Which countries have nuclear weapons – and are they likely to use them?
Nuclear weapons are front of mind after the US struck a number of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons sites. How many countries have nuclear weapons? Which countries are capable of building nuclear weapons? What is the non-proliferation treaty? And why are some countries allowed to have nuclear weapons and not others? Guardian Australia's Matilda Boseley explains
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Telegraph
27 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Zohran Mamdani offers a terrifying glimpse into the future of Left-wing politics
If it can happen in New York, it can happen anywhere. Last night, Democrats in the second most Jewish place on Earth, home to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Woody Allen and pastrami on rye, elected a Corbynite mayoral candidate who has defended the slogan 'globalise the intifada'. Zohran Mamdani, the proud 33-year-old socialist who was born in Uganda and worked as a rap music producer before turning to politics, pulled off a traumatic political upset when he beat the former state governor and moderate frontrunner Andrew Cuomo to win the nomination. Until recently, Mamdani, who only became an American citizen in 2018, was all but unknown to most New Yorkers. After all, this was the city of mayor Eric Adams, the pugnacious supporter of Israel whose popularity only collapsed after he was indicted on federal charges including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations last year, all of which he denies. In hard-Left circles, however, the Mamdani was fast becoming a poster boy. The photogenic son of a professor of post-colonial studies at Columbia University ran on a platform of free universal childcare, free buses, a rent freeze and – you guessed it – condemning the Middle East's only democracy, which he has lavishly accused of 'genocide'. Predictably enough, the emetic Mamdani campaign has been fuelled by umpteen vacuous TikTok videos, together with endorsements from the usual coalition of socialist dinosaurs like Bernie Sanders and airhead celebrities like model and activist Emily Ratajkowski and comedian Bowen Yang (who once put his name to a 'queers for Palestine' letter). 'This is not just about New York, this is about the Democratic Party,' Ratajkowski said in a video with Mamdani. 'It's about the hope that we have that there is a belief that people can win elections, and not just money.' Pass the sick bag. Here was yet another expression of the unifying power of Palestine on the Left, which has somehow become the meeting-point of narcissistic progressive posturing, eyepopping sexual experimentation, race radicalism, petulant teenage rebellion, climate fanaticism, Cold-War era anti-capitalism, and amongst some the venomous cause of global jihad and the sheer hatred of Jews. With the murder of two Israeli diplomats in Washington DC in May, the adolescent rage turned deadly. With the invasion of RAF Brize Norton this month, it crept in the direction of terror. And on both sides of the Atlantic, from Leicester South to Manhattan, it is becoming increasingly political. There is no shortage of irony here. As one Jewish-American writer put it: 'I hope this puts to rest the notion that Jews control politics. We couldn't even elect a non-antisemite in the most Jewish city in America.' Clearly, if you thought the Democrats had begun to learn the lessons of their drubbing by Donald Trump last year, you were wrong. There could have been no louder howl of American rage at the ultra-progressive agenda than the 2024 presidential election. New York, that most liberal of cities, has turned itself into a battleground for the soul of the Democrats. Partly, of course, this is generational: many of Mamdani's voters were young zealots who took on the old guard and crucified them. But in the bigger picture, it is a battle between the ideologues and the pragmatists. And the ideologues are winning. Wherever you look in the West, the same pattern is playing out. A small number of hardened Islamists and their fellow travellers are reaching for the levers of power over the heads of the bovine silent majority. With the moderates on their own side unable to muster anything other than appeasement, the tide is turning by increments. History is not always written by the masses. It can be written by the fanatics. With our democratic traditions unable to compensate for the rampant radicalism and apathy muting our immune systems, we are watching our societies slip away.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Keir Starmer scrambles to cosy up to Trump at Nato summit after flip-flopping over backing for Iran raid
Keir Starmer cosied up to Donald Trump at the Nato summit today after the UK's flip-flopping over the Iran bombing raid. The PM was carefully positioned next to the president for the 'family photo' at the gathering in The Hague. He also sat alongside Mr Trump for the formal discussions, after insisting that the Special Relationship had not been dented from apparent differences over the strike on Tehran's nuclear sites. The arrangement will be more pleasing for Downing Street than a group shot from last night, when Sir Keir was seen as having been sidelined. At the G7 last week the PM publicly insisted he did not believe Mr Trump would go ahead with the attacks, and afterwards pointedly stressed the UK had not been involved and was 'absolutely focused on de-escalation'. Foreign Secretary David Lammy repeatedly refused to say on Monday that the strikes were the 'right thing to do' and told MPs the issue of British support was not a 'binary question'. He also sat alongside Mr Trump for the formal discussions, after insisting that the Special Relationship had not been dented from apparent differences over the strike on Tehran's nuclear sites The US did not ask for permission to use the Diego Garcia based as a staging post, with critics suggesting Attorney General Lord Hermer had warned UK involvement could be illegal. But Sir Keir tried to shift the stance yesterday as it emerged that a tentative ceasefire deal had been done. The PM told Channel 5 News yesterday: 'Look, I think what we've seen over the last few days is the Americans alleviating a threat to nuclear weaponry by the Iranians and bringing about a ceasefire in the early hours of today. 'I think now what needs to happen is that ceasefire needs to be maintained, and that will be the focus of our attention, our engagement, our discussions, because that ceasefire provides the space for the negotiations that need to take place. 'It will have to be negotiations … to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon capability and that is very important for safety and security, not just in the region, but more widely.' Leaders are holding a tense gathering in the The Hague with fears over America distancing itself from the structure that has underpinned world peace since the Second World War. They are due to sign off a new Nato target for defence spending to hit 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 - with another 1.5 per cent on related 'resilience' budgets. However, some nations have signalled they do not view the level as a hard commitment, while there are questions about where the UK can find the extra £30billion. Having demanded everyone else sign up to the figure, Mr Trump has suggested the US does not need to meet it. The summit has been kept shorter than in previous years, amid concerns that Mr Trump either might not turn up or could leave early - as he did at the G7 in Canada last week. Sir Keir insisted today that Mr Trump is 'absolutely committed to the importance of Nato ' after the president raised doubts about the collective defence principle. The premier played down alarm about whether US stands by Article 5 of the military alliance after Mr Trump said the meaning 'depends on your definition'.
The Independent
37 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump's refusal to accept unwelcome reality is his greatest weakness of all
'Fake news!' It's been a while since we last heard that phrase from Donald Trump – this time, in response to a leak from the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) that Operation Midnight Hammer had not, after all, 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear drive. Trump is not happy and has said as much. On the White House lawn he told reporters that: 'CNN is scum and so is MSDNC [his favorite insult for MSNBC, referencing the Democrat National Committee]. And frankly, the networks aren't much better. It's all fake news!' Even more touchy than usual, he also threw in an F-bomb, a little bunker buster of his own about the Iranians and the Israelis. On social media, he went full caps lock: 'FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!' All very shouty, all very Trumpian, as if he were back on the campaign trail. He's always been like that, like Humpty Dumpty up on his wall, claiming that the truth is whatever he wants it to be, and that also happens to be what the public wants it to be – except here, of course, some 56 per cent of Americans disagreed with the bombing raids. It ain't enough for him to just claim the obvious success of the raids, which did damage the Iranian facilities, even if they haven't been 'completely destroyed', or just to refuse to comment on leaks. The White House released a tetchy statement that the DIA's assessment was "flat-out wrong" and had been leaked by "a low-level loser in the intelligence community". For Trump, everything is personal, and nothing is ever dignified. The anger is palpable, the tantrum real, and yet another sign that this personality isn't able to cope with alleged facts. He is one of those strange people who tries to make the world as he would wish it to be rather than accept it for what it is. Not unlike the now resurgent false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, or that foreign countries pay tariffs, his seeming refusal to accommodate reality is doing vast damage to the fabric of American life, not least because he's created a cult following who are prepared to take his every word as gospel. For them, the world is whatever Trump would like it to be. Common sense dares not intrude in such circumstances, and certainly not in this administration. Question Trump, as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard inadvertently did the other day, and you're bawled out or fired. Gabbard stated to Congress that Iran wasn't that near to making a nuclear bomb, and found herself publicly upbraided by the president. It would not be surprising that some public-spirited DIA official knew how Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would react to the news about the alleged partial success of the mission, and suppress and deny it. The American public needs to know, and the president needs to be confronted with it, even when his first reaction is to shoot the messenger. But common sense does tell us Operation Midnight Hammer wasn't a complete success, nor could it ever be. The Iranians knew it was coming, or might be, and the known nuclear sites had already been bombarded by the Israelis. The prudent thing in such circumstances would be to move whatever can be moved to safer and more secret places. There were satellite images of long queues of lorries at the mountain site of Fordo, maybe waiting to extract those 400 kilograms of precious enhanced uranium. That material may well have escaped total destruction. And the know-how and expertise embedded in the brains of the Iranian scientists and technicians have also mostly escaped the American and Israeli attacks. There is no complete military solution to the Iranian nuclear threat that could ever be achieved militarily. It could be done by encouraging a counter-revolution in Tehran and installing a more friendly government, as the Israelis wish, but regime change doesn't seem that inevitable, at least not imminently, and it would require further US intervention, which Trump has widely ruled out. Operation Midnight Hammer was a success, but not the solution to the problem, as it could never be. Trump knows this, which is why he initiated the negotiations with the Iranians a few months ago. His instinct for a new deal was correct, even if things stalled and were then wrecked by the Israeli bombing attacks. Trump is so cantankerous and so vain that he seems unable to enjoy his victories for what they are and constantly has to exaggerate them, gold plate them – quite literally, in the case of the Oval Office – and make claims for them that are so extreme they can never be true in the real world. Everything has to be complete, total, 100 per cent, utter, and anyone who contests that is a liar and a traitor. He is ridiculously insecure and disconcertingly haunted by his rivals, the Clintons, Barack Obama, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump so longs for, and Joe Biden, who did beat him in 2020. He prefers to live in a fantasy world and parades the cynical royal fawning he gets from Sir Keir Starmer and NATO's secretary general, Mark Rutte, as genuine love and respect. He's a man-child, and a dangerous one. We knew all that, of course, but he's just reminded us about it yet again. We've got the best part of four years of this, you know.
