U.S. intel chief warns ‘warmongers' fomenting nuclear war after Hiroshima visit
U.S. intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, fresh off a visit to Hiroshima, accused 'political elite and warmongers' of fomenting a 'nuclear holocaust' in unusual remarks that echoed Russian talking points on the war in Ukraine.
Although Gabbard, U.S. President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence, did not name specific countries that might be involved, Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Kremlin and White House officials — and MAGA aficionados with wide audiences — have warned of a descent into nuclear war following Ukraine's audacious drone attack on Russia's nuclear bomber fleet on June 1.
'This is the reality of what's at stake, what we are facing now, because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,' Gabbard said in a video posted to X on Tuesday.
'Perhaps it's because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won't have access to,' she said, urging people 'to speak up and demand an end to this madness.'
'We must reject this path to nuclear war, and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust,' she said.
I recently visited Hiroshima, and stood at the epicenter of a city scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945. What I saw, the stories I heard, and the haunting sadness that remains, will stay with me forever. pic.twitter.com/TmxmxiGwnV — Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) June 10, 2025
It's unclear when the video was made, but Gabbard visited Japan last week, touring the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which neighbors Hiroshima Prefecture, alongside U.S. Ambassador to Japan George Glass.
The video featured imagery of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and graphic paintings by survivors that she mistakenly referred to as 'hibokusha.' The survivors of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose numbers have dwindled ahead of the 80th anniversary of the attacks this year, are known as hibakusha.
The U.S. attacked Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people. Three days later, it dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, leaving around 74,000 people dead.
'A single nuclear weapon today could kill millions in just minutes,' Gabbard said, with the video then cutting to dramatic mock footage of a nuclear attack wiping out San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge as a mushroom cloud rises into the atmosphere.
Gabbard has in the past said that U.S. military and monetary assistance to Ukraine raises the risk of a global conflict by antagonizing Moscow. She has also expressed sympathy for Russia's stance, given Ukraine's desire to join NATO.
'This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate security concerns,' she wrote on social media at the start of Russia's invasion more than three years ago.
Her remarks come as Trump has signaled his frustration with Putin over the lack of progress toward a ceasefire in Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that Washington could walk away from its diplomatic outreach on the conflict if positive signals do not emerge soon.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Times
6 hours ago
- Japan Times
Los Angeles residents reject Trump's claims of protest destruction
Just blocks from where a handful of die-hard protesters faced police in Los Angeles on Wednesday, residents were enjoying lunch in the sun and shrugging off claims by U.S. President Donald Trump that their city was burning. Six days after unrest began — prompting Trump to send soldiers into the streets, over the furious protests of local officials — life in the City of Angels was going on largely as normal. "Everything is hunky dory right here at Ground Zero," said Lynn Sturgis, a retired teacher protesting outside the federal complex that has been at the heart of the demonstrations in Downtown Los Angeles. "Our city is not at all on fire, it's not burning down, as our terrible leader is trying to tell you." The demonstrations began Friday as immigration authorities carried out raids on undocumented migrants in the sprawling metropolis. They have continued each day since — mostly peacefully, but tarnished by several spectacular incidents of violence, including torched cars and sporadic clashes with law enforcement. Trump has insisted that if he had not taken the extraordinary step of sending troops into Los Angeles over the weekend, "it would be burning to the ground right now." 'Manufactured' "Not at all ... this is very calm," said protester Ellen Carpenter, a retired federal worker who was demonstrating alongside Sturgis. "I lived in Washington, D.C., for a long time, so I was part of very large protests there, you know, millions and millions of people. This is a little wimpy by comparison." "This whole thing has been manufactured by the current administration," Sturgis said. Trump's promises to crack down on illegal immigration helped propel him back into the White House. He seized the opportunity presented by the Los Angeles rallies to order the California National Guard to deploy along with hundreds of Marines — a move state governor Gavin Newsom called "dictatorial." Tracey, a Los Angeles real estate agent who declined to give her last name, said the deployment was a "mistake." "I don't feel safe" with the military presence in the city, she said, even as she admitted that the protests had at times been "scary." Retired actor Thomas welcomed the troops, however. Not taking chances "As soon as it gets dark, thugs come out and cause trouble," the 69-year-old said downtown. It is the National Guard that has calmed things down, he argued — "bringing in more force. That's all they understand ... You have to step in and put your foot down." Restaurants in the streets surrounding the protest area were packed at lunchtime Wednesday. Workers cleaned graffiti sprayed by protesters on federal buildings as curious passers-by stopped to watch and snap photos. But there were some signs of apprehension as a handful of businesses were boarding up, worried that protests planned for the weekend could spiral into more violence. Trump will hold a military parade in Washington for his birthday on Saturday that coincides with planned protests in more cities across the country. "There's lots of expensive glass behind these boards that we're worried about, so we're not going to take any chances," said Chis Gonzalez, who was overseeing the boarding up of one downtown business. "Saturday, you know, seems like it's going to be a big protest. We're just anticipating the worst ... Not saying the protests are bad, but it's definitely scary when you have a business to protect."
Japan Times
6 hours ago
- Japan Times
Israel appears ready to attack Iran, officials in U.S. and Europe say
Israel appears to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran, according to officials in the United States and Europe, a step that could further inflame the Middle East and derail or delay efforts by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to broker a deal to cut off Iran's path to building a nuclear bomb. The concern about a potential Israeli strike and the prospect of retaliation by Iran led the United States on Wednesday to withdraw diplomats from Iraq and authorize the voluntary departure of U.S. military family members from the Middle East. It is unclear how extensive an attack Israel might be preparing. But the rising tensions come after months in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has pressed Trump to seize on what Israel sees as a moment of Iranian vulnerability to a strike. Trump waved off another plan by Israel several months ago to attack Iran, insisting that he wanted a chance to negotiate a deal with Tehran that would choke off Iran's ability to produce more nuclear fuel for a bomb. Two weeks ago, Trump said he had warned Netanyahu about launching a strike while U.S. negotiations with Iran were under way. It is not clear how much effort Trump made to block Netanyahu again this time, but the president has appeared less optimistic in recent days about the prospects for a diplomatic settlement after Iran's supreme leader rejected an administration proposal that would have effectively phased out Iran's ability to enrich uranium on its soil. Netanyahu has walked up to bombing Iran's nuclear facilities in the past, only to back off at the last minute. Word of the U.S. decisions to withdraw personnel from the region, along with a warning from Britain about new threats to Middle East commercial shipping, came hours after Trump told The New York Post in a podcast released Wednesday that he had grown "less confident' about the prospects for a deal with Iran that would limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons. Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy to the Middle East, listens to U.S. President Donald Trump during his swearing-in ceremony in Washington on May 6. | Eric Lee / The New York Times American and Iranian negotiators have been planning to meet Sunday for another round of talks, although Trump told reporters Monday that Iran had adopted an "unacceptable' negotiating position. As of Wednesday, Trump's envoy to the talks, Steve Witkoff, was still planning to attend the negotiations in Oman, officials said. Asked about the reason for the departures of U.S. personnel and dependents from the region as he arrived at the Kennedy Center in Washington for a Wednesday evening performance of "Les Miserables,' Trump told reporters, "Well, you're going to have to figure that one out yourself.' The British warning came from a maritime trade agency that monitors Middle East shipping and that said in a public advisory that it had "been made aware of increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity having a direct impact on mariners.' The advisory urged commercial vessels transiting the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz to use heightened caution. Iranian military and government officials have already met to discuss their response to a potential Israeli strike, according to a senior Iranian official. The official said that Tehran had devised a response plan that would involve an immediate counterstrike on Israel with hundreds of ballistic missiles. In October 2024, a major Iranian missile assault against Israel related to the war in the Gaza Strip inflicted limited damage, however, in part because of U.S. assistance in intercepting the missiles. Trump spoke by phone Monday with Netanyahu, but the White House disclosed few details about the conversation. Trump had met on Sunday evening at Camp David with his national security team. Iran's defense minister, Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, raised alarms Wednesday with a warning that, in the event of a conflict following failed nuclear talks, the United States would suffer heavy losses. "America will have to leave the region because all its military bases are within our reach and we will, without any consideration, target them in the host countries,' he told reporters. People walk past an anti-U.S. mural in Tehran on May 11. | West Asia News Agency / via REUTERS Iranian officials also balked at remarks Tuesday by Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of Central Command. Kurilla testified before a House committee that he had presented Trump and Hegseth "a wide range of options' for a potential strike against Iran. Kurilla had been scheduled to testify again Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but his testimony was postponed without explanation. Iran's mission to the U.N. denounced Kurilla's comments in a Wednesday social media post as "militarism' that "fuels instability.' The tough talk came amid a week of meetings in Vienna by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors. The United States, Britain, France and Germany have submitted a resolution to the agency that would censure Iran for rapidly advancing its nuclear program and violating other commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal brokered with those countries, along with China and Russia. The board is expected to vote on the censure resolution on Thursday morning. Censure could be grounds for the U.N. Security Council to restore, or "snap back,' heavy economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted as part of the 2015 deal, which was struck by the Obama administration. Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from that agreement in 2018, a move that Iran says gave it license to abandon its commitments to limit its nuclear activity. The deal's European parties insist that it remains enforceable through restored sanctions. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on social media on Wednesday that censure "will compel Iran to react STRONGLY.' The State Department did not provide details on how many personnel would be removed from Iraq, or why. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that nonessential U.S. personnel would be withdrawn from Baghdad, and that nonessential personnel and family members of diplomats had been authorized to depart from U.S. embassies in Bahrain and Kuwait. The military dependents authorized to depart the Middle East are largely from Navy and Marine families in Bahrain, home to a major U.S. naval base, a senior Navy official said. Iran's atomic program has progressed dramatically since Trump abandoned the 2015 deal. Analysts say that Iran is now on the brink of being able to manufacture enough nuclear material to fuel 10 nuclear weapons. Constructing a workable device, if Iran chose to pursue that option, could take several more months. But many top Israeli officials already consider Iran's progress to be unacceptable and have openly threatened military action against its nuclear facilities. Many Israeli officials believe they have a golden opportunity to solve a decades-long problem. Israel has recently decimated Hezbollah and Hamas, Iranian proxy groups that Tehran has long relied on as a deterrent to Israeli action. And Israeli airstrikes last year severely reduced Iran's air defense systems. Some analysts warn that Iran has been restoring those defenses, making Israeli action against Iran's nuclear program riskier by the week. It is also unclear whether Israel can inflict decisive damage on Iran's nuclear program without U.S. military assistance. Armored vehicles belonging to Iraqi security forces are stationed outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone, Iraq, on Thursday. | REUTERS U.S. oil prices climbed above $68 a barrel on Wednesday afternoon, their highest level since early April, when Trump placed tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners. Fighting in the region could disrupt oil supplies, as could tougher American sanctions on Iran. The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson has been in the Arabian Sea for several weeks. More than 60 aircraft are aboard the Vinson, including advanced F-35 stealth strike fighters. The senior Navy official said there were currently no plans to change the carrier's position in response to the developing situation. The United States also has several dozen attack and fighter jets deployed in the Middle East. These aircraft were used extensively to defend Israel from Iranian strikes last year.
Yomiuri Shimbun
6 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
The U.S. Granted These Journalists Asylum. Then It Fired Them.
Aristide Economopoulos/For The Washington Post Leonid Martynyuk is a Russian journalist who was working for Voice of America but was recently fired in the Trump administration's cuts at the government-funded news operation. Martynyuk came to the United States in 2014 and was later granted asylum. When Leonid Martynyuk got off the train from Sochi to Krasnodar in southern Russia in the summer of 2014, a strange man bumped into him. The man started yelling, refusing to leave, egging on a fight. He claimed Martynyuk pushed him – not the other way around. Martynyuk's soon-to-be-wife, Ekaterina, motioned to police officers, pleading to intervene and defuse the hostile situation. But when the police arrived, they were only interested in interrogating Martynyuk – not the other man, who was released without questioning. 'This was when I was sure that the entire thing was an orchestrated set up to have me arrested,' Martynyuk later wrote in his application for political asylum in the United States. Martynyuk spent 10 days in prison on charges of hooliganism. His real offense, he maintains, was criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin. His crime was journalism. Martynyuk, then in his mid-30s, spent years writing critical reports about Putin alongside his mentor, the well-known political opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who previously served as deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin in the late 1990s. In one report, Nemtsov and Martynyuk detailed Putin's extensive wealth and opulence; in another, they detailed extensive corruption around the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Martynyuk also ran a popular YouTube channel. When he was released from prison, Martynyuk's lawyer suggested that he and Ekaterina relocate to the United States for a short time, so the pair left for the New York area in October 2014. Four months later, two gunmen assassinated Nemtsov while he was walking home from dinner along a Moscow bridge. 'After that, I decided it would be dangerous to return,' Martynyuk recently told The Washington Post. He applied for political asylum, which the U.S. government granted two years later. But now Martynyuk, who became a full citizen in 2024, is once again feeling the ire of a powerful government – this time, it's the United States. On May 30, Martynyuk was one of more than 500 Voice of America staffers terminated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the agency that oversees the government-funded news service. Kari Lake, senior adviser to the USAGM, which oversees Voice of America and funds nonprofit news outlets with similar goals, says the agency represents government waste. The contractors fired could soon be joined by hundreds of full-time staffers, who are expected to be fired. After Putin came to power in 1999, he gradually clamped down on independent media in the country. Martynyuk read, listened to and watched Voice of America's work as a young man in the early 2000s, and he learned English through a program at the time titled Special English. His history with the network goes back much further: His grandfather was a colonel in the Soviet Army, stationed in Lviv in the 1970s. At night, he would listen to VOA on the radio – in secret. Martynyuk applied to work for VOA's fact-checking team, Polygraph. At the time of his firing, Polygraph employed one editor and three reporters, all of whom either received or had applied for political asylum. Stacy Caplow, a Brooklyn Law School professor, who – along with students in her clinic – helped Martynyuk apply for asylum, told The Post that he was the quintessential asylum seeker. 'This was the kind of case where if they didn't grant asylum, there would be something wrong with the system,' she said. 'It's clear-cut. Asylum is designed for people like him.' For foreign-born journalists who have found refuge not just in the U.S. but at Voice of America, losing their jobs feels like an existential threat – one that could stop them from working every day to speak truth to power, for the first time in their careers. Nik Yarst, a video producer on the fact-checking team, also lost his job on May 30. Yarst was a Sochi-based correspondent for the Public Television of Russia, also known as OTR, and reported extensively on corruption in Russia during the Olympics. He and a cameraman were driving to an interview with a Russian official when he was stopped by Russian police, who found narcotics in his car. Yarst, who later tested negative for a drug test, said the police slid the drugs into his car to arrest him. He served a year on house arrest, while his legal battle continued, and faced a 10-year prison sentence if convicted. 'After the Olympic Games were done, I decided to escape from the Russia,' Yarst told The Post. 'I asked for the political asylum here in the United States because I truly believed here the independent media exists. Here is freedom of speech. And I have to escape from Russia because I was facing prison or death.' Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch, said Russia was a different country back then – 'still quite authoritarian,' but there were still independent journalists, news organizations and human rights organizations. 'This was a time you could still operate in Russia, but Krasnodar region was one of the toughest to operate and had a very, very harsh governor who really went after journalists,' said Denber, who has known Yarst for many years and documented his story. 'Nik, sadly, was no exception.' Yarst worked on an investigative story involving the kidnapping of a 6-year-old girl who had received a large inheritance, including land in the zone designated for construction of the Sochi Olympics. 'Her mother was murdered – before that, she had been threatened – and the girl was taken to Abkhazia,' Yarst told The Post. 'Her grandmother fought in court, trying to restore justice. We were helping her. That case was a boiling point.' The story, which involved allegations of corruption and improper land seizure by the government, made him a target. In the U.S., Yarst – now based in Miami – first flew to New York and stayed at a hostel for a month, choosing to start his life over in a new country. Human rights organizations heard about his case and contacted him, connecting him with a lawyer and to resources from the Committee to Protect Journalists and other organizations. He received asylum in 2017, and he found employment at Voice of America. 'VOA was the one service who could hire people like me,' he said. He feels not betrayed but disappointed by the government. President Donald Trump, 'during his campaign, he talked a lot about the swamp, about corrupt people,' Yarst said. 'But these are not corrupt people who are out on the street.' When Fatima Tlis arrived in America, she resettled in Erie, Pennsylvania, through the work of the International Institute of Erie, now the Erie field office of the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. It helped her learn English, get a Social Security card and establish credit. She couldn't get a car, so she and her two children would ride bicycles through the rural roads of northeast Pennsylvania to Walmart for groceries, which they loaded into backpacks. 'Of course, in Pennsylvania, nobody cares that you're some kind of a famous journalist,' she told The Post. When she found out her fellowship application to Harvard University's Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights had been accepted, she broke down sobbing. Before that, in Russia, Tlis reported for both independent Russian media and the U.S.-based Associated Press, particularly about issues in the Caucasus. She said Russian security forces harassed her, detained her, tortured her and once put her in a hidden room in a police station that she called a 'cage.' It was 12 feet long, but only four feet wide, and had a door with thick iron bars, through which she could see a portrait of Putin on the wall. After that, a former classmate who worked for the Russian security forces, stopped her on the street one day and warned her that her name was on a list and urged her to flee the country. 'What list?' Tlis replied. 'You remember your friend Anna Politkovskaya?' she recalls him asking. 'She was on the same list – and those lists never expire.' Politkovskaya, a journalist and human rights activist critical of Putin, was assassinated in 2006. Tlis joined Voice of America in 2010 after two years of fellowships at Harvard, including the prestigious Nieman Fellowship. At the time of Trump's executive order in March dismantling the USAGM, she was the supervisory editor in charge of Polygraph and the team's only full-time employee. The others worked full time but were designated as personal services contractors, who are easier to hire and fire. As of now, she still has a job. Lake sent her plans for a reduction in force at the USAGM to Congress on June 3, a move that would eliminate all but 80 staffers at the agency and fewer than 20 at Voice of America. About 1,300 people worked at VOA before the March executive order. Tlis said that – beyond Polygraph – she personally knows of more than a dozen asylum holders or seekers at Voice of America. Lake did not respond to a request for comment about the asylum holders that have or could be fired. 'The people who were working on my team, journalists who, because of their job, endured the impossible just to be able to support the truth in their countries,' Tlis said. 'Still, after all of that they remained true to their profession, to their mission, and wanted to continue fighting lies and falsehoods and unmasking disinformation. Those people are getting fired right now.'
