Latest news with #disarmament
Asharq Al-Awsat
12 hours ago
- General
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel Resumes Airstrikes North of Litani Amid Hezbollah Disarmament Talks
Israel has resumed heavy airstrikes north of the Litani river amid discussions among Lebanese leaders on a possible agreement to disarm Hezbollah. President Joseph Aoun met on Friday with Speaker Nabih Berri at the Baabda Palace. Berri described the talks as "excellent' without giving further details. Aoun also held Friday a security meeting with the Minister of Defense, the Army Commander, and the Intelligence chief to discuss the security situation in the country, mainly in south Lebanon as Israel continues to carry out attacks that hinder the deployment of the Lebanese army. The officials also discussed the disarmament of Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which are set to start in mid-June in three Beirut camps. For the first time in three weeks, Israel carried out more than a dozen airstrikes overnight Thursday to Friday in south and east Lebanon, in areas lying north of the Litani river. The Israeli army said it targeted 'several military sites and terrorist infrastructure belonging to ... Hezbollah across Lebanon.' 'Among the targets was terrorist infrastructure containing combat equipment in the Sidon area, which had recently witnessed Hezbollah attempts to rebuild after it had been bombed in the past,' the Israeli army said. It added that Israel will 'continue to operate to eliminate any threat' and 'prevent any attempt by ... Hezbollah to establish itself.' The escalation came as Lebanese officials hold talks to limit illegitimate arms to state control, an issue that is set to be discussed by US Deputy Special Envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus, who is set to visit Beirut next week. Development and Liberation bloc MP Michel Moussa told a local radio station that the authorities haven't been informed yet about the timing of the visit or the agenda of her meetings. 'Ortagus is scheduled to follow up on discussions on major issues such as the implementation of Resolution 1701, reforms and the renewal of the UNIFIL mandate by the UN Security Council next August,' Moussa said.
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
China unveils world's first AI nuke inspector
The technology , disclosed in a peer-reviewed paper published in April by researchers with the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE), could bolster Beijing 's stance in stalled international disarmament talks while fuelling debate on the role of AI in managing weapons of mass destruction The project, which is built on a protocol jointly proposed by Chinese and American scientists more than a decade ago, faced three monumental hurdles. These were – training and testing the AI using sensitive nuclear data (including real warhead specifications); convincing Chinese military leaders that the system would not leak tech secrets; and persuading sceptical nations, particularly the United States , to abandon Cold War-era verification methods. So far, only the first step has been cleared. 'Due to the classified nature of nuclear warheads and component designs, specific data cannot be disclosed here,' the CIAE team wrote in their Atomic Energy Science and Technology paper.
LBCI
2 days ago
- General
- LBCI
Hezbollah's arsenal remains: Lebanon stalls on disarmament as international community awaits
Report by Maroun Nassif, English adaptation by Yasmine Jaroudi February 26, 2025, marked the confidence vote session of Lebanon's new government. Ninety-two days have passed since then, but there has been no tangible progress on one of its most critical commitments: disarming all non-state actors and ensuring that weapons are solely in the hands of the Lebanese state. Despite repeated promises, Lebanon's official stance on the issue has moved at what critics describe as a "snail's pace." The international community continues to watch closely, expecting decisive action. Yet, Hezbollah maintains that it is willing to cooperate—only once the government fully implements both the ministerial statement and the inaugural presidential speech. When asked to clarify this position, MP Hassan Fadlallah confirmed that cooperation remains conditional. While the Lebanese Army has reportedly deployed across most of the area south of the Litani River, except the five Israeli-occupied hills, and has secured approximately 80% of Hezbollah's weapons stockpiles in that region, the remainder lies in areas that require demining. Efforts are ongoing, but they are far from sufficient. The broader concern remains north of the Litani, where Hezbollah's arsenal has not been addressed. Both President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam are reportedly fully aware of the need to resolve this matter. Meanwhile, Israel has shown no intention of withdrawing from the five occupied hills and continues its violations and targeted assassinations. Talks over Hezbollah's detained fighters remain stalled, leaving the process in a political deadlock. Observers now question whether a breakthrough might come from initiating a national defense dialogue—one that Hezbollah might join unconditionally—or from jumpstarting reconstruction efforts to build trust, potentially starting with the $250 million World Bank loan designated for that purpose. In any case, the issue of disarmament requires urgent action before the country risks sliding back into a broader conflict—something Israel may be preparing for more eagerly than any other scenario.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Global Military Spending Surges As Arms Control Mechanisms Collapse
At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit last year in Washington D.C., the corresponding press release noted that arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation remained critical to achieving the organization's security objectives. With the war in Ukraine still going strong, global trends in military spending are not reflecting these objectives. A range of escalating security challenges has triggered destabilizing arms races worldwide. Global military spending reached $2.7 trillion in 2024, representing a 9.4% jump in real terms from 2023. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine and Russia have dramatically boosted their military budgets. Ukraine's military spending surged 640% between 2021 and 2022, according to while Russia's rose by 31%. In 2024, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released a report showing that Ukraine allocates $64.7 billion — roughly 24% of its gross domestic product — to defense, whereas Russia spends about $149 billion, or 7% of its GDP. But the arms build-up is not limited to Russia and Ukraine. Over the past decade, more than 100 countries have expanded their defense budgets. Including Russia, European military spending climbed 17% to $693 billion in 2024, the same SIPRI report found. With the exception of Malta, all European countries increased their military spending in 2024. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a military budget of almost a trillion dollars for 2026, including at least $175 billion for a Golden Dome Defense System— a layered missile shield designed to protect the U.S. from long-range and hypersonic missiles, which travel at over five times the speed of sound. In response to the news, Beijing called the Golden Dome 'deeply destabilising in nature.' Yet for the last two decades China has been investing in hypersonic weapons— which follow unpredictable paths and can be maneuvered mid-flight, making them difficult to intercept. China's military modernization, marked by three decades of consecutive growth, saw spending rise 7% to $314 billion in 2024. This surge sharply contrasts with global trends in military spending several decades ago. From 1983 to 1993, world military expenditures dropped over 40% in proportion to GDP, from 5.7% to 3.3% of world GDP. The 1990s remain the decade with the fewest state-based conflict deaths since the 1950s, raising questions about the causal relationship between military spending and conflict. Today's arms race unfolds after the repeated failure of critical arms control agreements. The last remaining treaty between the U.S. and Russia on nuclear weapons is New START, which was signed by then leaders Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in April of 2010. Though an agreement was made in March of 2021 to extend the treaty, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and Russia's subsequent refusal to submit to on-site inspections several months later, Moscow officially stopped participating in the treaty the following February. Russia also withdrew from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in May of 2023 (which bans nuclear test explosions) and the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty in November 2023. Even as U.S. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to engage in talks about the war in Ukraine, the status of New START (which expires in 2026) and its future replacement remain unknown. Russia has rejected any nuclear arms control talks with the U.S. arguing that the West would first have to change its 'anti-Russian attitudes.' This wasn't the first time that Russia reneged on an arms' control agreement. One of the notable cases was Russia's development of the Novator 9M729 (first test fired in 2014), a cruise missile which has a range of 2,500 km, which violated the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The INF prohibited the US and Russia (then the Soviet Union) from developing and deploying ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500km, eliminating an entire category of nuclear weapons. As concerns about Russia's pursuit of ground-based missiles persisted, the U.S. withdrew from the INF in 2019. Russia's INF breaches likely spurred NATO and its allies to enhance their own long range strike capabilities. The U.S. and Germany announced in 2024 that Germany would host ground based medium range missiles (including SM-6, Tomahawk missiles, and hypersonic weapons) which can target Russia directly by 2026. Though these missiles are designed to only carry conventional warheads, they sparked a reaction from Moscow that additional nuclear tipped medium range missiles could be deployed. Russia further alarmed the West by unveiling an intermediate range ballistic missile called the Oreshnik in Dnipro, Ukraine – capable of carrying six nuclear tipped warheads and striking European capitals within 12 to 16 minutes. Meanwhile France, Germany and Poland signed a letter of intent committing to agree to jointly produce their own medium-range missiles, with a range over 500 km. As for the U.S., in addition to its investment in the Golden Dome, Washington. is accumulating an arsenal of ground-launched strike systems with ranges exceeding 500 kilometres, and working to become a hypersonic missile superpower over concerns of China's rising power. This arms race between the U.S. in China is especially concerning given that there is no bilateral arms control agreement, and alongside Russia, neither country has ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. While China signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons in 1992 (the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed in 1968), it does not adhere to the spirit of the treaty, having increased its nuclear arsenal considerably. By 2030, the PRC will potentially possess over 1,000 operational warheads, while Russia and the U.S. each possess over 5,000. With arms' control talks increasingly sidelined, the arms race of the 21st century is not only more expensive than during the Cold War, but potentially more dangerous.
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 days ago
- General
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Palestinian Arms: What Guarantees the Success of Disarmament?
In mid-June, the Lebanese authorities will begin receiving weapons handed over by Palestinian factions operating in refugee camps, starting with the camps in Beirut and its southern suburbs. By implementing this decision, Lebanon will end a dangerous chapter of history that began in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967. Through the 'Cairo Agreement' of 1969, Lebanon formally ceded its sovereignty, with 'Fatahland' declared in the Arkoub region (in the south of the country) before gradually expanding as the camps in Lebanon were transformed into dangerous military enclaves. Primarily an initiative of the Palestinian Authority, disarming the Palestinian factions reinforces Lebanon's efforts to assert its sovereignty and turn the page on a history of these factions' abuses. Abu Mazen had adopted this position a year ago. 'Palestinian refugees are guests of the Lebanese state,' he regularly reiterated, stressing the need for Palestinians to return the favor in recognition of everything the Lebanese people have offered to the Palestinian cause. However, at the time, the Lebanese ignored his statements and complied with Hezbollah's wishes. It is worth noting that the Palestinian Authority's position has been that the refugees did not need weapons since the Oslo Accords. Indeed, they no longer had a resistance project nor a front with Israel in Lebanon. However, Hezbollah shielded these armed factions and exploited them to serve its interests, turning the camps into a refuge for criminals, terrorists, and fugitives. Lebanon- its institutions, army, and people- has suffered greatly as a result, as have the refugees themselves. On 8 June 1999, the Lebanese judiciary was shaken by the assassination of four judges at the South Lebanon Court of Appeal, where two gunmen shot them as they were sitting on the bench. The killers fled to the ʿAyn al-Ḥilwah camp near Sidon. Only many years was an indictment issued. In 2017, eighteen years after the crime, the terrorist group Asbat al-Ansar was found guilty, with the court concluding that its leader, Abou Muḥjin, had ordered the attack 'to undermine the Lebanese state.' In mid-May 2007, security forces raided several sites harboring fugitives in Tripoli. On the 20th of May, Fatah al-Islam militants infiltrated a military post and killed twenty-seven soldiers in their sleep. It later emerged that the orders came from the extremist Shaker al-Absi, the leader of the group that had seized the Nahr al-Bared camp and that he had managed to temporarily cut Tripoli off from Dinniyeh and Akkar (north Lebanon). The army paid a heavy price. Hundreds were killed and wounded in the battle the army waged to purge the camp of these terrorists who had used civilians as human shields. Hezbollah's intentions were exposed during this episode, as it drew a red line in the face of the authorities and the army's decision to end this perilous state of affairs. In the interval between Sidon judges' assassination and the Nahr al-Bared terrorism, the Lebanese National Dialogue Conference before the July 2006 war. At the conference, it was decided that Palestinian factions operating outside the camps would be disarmed as a first step that would be followed by addressing the arms inside the camps. Hezbollah quickly reneged on the agreement, however. Over the years, Ayn al-Ḥilwah camp and others have witnessed clashes that claimed innocent lives as Hamas, with Hezbollah's backing, sought to take control of Lebanon's largest camp in the country after having gained the upper hand over the PLO in the two camps in Tyre, Al-Buss and Rashidiya. It is from those camps that rockets were launched recently- in an incident that the enemy exploited to inflict more death and destruction. There are several dimensions to the Palestinian Authority's move to delegitimize all the armed factions in the camps. Mahmoud Abbas, who has been insisting on placing the camps under the authority of the Lebanese state for years, as well as calling for a reevaluation of how refugees are managed, probably hopes to prevent intra-Palestinian strife preemptively. This was echoed by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who said 'The strength of the Palestinians today does not lie in weapons but in international recognition and diplomacy.' The PLO is keenly working to prevent the kind of Lebanese-Palestinian strife that the so-called 'Resistance Axis' has often threatened, and these efforts are appreciated. Abbas's visit to Lebanon and his support for the country's efforts to restore its sovereignty have provoked the remnants of that Axis. Some circles are claiming that the Palestinian president 'only has influence over his own faction (i.e., Fatah),' and that if Fatah were to disarm, the camps would fall under the control of extremists, and that the weapons of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are protected by Hezbollah. Hezbollah, which refuses to hand over its own arms, understands that the disarmament of Palestinian factions undercuts its broader strategy and its effort to turn back the clock. That is why its top brass is giving triumphalist speeches of defiance and denial, refusing to recognize the implications of Lebanon's political earthquake and the major shift in regional power dynamics. It may seek to obstruct Palestinian factions' disarmament even if that means triggering clashes. It is in this light that we should view the decision to begin collecting weapons from the Beirut camps rather than those in Tyre, south of the Litani River. The key to success, however, is a firm commitment by the Lebanese state to enforcing the state's sovereignty. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is clearly taking this approach. He has not been mincing his words recently: 'The era of exporting the Iranian revolution is over, and we will keep quiet about any non-state actor's arsenal.'
