We are entering the second week of the war in Iran, and at the moment there seems to be no end in sight to the conflict; quite the contrary. Much information is lacking, especially from within Iran, and much of the news we receive is biased or incomplete. However, the signs point to an internal division within the country that makes it difficult to know who is truly in charge. Although on Saturday, President Masoud Pezeshkian stated that they would not attack neighboring countries if those countries did not allow attacks against them from their bases, drone attacks against the Gulf petrostates increased yesterday. The Revolutionary Guard, which maintains the hardline stance and directly opposed Pezeshkian's statement, has a decentralized command structure, allowing it to continue attacks, albeit on a smaller scale, independently.

The radars of the 49th Missile Defense Battalion, based in Fort Greely (Alaska)They detect the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) heading toward some point in the United States. They can't identify its launch point, but they know that in just over eighteen minutes, unless it's an error in the tracking satellites, it will impact its predetermined target. The military chain of command is activated, preparing to intercept it. The political structure is also set in motion to decide, ultimately by the president, whether to counterattack—against whom, but?—which could trigger a global nuclear war. This is the beginning of the gripping Netflix hit that premiered last October. In House of DynamiteFrom Kathryn Bigelow's film. In the movie, the chances of intercepting an ICBM in flight, traveling at a speed of six kilometers per second, are 61%. Do they manage to intercept the missile? No need to spoil it.

Faced with a turbulent geopolitical landscape, France is embarking on a nuclear rearmament program. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the country will increase its nuclear commanders—Macron clarified that the number will not be made public—and will acquire a new, state-of-the-art nuclear submarine. The announcement is not directly linked to the new war in the Middle East: the French president has been preparing France's rearmament for months. the desire to protect themselves from countries like Russia in a new global environment full of "risks and threats," where the United States is no longer a reliable partner."An increase in our arsenal is indispensable," the President of the Republic declared on Monday in a speech from Île Longue (Finistère), the secret military base where France has its four submarines capable of launching nuclear weapons. For the President, the key is deterrence: "The essential thing is that no adversary can even consider the possibility of an attack against France without the certainty of suffering damage from which it could not recover." However, Macron warned that he would use his nuclear arsenal if the country is attacked. "I will never hesitate to take the necessary decisions to protect our vital interests. No state, however powerful, could escape. No country could recover," the President of the Republic stated. Today's speech was one of the harshest and most bellicose that Macron has ever delivered. He did it in the middle of the nuclear military base, with a large, real submarine as a backdrop. "Just one of our submarines, like the one behind me, carries an attack power equivalent to the sum of all the bombs that fell on Europe during World War II," he boasted. It was one of the French nuclear submarines, which have a power equivalent to about a thousand times the power of the first nuclear bombs.

Meeting in Washington with his Gaza Peace Council, Donald Trump has once again threatened Iran. "You cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region and you must reach an agreement [on the nuclear program]. If this does not happen, there will be serious consequences," the president warned Tehran. He added, "You will probably find out within the next 10 days." The president issued the cryptic warning with the entire US naval fleet already positioned in the Strait of Hormuz, ready to launch a possible attack against the ayatollahs' regime. Shortly afterward, aboard Air Force One en route to Georgia, the Republican extended the deadline to 15 days as the "maximum time." "We are going to get a deal one way or another," he told reporters.

85 seconds separate us from the end of the world. This is the figure displayed a week ago by the Doomsday Clock. And it is the starkest diagnosis of all those made by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since they created the clock in 1947 as a powerful yet rigorous tool to represent our risk of self-destruction and communicate the need for decisive action to ensure the planet's survival.

This Thursday, February 5, 2026, is a historic date, one that truly honors this overused adjective. The New Start agreement expires. the latest treaty that limits nuclear weapons The strategic nuclear arms of the major nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, expires. With its expiration, more than half a century of control over the military development of the deadliest technology humanity has created comes to an end. Vladimir Putin has been offering Donald Trump a one-year extension of the agreement for months, but Washington has ignored his pleas, fearful of a China that has no intention of abandoning the production of nuclear warheads.

The anti-nuclear consensus that has defined Japan for almost six decades has begun to crack. A senior cabinet official Prime Minister Sanae TakaichiAn advisor on national security policy stated to several local media outlets that the country "should possess nuclear weapons." This personal opinion, despite being labeled "unrealistic" in the short term, has reopened an extremely sensitive debate in the only country in the world to have been the victim of atomic attacks during wartime. The statements come at a time of heightened geopolitical tension in East Asia and coincide with the ongoing review of the national security strategy promoted by the Takaichi administration, known for its hardline defense stances and its close ties to the most hardline sectors of US security policy. Although the government officially insists that it remains committed to the three anti-nuclear principles—not possessing, not producing, and not allowing the entry of nuclear weapons—the ambiguity of the rhetoric and the internal debate have triggered political, social, and diplomatic alarm bells.

For decades, at the height of the Cold War, the world lived in anguish over the latent threat of nuclear war. The memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still fresh. The division into irreconcilable blocs—capitalist West versus communist Russia and its satellites—kept the international community in a state of constant tension. Pacifism gained ground (as did environmentalism, which opposed nuclear energy). Détente and de-escalation in nuclear armament came with the agreements between US President Reagan and Russian President Gorbachev, beginning in 1985 and culminating in the START Treaty of 1991. With the fall and dissolution of the USSR, there was a relaxation of the nuclear threat. But despite the destruction of arsenals, the danger has persisted. The weapons are still there, possessing immense destructive potential, infinitely greater than the devastating mushroom clouds that, in Japan, brought the tragic end of World War II.

Coercion and supply in the same statement. Vladimir Putin warns that Russia is willing to resort to force if it feels threatened by the arms buildup of other countries. The Russian president is referring to the future space-based missile shield that Donald Trump wants to create to protect the United States, the so-called Golden Dome. "No one should doubt it: Russia is capable of responding to any existing or emerging threat, not with words, but through the use of military-technical measures," he said at a meeting of the Russian Security Council.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has justified the attack on Iran as a preemptive action to halt Iran's nuclear program, and has asserted that Tehran already has the capacity to build no fewer than nine atomic bombs. Tel Aviv claims it has presented the evidence to the United States, but it has not been made public. Inside and outside Israel, however, he is accused of having acted now to derail the Iranian nuclear program. ongoing negotiations between the Trump administration and the Ayatollahs' regime, to drag the Pentagon into a war against Tehran and to divert attention from the genocide in Gaza, which his allies had begun to criticizeIsrael claims that Iran has been on the verge of becoming a nuclear power for twenty years, and now its attacks have gone far beyond nuclear facilities and point to an attempt at regime change.

We argued, before the brand-new change in the world order, that nuclear weapons precisely rendered thrift rearmament, that is, junk (tanks, pistols, and machine guns), completely useless. That the army had little point if a button solved everything and, in practice, fostered peace, out of fear of total destruction.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday night outlined denuclearisation as one of the goals of his second term. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president said he wants to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to reach an agreement. agreement to reduce their respective atomic arsenals. What's more, he said that he would propose cutting the military budget in half.