
Easy Targets: Others see them as weak links who add no real safety.
He’s another clone. We might have had a chance with Jeremy Corbyn but moron starmer put paid to that. It’s right to call them xxxxing morons. Just look at the last few pm’s and their attending foreign secretaries etc. (And of course now we have the “Russian” threat.)
This was a wonderful and insightful discussion, and I think it’s understood, but not elucidated often enough, that the mediocrity of the leaders in the West, to which Rick Wolff referred, is primarily a function of the corrupting power of money.
When discussing Putin and Xi, and their measured language and diplomatic finesse, it ought to be contextualized with regard to their political systems which aren’t vulnerable to the prerogatives of bankers.
This point in history represents, not the demise of imperialist Europe (that began with opportunist US participation in WW1), but rather the end of a US world hegemony that has caused constant war and genocide ever since their choice to use nuclear weapons against Japan. The destruction of the peoples of Palestine and Ukraine represents the last of the US imperialist projects.
The US needs to face this reality and accept that their obsession with oil and Western Asia is being overwhelmed by
climate change Armageddon – not a nuclear one.
TY, Joe Lauria, for succinctly, summing-up the MADness (Mutually Agreed Destruction, Deception, Death..ness). “Humans created it. Humans can solve it.” *“FASCISM IS HERE”.
…..‘Comfortably Numb. [Apathy Numb]. [Nuclear Numbness]…(This Is Not A Drill)’…“Hello. Hello. Hello. Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?” Roger Waters.
…”Shout Out!” To the Over One (1) Million New Yorkers’ Home Run! i.e., Taking a Smart Risk, Voting “M” for Mamdani; but, Come on, AOC? “Sandy”aka AOC, imo, is a f/moron!! “Oh, Mon, that fruit is rotten!!!” Got Stoked! Chartering flights to HER Old Guard’s Tour w/Bernie. Puhleeze! “How can “we” escape this?” Pray for birdies, i.e., Socialists tied to the DNC will “Live Free”. They will lose the “D”emocrats by fully detaching themselves fm the Mother$hip, The DNC!” In the meantime, they will rock & roll the $tatus Quo!
It’s all about reaching a higher level of consciousness. Just ask Peter Kuznik’s students. Ya know the tune, *“Look to the Children!” They f/know, all about “the dollars, today; blood tomorrow.” “Where’s the pride and the glory? Where’s the pot of gold?” Sister Hazel
* hxxps://chrishedges.substack.com/p/this-is-not-a-drill-w-roger-waters
Thank you for assembling this magnificent panel with several lifetimes full of knowledge and expertise to share! I have much respect for all three, as well as for Moderator, Joe, of course!
I disagreed with Professor Wolfe on a couple of assessments.
He off-handedly praised AOC. Glenn Greenwald recently reposted his first interview with her when she first ran for her seat and he was very excited to see a progressive running for office. He challenged viewers to watch that old interview and find ANYTHING she hasn’t gone back on.
The general tendency is for politicians to start out better and get progressively worse. They have to at least pretend to be good to to get people to vote for them. And then they get progressively worse as they juggle pleasing the megadonors with still pretending to represent the people.
JFK, whom Wolfe hated went the opposite direction. He went from nearly blowing up the world to challenging Russia to a Peace Race.
He was the most improved.
And we can see where that got him.
He lies in his grave, a testament to how difficult it is for politicians to do the right thing.
If Kshama Sawant gets a few more of her goals accomplished, she’ll need a team of bodyguards.
Finance capital is at the top of the money-power pyramid.
A corporation might control tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. Financial institutions that trade its stocks and bonds control trillions.
Blackrock manages (holds and invests) $15.3 trillion, Vanguard $12.8 trillion, Fidelity $7 trillion.
Bank of New York Mellon administers (holds and provides back office services for) $50 trillion, State Street Bank $43 trillion, J.P. Morgan Chase $40 trillion.)
Everybody works for finance capital: employers, workers, billionaires, governments, central banks, commercial banks, every sector of the economy without exception.
Perhaps out of information we have fashioned multiple lebenswelts. To study the nuclear treaties is INVOLVED; there’s no two ways about it. It’s academic. It requires the luxury of time [and there were always two takes on any groups which at any time favored talking]. But down on the level of common Prolefeed there is a mass of crap so ubiquitous that many believe the common folk art of down to earth humans sees a bad ending as inevitable. Alex Jones is loud about the possibility to the point that no one really picks up on any solution in the background he may be offering [until recently?]. People believe he’s more the common man podcaster to go with than say a Trita Parsi who offers three explanations for why a general tells the pentagon we lack enough forces to defend Israel. But Parsi’s like Popper; he makes sense.
This may also be tied in with the premillennialist Antichrist scenario, though I think Elaine Pagels dissected that thing pretty effectively. Nevertheless that bad ending [before the good one] and what our horror media promulgates may reinforce one another. Perhaps those who create the latter horrors never really were up against real obstacles…so they invent versions of what they haven’t had to deal with?
I will have to take a look at that article in Naked Capitalism “How Stories Change the Human Brain, Empathy, Memory, and Behavior.”
Have we not been here before? August, 1914? Two sides – seemingly reconcilable differences – one side of view that through war they could achieve objectives that they could not achieve through negotiation – that they possessed sure fire winning strategies – victory would come early and easily – the ‘boys would be home by Christmas’
there is one significant difference, now we have world destroying nuclear weapons – As in August, 1914, we have folk who contend that through war, not negotiations, they will achieve their objectives; that victory will come early and easy because of their use of nuclear weapons; further we have folks who are not fazed by use of nuclear weapons, possibly because they think that their side would win a nuclear war with tolerable, if any, losses; who contend that it is pointless to have nuclear weapons if they are not going to be used*; who would rather roll the dice than walk away – and, like August, 1914, like cornered animals, they cannot afford to lose –
what we have here is the potential for West Asia becoming so radioactive that, like Chernobyl, is uninhabitable. What we have here is the potential for a winner-less outcome.
*the present POTUS has publicly asked ‘why have them if we are not going to use them’
Ray, please show the book you are talking about. I was listening and you never said what that book is.
he mentioned it.
“the untold history of the united states,”
by peter kuznick and oliver stone.
[companion to the showtime documentary series]
I believe that Israel — the zionist apartheid state backed by most Israelis plus AIPAC, Miriam Adelson, Alan Dershowitz & Co. — would absolutely drop nuclear bombs on Iran or anyone else. Beyond terrifying.
When it comes to religion-minded zealots, in this case zionists, nothing — repeat nothing — is unthinkable. See Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s 20-min talk, hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGO3eBxQX7Q
p.s. As a kid growing up in New York, I raised coins door to door for the zionist Jewish National Fund (JNF). I’m a slow learner. It took decades to see the truth. But once I saw, I could never un-see.
When has mankind ever taken the right way out? Israel, the most reviled ‘state’ [deservedly so] on the planet, is by far the biggest threat. It is infected with a unique combination of delusional beliefs that no other county has, fortunately – but which make it far, far more dangerous than any other state of its size.
There are far too many mentally & emotionally unhinged individuals in charge in Western countries for reason to prevail right now. Most are in thrall to Israel, giving it immense leverage. The Israelis would love nothing more than to be able to nuke Tehran and destroy Iran.
The cooler, more rational thinking has moved eastwards. One only has to listen to the deranged rhetoric of the Western leaders and compare it to the more measured and rational statements from countries like Russia, China, Iran and others.
If we provoked Cuba with the bay of pigs and we knew what was happening in Cuba in the spring and didn’t bring it up until just before the 1962 mid term election at the end of Oct it appears very controlled for the base agreement but with a chance of significant risk for political and strategic benefit.
The thermonuclear threat now is the threat to totally blow away the major feared nation for an apocalyptic religious fantasy of the western world empires building complex of 2000 years of defamation of nations and indigenous peoples arising out of monotheistic self permission.
That’s what you get with a species that the Bible states was started with one breeding pair and two male offspring…LOL!
LOL is right Harvey. Anyone believing that needs their head examined.
Agreed! Is this the first time anyone’s noticed? L&B&L and thanks
thank you so much for that reminder.
don’t they say that, when god created wo/man,
she was only practicing?
If even a single nuclear bomb is used it will change the world irrevocably. Suddenly our planet will be a much more dangerous place. Every country will attempt to arm itself as lethally as possible in order to protect itself. The possibility of worldwide nuclear war will increase exponentially and the future of every living person will look very dark.
To be clear. Western One percenters don’t want nuclear war. But their hubris might well make it unavoidable. What good is a gun if you are not ready to use it ?… think North Korea.
Paul, you need a hug.
Quick now – before the flash vaporizes us.
August 1, 2026, “Lo splendore della verità ‘is precisely’ reason to be there @ TWTW. Grazie!!!
…..“We” are here @ *”August & Everything After.” The BBB “LIVES LARGE.” IMO, BB & his B*tche$ are pack’n nukes & bored of peace. Hence, “Keep your head on a swivel!”
Add BB’s B*tches’ bottle, Strait outta Hormuz + The Nazification of the South American Drug Trade + the WH’s king & his queens’ Kill List = “Israel gets its way, again” aka BBB’s wargasm, “Coloring the world, bloody, f/burnt-orange.”
Basically, “Where the Sidewalk Ends” Shel Silverstein. [The Lies Begin] i.e., “Propagating Propaganda” Scott “On f/Point” Ritter @ hXXps://consortiumnews.com/2026/07/18/watch-twtw-israel-gets-its-way-again/
…..A Murder of One. “I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow, casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows, One for sorrow. Two for joy. Three for girls. Four for boys. Five for silver. Six for gold. Seven for a secret never to be told.” Counting Crows.
August 1, “Happy Birthday”Adam Duritz – Counting Crows.
Love your quote of counting crows. Quite a dark poem with several possible interpretations, slavery comes to mind, the markets wherein they were priced and bid on, but that might be a stretch.
TY, Paula.
100%!!! No one is safe. “We” are *“under the gun ’round here”. Inadvertently, “we” are guilty by association, w/POTUS’ 42-47, SCOTUS, US Congress, Alpha-Beta Agencies, MIC of crimes against humanity & war crimes, universally. Plant, animal & human life have become the sacrificial lamb. “We” the people say “Fugg That”.
Hence, ‘Round here, we always stand up straight. ‘Round here, something radiates. ‘Round here, “we” gotta keep “our” lighthouse, ConsortiumNews dot com, Rock’n via the “Open” window above! TY, Everyone!!!
..p.s.,* ‘Round Here, Counting Crows @ hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dgjDqbgzJhE&list=RDdgjDqbgzJhE&start_radio=1&pp=oAcB