Korean Nuclear Missile Capable Of Reaching US

N. Korea ICBM engine tests stoke nuclear fears

Intercontinental Nuclear Missiles

North Korea has been testing engines for an inter-continental ballistic missile, a US think-tank said Friday, as Pyongyang announced a top military reshuffle that coincided with signs of a looming nuclear test.

The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said satellite images of the North’s Sohae rocket launch site suggested one “and maybe more” recent tests on the engine of what is probably the first stage of a road-mobile ICBM called the KN-08.

It was the latest in a series of similar tests — dating back to mid-2013 — on a missile with a targeted range of up to 11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles), the institute said on its closely followed website, 38 North.

“The next technically logical step… would be a flight test of the entire system,” it said.

The successful test of an ICBM capable of reaching the continental United States would take the nuclear threat posed by the North to an entirely new level.

Experts believe three nuclear tests have brought the North closer to mastering the miniaturisation techniques required to place a nuclear warhead on a missile.

And there are signs it is preparing a fourth test, with multiple analyses of recent satellite images all noting stepped-up activity at the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

“All these activities are consistent with the view that a (nuclear) test or tests will occur soon,” the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said in its latest assessment on Friday.

Missile delivery has often been cited as the main weakness of the North’s nuclear weapons programme.

It has yet to test its medium-range Musudan missile with a range of up to 4,000 kilometers, let alone an ICBM.

In December 2012, it put a satellite in orbit with a rocket launch that was widely condemned as a disguised ballistic missile test.

That launch marked a significant step forward, but the rocket lacked the re-entry capability required of a functioning ICBM.

Models of the road-mobile KN-08 missile were displayed in North Korean military parades in 2012 and in July last year.

Nukes, Nukes Everywhere

Global Nuclear Arsenal

Nuclear weapons, since their induction into arsenals, have generated many concepts. In contemporary scenario, the rationales share these concepts in analyzing the nuclear competition in South Asia. There are many questions regarding Pakistan’s national security together with nuclear capability. Why does Pakistan tend to maintain nuclear arsenal? Is India an existential threat to Pakistan? How can Pakistan’s conventional weaponry guarantee national security? Would India out-compete Pakistan? Is Pakistan’s internal writ shrinking? These questions are directly or indirectly linked to the Pakistan’s nukes.

John J. Mearshiemer maintains that the great powers maximize their relative power. He explains further that these powers do not enlarge the existing power due to power-lust but due to the compulsions of the anarchic nature of the international system. [i]

Thus, the arsenals are mainly built for pursuit of the national security. The states possibly consume their energies in order to cope with the threat. Pakistan in south Asian region exists as the second-largest state with both military and economic power potential. Its policy-making junta is keen in making sure to cope with the external threats. Since its creation in 1947, it shared antagonistic and adversarial relation with the eastern neighbor.

Given the hostility, Pakistan left no stone unturned in an attempt to ensure the national security. The nuclear weapons are the outcome of the aforesaid approach. It is worth-mentioning that the region is more stable than ever before since Qadeer Khan in an interview with Kuldip Nayyer in 1985 unveiled the nuclear capability. Thus, no one can deny the fact that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are the outcome of broad-based strategy to solidify the national security. Likewise, the established tenet of national-security policy will in future be maintained.

Similarly, Pakistan according to civilian and military leadership is still sensitive regarding the developments being made in India. It is true that the region is reported to be destabilized whenever the balance of power is disturbed. Michael Krepon is of the view that India competes with China and will compete it regardless of what Pakistan does. Now, if India asserts to compete with Beijing, ultimately it would enlarge its military power given the approach of offensive realism.

The more New Delhi increases its military power, the larger concerns Islamabad would have. With this perception, the New Delhi cannot be absorbed as normal and fraternal neighbor. Can anybody assure Pakistan of the Indian neutral behavior towards its neighbors if it becomes the most powerful nation in the world? Its presence in Afghanistan is particularly adequate to deny this optimism vis-a-vis Pakistan. Therefore, it is irrational to ignore that the perception-based policies in South Asia would forcibly be pursued.

Some analysts like Michael Krepon uphold that Pakistan cannot compete with India in subject of conventional military capability. In actuality, they observe the quantity where the latter outnumbers the former. Nonetheless, quantity matters more than quality. Under this perspective, Pakistani armed forces induct the western state-of-the-art equipment and systems that are more advanced and effective than what Indian possess the Soviet technology in the military systems.

Pakistan air force operates the mixture of the US, French, Chinese, and the PAK-China jointly manufactured systems. It can provide an immense fire power to the ground forces. In all spheres like air superiority, interception and interdiction, and ground attack, it is capable of giving surprise to the rival. Rhetorically, Pakistan, owing to the quantity, is not far behind India in the subject of conventional military capability. Nonetheless, it equally vies with India.

On the question of Pakistan’s failure against India in competition, an impartial analyst can assess how valiantly Pakistan survived during the last 14 years’ war-like scenario. On the other hand, Pakistan tremendously ensured the safety of nuclear weapons. It successfully coped with the terrorists in Swat and Balochistan. Despite of all menaces, Pakistani defense capability is safe and sound and is likely to give immense demonstration whenever the time demands.

Pakistan’s internal writ is restored. There is not a single area that is out of the central government’s writ. As far TTP’s bastion is concerned, they are disintegrated and deployed in the remote mountainous areas. It was Pakistan air force’s vigorous strike that recently forced them to come to dialogues. In presence of the certain terrorists, it is unfair to conclude that the government’s internal writ shrinks.

To wind up, Pakistan in military form is really hard to be engulfed. Its nuclear weapons are safe. Economically, it will boom up since 2015. Therefore, it is ideal to live without any rivalry. India and Pakistan should realize each other’s status. That is how the nuclear normalcy can work. Significantly, it remains still a nuclear military power that cannot be underestimated.

Nuclear War Is In The Hands Of Just A Few

The Insanity Of Nuclear War Thinking

The Nuclear Decision

By Alan Johnstone

30 April, 2014
 

Countercurrents.org

“If the adversary feels that you are unpredictable, even rash, he will be deterred from pressing you too far. The odds that he will fold increase greatly, and the unpredictable president will win another hand.” – Richard Nixon

The UK-based military think-tank has produced a report (1) that uses many declassified documents, testimonies and interviews suggests that the world has, indeed, been lucky avoiding nuclear catastrophe, given the number of instances in which nuclear weapons were nearly used inadvertently as a result of miscalculation or error. Historical cases of war resulting from misunderstanding demonstrate the importance of the ‘human judgment factor’ in decision-making. The report describes the history of the Indian-Pakistan nuclear stand-offs, the latest being the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks which risked nuclear escalation through a possible rapid conventional response by India and a potential nuclear response by Pakistan.

India maintains civilian control over its nuclear weapons, routinely separates its warheads and missiles, and has an official policy of no first use. Its strategic posture evolved significantly as a result of the 1999 and 2002 incidents. After the 2001–02 crisis, it developed a rapid response conventional posture (dubbed the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine). India’s military doctrine centres on the use of conventional military force in order to gain territory as quickly as possible, which might be used later as potential leverage in demanding concessions from the Pakistani government. A cable from US Ambassador to India Tim Roemer, entitled ‘A Mixture of Myth and Reality’, expressed doubts that India’s conventional force posture would ever be used beyond the purpose of deterrence owing to operational and logistical complications, and referred to this type of military planning as rolling “the nuclear dice”.

India particularly relies on a significant degree of unpredictability in the deployment of eight specialized divisions known as Integrated Battle Groups (IBG)– including infantry and artillery units – in Pakistan’s territory to strike at its military’s cohesion. In response, Pakistan has fielded the nuclear-tipped short-range Nasr missile, thus introducing tactical nuclear weapons into an already charged atmosphere.

Pakistan’s nuclear command-and-control structure is officially divided between three authorities. The first is the National Command Authority, which is chaired by the prime minister. The second is the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), a body comprising government and military representatives set up as the result of command-and-control reforms between 1999 and 2001. The third is Strategic Forces Command, comprised of the military. The storage status of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons during peacetime has not been explicitly clarified, but it is widely believed that the SPD exercises heightened vigilance against the possibility that they could go missing. Reports indicate that Pakistan does separate its warheads from its delivery systems, and that the warheads themselves are separated by ‘isolating the fissile “core” or trigger from the weapon and storing it elsewhere’. While Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are therefore not susceptible to being used while on a hair-trigger alert, the warhead’s components are nevertheless stored at military bases and can be put together at short notice. The disputed nature of command and control over Pakistan’s military raises questions regarding the stability of its nuclear forces in a context where conventional confrontations can potentially escalate without authorization from the civilian leadership. The Chatham House authors describe the near use of nuclear weapons in the confrontations between India and Pakistan.

Brasstacks

Brasstacks, was an Indian military exercise that took place in 1986–87 and involved and involved 400,000 Indian troops within 100 miles of the Rajasthan border with Pakistan, which responded with its own exercises, Flying Horse and Sledgehammer. The Indian military leadership spent two weeks debating how to respond before passing on news of the escalation to newly elected Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. On 18 January 1987, the US ambassador intervened by meeting with the Indian minister of state for defence and securing an agreement to resolve the crisis, a message he subsequently passed to Pakistani officials. Only then did India and Pakistan activate the crisis hotline. Brasstacks demonstrated miscommunication and misperception on both sides. India, for example, did not fully notify Pakistan of the exercise beforehand. In addition, Pakistan claims that Gandhi earlier agreed that Brasstacks should be reviewed and provided vague assurances. However, the exercise continued as planned and the situation escalated further, possibly because Gandhi knew so little about it.

Leading the Operation Brasstacks was Indian Chief of Army Staff General K. Sundarji, and there is reason to believe he intentionally escalated the crisis in the hope of provoking Pakistan into a military confrontation that would allow India to take out Pakistan’s burgeoning nuclear weapons programme. The Pakistani intelligence service, which, rightly or wrongly, interpreted Brasstacks as a test of will with the potential for confrontation and chose to reciprocate with its own military exercises. Shortly afterwards the nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan acknowledged the existence of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Kargil Crisis

The 1999 Kargil crisis arose out of a conventional military conflict between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir. In May 1999, Pakistani troops and pro-Pakistani militants were spotted by Indian intelligence in the Kargil region of Kashmir on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC). The Indian Air Force bombed Pakistani bases along the LoC in Kargil.

The incident soon escalated into a military confrontation involving the threat to use nuclear weapons. In the midst of the crisis, Pakistan moved its nuclear weapons from storage. At the end of May, Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan’s foreign secretary, declared that Pakistan would “not hesitate to use any weapon in its arsenal to protect its territorial integrity”.

The conflict ended thanks to the successful mediation of US President Bill Clinton, who was able to persuade Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to withdraw his forces from the Indian side of the LoC in Kargil. It then emerged how little Sharif knew of the Kargil incursion relative to the head of the military, General Musharraf. A government minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, later commented that Pakistan’s army “very consciously only provided [Sharif] an outline of the exercise in which the focus was totally different … [It] did not involve the armed forces or crossing the [Line of Control].”

Clinton explicitly asked Sharif if he was aware of how “advanced the threat of nuclear war really was” and whether he knew that Pakistan’s military had begun preparing its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif explained “I was taken aback by this revelation because I knew nothing about it. The American President further told me during the meeting that the nuclear warheads have been moved so that these could be used against India.”

Bruce Riedel, an adviser to Clinton at the time of the Kargil incident, implied that Sharif was under considerable pressure to reach a solution which would allow Pakistan to save face.

Sharif feared that otherwise “fundamentalists would move against him and this meeting would be his last with Clinton”. Furthermore, Sharif’s denial that he gave the order to prepare Pakistan’s missile forces raised concerns about the nature of military and civilian control at the time of the Kargil conflict.

The Kashmir Again

In 2001 and 2002, India and Pakistan went into a renewed cycle of hostility as a result of the unresolved Kashmir conflict and additional provocations. For 10 months, between December 2001 and October 2002, India and Pakistan kept one million soldiers in a state of high readiness. India had rejected the first use of nuclear weapons, but President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan refused to do the same and stated that the “possession of nuclear weapons by any state obviously implies they will be used under some circumstances”.

The Chatham House report describes:

“The crisis was a combination of logical decision-making and seemingly irrational behaviour by decision-makers on both sides, most likely owing to misperceptions.”

India assumed that Pakistan would not resort to nuclear use if it was involved in a limited conventional war, as the United States would intervene early before the crisis escalated to that level. India’s defence minister maintained that Pakistan would eventually refrain from a nuclear strike because a nuclear exchange would ‘destroy’ Pakistan while India would ‘win’ and lose ‘only a part of its population’.

The conflict was resolved when US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made public a pledge by Musharraf to move against specific terrorist groups (such as Lashkar-e-Taiba) and seek negotiations with India. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was also involved in the talks with the Pakistani side to defuse the nuclear dimension of the crisis. “All this chatter about nuclear weapons is very interesting, but let’s talk general-to-general,’ Powell on one occasion maintained in a conversation with the Pakistani military leadership. “You know and I know that you can’t possibly use nuclear weapons […] It’s really an existential weapon that has not been used since 1945. So stop scaring everyone.”

One socialist journal at the time wrote “What a barbaric age we live in. Still, borders are to be fought over. Still, gods to be avenged and, still, that age-old cursed prize – profit – to be sought in every stinking orifice. And were the mushroom clouds to start rising over Islamabad and New Delhi, western capitalists would still ponder how they could cash in on this hell, this hell of their system’s making.” (2)

Conclusion

India and Pakistan rely heavily on the diplomatic mediation of third-party states, particularly the US, to resolve their stand-offs and its presence in the region as “insurance against escalation to war”. Yet the 2001–02 crisis highlighted that “what-if”… is it possible in the next crisis, US diplomacy may fail to prevent nuclear first use by Pakistan and/or nuclear retaliation by India.

Decisions about nuclear use in many of these cases came down to only a handful of people. Nuclear weapons require constant vigilance and caution. For as long as nuclear weapons exist, the risk of an inadvertent, accidental or deliberate detonation remains.

 
Alan Johnstone is a member of The Socialist Party Of Great Britain

Iran Much More Capable Than US Suspects

Iranian Nuclear Capabiity

TEHRAN: Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei lauded Iran’s scientific and industrial progress despite the western sanctions, and said that the world powers further realize the ineffectiveness of their unilateral embargos against Iran as the country displays its domestic power for supplying its needs.

“The more we make progress in every field, the more the other side will understand the futility of its sanctions,” Ayatollah Khamenei said during a visit to MAPNA Industrial Complex in Fardis city in Alborz province on Wednesday. The Supreme Leader reminded that when, for instance, Iran needed 20-percent enriched uranium to fuel Tehran University Research Reactor to produce radoisotopes for patients and it was ready to purchase it, the world’s bullying powers headed by the US created problems through different tricks and refrained from supplying the fuel.

And when Iran came to decide to produce the 20-percent enriched uranium, the West did not believe that the young Iranian scientists could achieve this technology only through their talent, initiatives, and good management, he added. They did not even believe that Iran could produce fuel rods and plates, but Iran succeeded to do so, he added. “And now all the world powers state that they are ready to sell it (enriched uranium) to Iran” in order to get Tehran to stop its nuclear fuel production.The Supreme Leader underlined that the “world is in trouble because of the games and bad-temperedness of the world powers”, and said that “the irrational behaviors of the world bullying powers against the Islamic Republic of Iran depend on Iran’s weakness or strength”.

“Whenever we stand up on our own feet and we become strong, they are forced to behave politely and rationally,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, and concluded, “Paying heed to this very reality is the key to all the problems of the country.”

The Iran Power Plant Projects Management Company (MAPNA) was founded in 1993 with the aim of developing indigenous knowledge production capacity for petroleum facilities, power plants and other industrial facilities, and as a contract management company. Historically large scale industrial installation in Iran had been supplied by foreign companies on a turn-key basis; the MAPNA was created in February 1993 by Tavanir, Iranian Industrial Development and Renovation Organization (IDRO) and the Saba Investment Company to manage power plant, petroleum plant and railway projects.

Al-Maliki Uses Militia Against Antichrist’s Men

Iraq Votes, but Its Nightmare Continues

Sadrists Threatened By Al-Maliki

Bob Dreyfuss

Iraqis went to the polls today. At least, that’s the official story. But how can a country have an election when it’s embroiled in virtual civil war conditions, run by a gangster politician enforcing a Shiite, sectarian agenda, with some of its major cities besieged by a rough alliance of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and thousands of angry, disaffected Sunnis? Plus, with its Kurdish north careening toward breakaway, independent status?The tragedy of Iraq continues. Nearly 9,000 Iraqis died last year in violent attacks, suicide and car bombings, and civil war–style violence, and that’s probably an underestimate. In 2014, about a thousand a month are being killed—not quite Syrian levels, but far worse than, say, in. (See the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq for month-by-month details, which understate the deaths.) And since the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the George W. Bush administration and its neoconservative allies—along with its liberal-interventionist co-thinkers, such as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton—Iraq has been plunged into a never-ending nightmare, its body politic ripped asunder, its civil and industrial infrastructure destroyed and its population reduced by at least several hundred thousands who died. Countless millions more suffer from grotesque injuries, psychological trauma and PTSD—especially children.

It’s a testament to the strength and determination of Iraqis that they can have an election at all. But the result isn’t likely to improve Iraq’s pitiful situation, especially since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki—the would-be dictator and president-for-life—is almost certain to remain in power, provided that he can cobble together another parliamentary coalition that rests chiefly on his fundamentalist, Shiite-sectarian base. His popularity has been declining in recent years, but now his thundering war against Sunni “terrorists” in Ramadi, Fallujah and the rest of Anbar province, along with somewhat less intense crusades in Salahuddin province, in Mosul and elsewhere, may have managed to stir up enough Shiite sectarian excitement that he can pull off a sizable plurality of the vote. Back in 2010, when an opposition party led by Ayad Allawi—a wily, nonsectarian, secular Shiite politician with a largely Sunni base—won the biggest share of the vote, both the United States and Iran weighed in to prop up Maliki and ensure that he was able to form a government that eventually excluded Allawi. A year later, in 2011, the remaining American troops departed, and within days Maliki went to war against Sunni politicians, the Sunni establishment and others who opposed his authoritarian style. Maliki used spurious charges of terrorism against top politicos, including the Sunni vice president of Iraq, who was forced to flee for his life. Following that, Maliki cracked down viciously on peaceful, Arab Spring–style protests in Anbar, killing hundreds and detaining thousands.

And Maliki has seized control of the levers of influence in Iraq: the media, the armed forces, the intelligence service, the election commission and more. As Matt Bradley reports in The Wall Street Journal, Iraqiyya, the state broadcast service, is deployed at Maliki’s service, “among more than a half-dozen other once-independent institutions that Mr. Maliki has come to dominate and is now using to catapult himself to a third term, say his political opponents, critics and analysts.”

So, it’s no wonder that the Iraqi insurgency that erupted after 2003 is back. This time, it’s enhanced by the chaos in Syria, where a largely Sunni army of Islamist fanatics and rag-tag rebels tied to Al Qaeda and ISIS are battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah have turned into strongholds of the insurgency, and the anti-Maliki radicals have deployed waves of suicide bombers and car bomb experts to slaughter thousands of Shiite civilians in markets, public squares and other soft targets. They’ve also carried out a lethal pattern of assassinations of moderate and establishment Sunnis outside Baghdad.

Maliki—a paranoid, secretive thug who was long one of the leaders of the Shiite-fundamentalist Dawa party—has fallen back on the help of several Shiite paramilitary militia closely tied to Iran, using them to smash Sunni political opposition and to undermine the forces of the independent minded Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. As Filkins relates, the leaders of two of the groups—Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis of the Party of God Brigade and Qais al-Khazali of Asa’ib al-Haq—live close to Maliki’s home in the Little Venice area of the old Green Zone. Adds Filkins:

According to Iraqi and American officials, Maliki has begun to deploy both militias against his opponents, mainly the followers of Sadr. “Maliki is using Asa’ib to take out his enemies,” the senior Iraqi lawmaker told me.… Several American and Iraqi officials told me that Muhandis is Maliki’s principal connection to the Iranian regime, acting as the personal representative of Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force. (Maliki responded, “I do have a good relationship with Iran, but I do not have any links with Muhandis.”)

It was, of course, the United States who catapulted Maliki into power. Even before the 2003 war, the Bush administration—and its principal overseer of Iraqi politics, Zalmay Khalilzad, a neoconservative Afghan-American—built an alliance with Iraq’s Shiites, especially its religious parties, including Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Both Dawa and SCIRI, along with Ahmad Chalabi—the Shiite charlatan who conned the neocons—had close ties to Tehran. (Indeed, SCIRI was a founded as a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.) And in 2006 it was Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, who elevated Maliki to the post of prime minister, with behind-the-scenes maneuvering. That’s why it’s sad but not surprising that Khalilzad, even today, is blathering on about how the United States ought to use its soft power to help Maliki today. In a piece for The National Interest, titled “Iraq’s Elections: What Washington Must Do,” he writes:

Vital American interests are at stake.… Navigating Iraqi politics in the coming months will require a level of deftness, balance, and steadfastness that has eluded the Obama Administration’s Iraq policy to date. However, given the strong relationships that Washington has with key Iraqi leaders and factions, the United States still possesses sufficient leverage in Iraq for securing a government that is beneficial for Iraqis and friendly with the United States.

It’s too late, Zal. The United States has little or no influence in Iraq anymore, just as it has little or no influence over the civil war in Syria, the undemocratic actions of the government in Egypt and the scattered militias of chaotic Libya. Iraq, torn between its Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds and pulled this way and that by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, will make its own way—and its own mistakes. And it will take several generations for Iraq to recover from the effects of its destruction in 2003.

NUCLEAR TERRORISM IS A HUGE CONCERN

Nuclear Terrorism

 

Terrorists and nuclear weapons: A serious concern

 

Ray M. Smythe 11:19 p.m. PDT April 29, 2014

I am scared. I am very scared. I am scared about something that most people try to forget. I am terribly frightened about the possibility of a nuclear war between the super powers or by rogue terrorists getting into some other country’s nuclear silos.

What worries me is our technology. If a computer accidentally tells the military to fire its missiles, will someone check first to see if this is accurate or will they simply start pressing buttons? None of the general public knows exactly what the safeguards are for our nuclear arsenals, but I pray each day that they work. Having said that, what do we know about Russia’s nuclear silos? Who is calling the shots over there? Is Vladimir Putin the sole figure to make the decision to start a war or is there some sort of hierarchy of management for the missiles?

What is also very worrisome is a country like Pakistan. They have plenty of nuclear warheads. However, it does not have a stable government and there are scores of terrorists in that country. We should be demanding to know what safeguards the Pakistani government is using to protect their arsenal of nuclear weapons. The world does not need terrorists getting a hold of these weapons.

Perhaps the United Nations or some other world organization needs to start investigating safe checks for nuclear weapons around the world. I don’t have the answers, just the concerns. I used to worry about leaders pressing the nuclear trigger, but I worry more now about a crazed terrorist who doesn’t give a darn about human life. So I believe it is the terrorist factor that is most dangerous at this time. Yes, North Korea and Iran are worrisome, but I don’t think they have developed weapons yet that could devastate the world.

Albert Einstein once said, “World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones as that is all that will be left after World War III.” I find his words chilling. We need to continue diplomacy with all nations and work together as a global community to contain the nuclear threat.

What we truly need is a charismatic person who could tackle the problem and make it their personal project. President Obama could appoint someone like Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Angelina Jolie or Christiane Amanpour. It doesn’t matter who takes up the cause. We need someone who is passionate about saving the world from nuclear destruction. I believe that one person can make a difference. The bottom line is we need to start acting now to prevent a nuclear accident, terrorist attack or accidental war.

Ray M. Smythe is an author and retired history teacher from Palm Valley School in Rancho Mirage. He can be reached at Rayme49@aol.com

Saudis Show Off Their Nukes

Saudis parade nuclear missiles for the first time in defiance of US-Iranian nuclear accord

 

Saudis’ Parade Nuclear Bomb

 

DEBKAfile Special Report April 29, 2014, 10:49 PM (IDT)

Saudi Arabia became the first Middle East nation to publicly exhibit its nuclear-capable missiles. The long-range, liquid propellant DF-3 ballistic missile (NATO designated CSS-2), purchased from China 27 years ago, was displayed for the first time at a Saudi military parade Tuesday, April 29, in the eastern military town of Hafar Al-Batin, at the junction of the Saudi-Kuwaiti-Iraqi borders.
The DF-3 has a range of 2,650 km and carries a payload of 2,150 kg. It is equipped with a single nuclear warhead with a 1-3 MT yield.

Watched by a wide array of Saudi defense and military dignitaries, headed by Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister Salman bin Abdulaziz, the parade marked the end of the large-scale “Abdullah’s Sword” military war game.

Conspicuous on the saluting stand was the Pakistani Chief of Staff Gen. Raheel Sharif alongside eminent visitors, including King Hamad of Bahrain and Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

Debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the event was deliberately loaded with highly-significant messages, the foremost of which was that the Middle East is in the throes of a nuclear arms race in the wake of the Iranian program.

1. The oil kingdom was saying loud and clear that it has obtained nuclear missiles and is ready to use them in the event of an armed conflict with Iran.

2.  The message for Washington was that Riyadh adheres to its adamant objections to the comprehensive accord for resolving the Iranian nuclear question which is racing toward its finale with the six world powers led by the US. The Saudis share Israel’s conviction that this pact – far from dismantling Iran’s nuclear capacity – will seal the Islamic Republic’s elevation to the status of pre-nuclear power. The result will be a Middle East war in which the Saudis will take part.

3.  The participation of the nuclear DF-3 missiles in the “Abdullah’s Sword” exercise signified Riyadh’s estimate that the coming conflict will see the use of nuclear weapons.

4.  By showing off their ageing Chinese missiles, the Saudis intimated that they had acquired the more advanced generation of this weapon, which they are keeping under wraps.  debkafile’s intelligence sources report that in recent visits to Beijing, high-ranking Saudi officials negotiated the purchase of Dong-Feng 21 (DF-21), whose range is shorter, 1,700 km, but more precise and effective in view of its terminal radar guidance system. The West has no information about when the new Chinese missiles were delivered to Saudi Arabia.

5.  The presence of the top Pakistani soldier at the parade of military and nuclear hardware was meant as corroboration of Islamabad’s active role as the source of the Saudi nuclear arsenal.

6.   The Saudis no longer rely on the American nuclear umbrella. They are developing their own nuclear strike force with the help of China and Pakistan.