Iranian Horn building new uranium enrichment facility in Natanz: Daniel 8

Report: Iran building new uranium enrichment facility in Natanz

A combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning is helping researchers and scientists discover and uncover activities at Iran’s nuclear facilities, says Allison Puccioni from the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in a new report. According to the report, it is possible that Iran is between 18 and 24 months away from completing a new underground centrifuge assembly hall next to its nuclear facilities in Natanz.

The center’s report, whose findings were published by the Defense One website, said that Iran is now able to expand its ability to enrich uranium despite a number of failures and other setbacks that Iran has blamed on sabotage. The new facility, located south of the main facility in Natanz, is being built deep within a mountain, hidden from imaging satellites.    

Experts from the Center for International Security and Cooperation used artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to help them collect data from satellite imagery of the work underway at the new underground centrifuge site and process it, including tracking of the excavations. The work started between August and September of last year. A very large number of trucks arrived at the site during the first three months, almost 10 times the number that had arrived previously, due to the digging work at the site.  

The experts estimated that the Iranians will start building the centrifuge assembly hall in the near future, and apparently start operating the centrifuges in 18 months to two years. The Center for International Security and Cooperation said that the combination of satellite imagery and various data sources, including open sources on social media, along with artificial intelligence, enable much more comprehensive tracking of what is being done at Iranian nuclear sites.     

In conclusion, the center said that is Iran is working hard to maintain its nuclear enrichment capability and reinforce its capability to develop nuclear weapons.

Iraqi Horn Continues to Attack Babylon the Great

Keeping up attacks, some Iraq militias challenge patron Iran

July 10, 2021 02:32

BAGHDAD: Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force commander brought one main directive for Iraqi militia faction leaders long beholden to Tehran, when he gathered with them in Baghdad last month: Maintain calm, until after nuclear talks between Iran and the United States.
But he was met with defiance. One of the six faction leaders spoke up in their meeting: They could not stay quiet while the death of his predecessor Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in a US drone strike went unavenged.
Militia attacks have only been increasing against the US in military bases in both Iraq and Syria. Three missile attacks in the last week alone resulted in minor injuries, stoking fears of escalation.
The details from Esmail Ghaani’s visit, confirmed to The Associated Press by three Shiite political officials and two senior militia officials, demonstrate how Iranian-aligned Iraqi militia groups are asserting a degree of independence, sometimes even flouting orders from Tehran. Iran now relies on Lebanon’s Hezbollah for support in reining them in, and there is potential that Iran’s new president could play a role in doing the same.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meetings.
Iran’s influence, sustained by ideological ties and military support, has frayed because of the US killing of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis last year, because of differing interests and because of financial strains in Tehran. With nuclear talks restarting following US President Joe Biden’s inauguration this year, these differences have come to the fore.
“Iran isn’t the way it used to be, with 100 percent control over the militia commanders,” said one Shiite political leader.
Increasing rocket and drone attacks targeting American troops in Iraq and Syria have alarmed Western and coalition officials. There have been at least eight drone attacks targeting the US presence since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks, according to coalition officials.
The attacks are blamed on the Iranian-backed militias that make up the bulk of Iraq’s state-supported Popular Mobilization Forces. The Biden administration has responded by twice targeting Iraqi militia groups operating inside Syria, including close to the Iraqi border.
“What is taking place now is when Ghaani asks for calm, the brigade leaders agree with him. But as soon as he leaves the meeting, they disregard his recommendations,” said another Shiite political leader.
The loudest of the defiant militia voices has been Qais Al-Khazali, leader of the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq faction, which also maintains a political party. On June 17, only days after Ghaani’s meetings with the militias, he said in a televised address that they would continue to target the US “occupier” and that they will not take into consideration nuclear talks.
“And that decision is an Iraqi one,” he said.
The coalition has formally ended combat operations and reduced troop levels significantly in the last year. Only 2,500 US troops remain in Iraq and discussions are ongoing with NATO to transfer to an advisory mission. Iraq still needs coalition support in surveillance and intelligence gathering and airstrikes against Daesh group targets.
Some argue the ongoing attacks benefit Iran by maintaining pressure on the US.
During talks with Shiite political officials during his visit, Ghani said Iran doesn’t interfere in their political work, but that military matters were different. “These must be approved by the Revolutionary Guard,” one political leader recounted him saying.
Still, Ghaani did not reprimand the militia groups during the meeting. Instead, he told them he understood their concerns.
Iran has struggled to fill in the gap left in the absence of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis, who were commanding figures able to push factions into line and resolve disputes among them.
“Ghaani has a different style and capabilities,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at The Washington Institute. He has a looser framework, establishing broad red lines on some matters, while “other things are ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said.
Along with asking for less, cash-strapped Iran has been giving less as well. Assistance to the groups has been significantly downgraded since US sanctions began crippling Iran’s economy last year.
Divisions among factions have deepened, with growing competition among militias and Shiite politicians.
Ghaani came to meet the militia leaders to mend tensions that were sparked weeks earlier when Iraqi authorities arrested a paramilitary commander, Qassim Musleh, prompting a standoff between PMF fighters and security forces. Ghaani brought a letter from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, criticizing the PMF for its reaction, saying it weakened their position.
To apply pressure on the factions, Iran has come to rely on Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Lebanon, a figure the militias highly respect. Almost weekly, various factional leaders hold face-to-face meetings with him in Lebanon, said Shiite political leaders.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, elected in June, also may be a unifying figure for the militias, which hold him in high esteem, political and militia officials said. When Raisi visited Baghdad in February, he met with PMF commanders and told them, in fluent Arabic, “Our flesh is your flesh, and our blood is your blood.” Ghaani communicates with brigade leaders through an interpreter.
“The resistance will grow in power and will see its best of times due to the election victory of Raisi,” said Abu Alaa Al-Walae, commander of Kataib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, in a recent interview.

Our enemies HAVE found a way to defeat the United States

Have our enemies found a way to defeat the United States?

By Kevin T. Carroll, opinion contributorAugust 01, 2021 – 10:00 AM EDT

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill 

Iraq is kicking American combat troops out of Iraq, at Iran’s behest, just as the U.S. leaves Afghanistan. We are now 1-3-1 in major conflicts since 1945. Our enemies’ successful strategy appears to be to attack us from third-country sanctuaries and bleed our troops until domestic support for the war collapses.

In Korea, Harry Truman would not attack communist sanctuaries in China. Truman’s decision was reasonable; he did not want to risk World War III and believed a Soviet invasion of western Europe was the bigger threat. His decision had serious consequences, however. China nearly threw U.S. forces off the Korean Peninsula. A stalemate developed, as China sent a practically inexhaustible supply of “volunteers” south. Domestic support for the war — and for Truman — collapsed. He did not seek reelection in 1952.

Dwight Eisenhower achieved an armistice only by threatening to use nuclear weapons. North Korea was left intact as a horrific police state. Today, 28,000 American troops still defend South Korea, and Pyongyang’s erratic dictator threatens the U.S. with “confrontation”.

In Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson conducted only limited airstrikes on North Vietnam, and allowed communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. Johnson’s decision was reasonable; he did not want to risk a “second Korea” nor distract from his domestic agenda. This decision also had consequences. The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong sent a practically inexhaustible supply of troops south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. An insurgency developed, punctuated by conventional attacks such as the Tet Offensive. Domestic support for the war — and for Johnson — collapsed. He did not seek reelection in 1968.

Richard Nixon, helped by his invasion of Cambodia, strategic bombing of Hanoi and mining Haiphong Harbor, achieved the Paris Peace Accords. U.S. troops withdrew in 1973. North Vietnam conquered the south in 1975, and terrible human rights abuses followed.

One exception proves the rule. In the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush used overwhelming force and attacked into Iraq to liberate Kuwait. He achieved his limited goal in just six weeks, while maintaining popular support. Bush lost reelection in 1992 despite — not because of — the war.

In Afghanistan, George W. Bush did not pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders into Pakistan.  Bush’s decision was reasonable; Pakistan is a nuclear power and ostensible U.S. ally. The consequences: Al Qaeda established a redoubt around the Northwest Frontier Provinces and continued to plot terror, and the Quetta Shura Taliban sent a practically inexhaustible supply of Pashtun fighters north.

An insurgency developed, aided by Pakistan. The U.S. only conducted drone strikes against al Qaeda targets within a geographically limited “Predator box,” and launched only two special operations across the border, while leaving the Afghan Taliban leadership undisturbed in Quetta. Gradually, domestic support for the war collapsed. By 2016, Donald Trump campaigned on ending “forever wars.” President Biden will pull out U.S. forces in August. The allied government will soon fall, with human rights atrocities to follow.

In Iraq, Bush allowed two enemy sanctuaries. Sunni foreign fighters flowed in through Syria, while sophisticated munitions for Shia militias, such as explosively formed penetrators, flowed in through Iran. Again, Bush’s decision was reasonable, as world politics might not have borne a regional war.

This consequential decision led to two insurgencies. The U.S. had at least one special operation into Syria, and a border skirmish with Iranian forces, in 2007. But once again, domestic support for the war — and for Bush — collapsed; his party was “thumped,” in his words, in the 2006 midterms. In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq War. As president, he withdrew forces in 2011, only to send them back to fight ISIS in 2014.

Former President Trump began to withdraw forces from Syria in 2018. At the host nation’s insistence, Biden is withdrawing troops from Iraq. Iran’s ayatollahs now control a 1,900-mile swath running from Beirut to Herat.

Other factors played roles in these defeats: Our allies never developed clean, competent, popular governments in Saigon, Kabul or Baghdad. And we underestimated the fervor of Maoism, Vietnamese nationalism, Afghan tribalism and Iraqi sectarianism. But the enemy template is clear: Attack U.S. forces from a sanctuary and wait for domestic opinion to turn.

Biden may face challenges similar to his predecessors. What if Russia uses gray zone techniques, such as cyberattacks and special forces in civilian clothes (“Little Green Men”) staged from Belarus, against the Baltic States, or long-range air defense and artillery fires from Russia’s salient in Kaliningrad? Will we defend forward? What if China seeks to force our tacit ally Taiwan’s submission to unification, using airstrikes and missiles launched from the Chinese mainland? Will we bomb targets on China’s coast?

When Eisenhower threatened nuclear war to force an armistice in 1953, China and North Korea lacked the atomic bomb, and the Soviets likely lacked the ability to drop one on the U.S.  The world is different now, and no easy answers present themselves.

Breaching our NATO commitment to mutual self-defense in Europe, or failing to defend Taiwan against China, would end the American Century with a whimper. Totalitarians in Beijing would assume the mantle of world leadership. Chinese leader Xi Jinping would begin to shape our children’s futures, limiting their economic prospects — and given Han Chinese hypersensitivity to criticism and the globalization of communications, entertainment and media, likely their free expression as well.

Yet, American voters have grown more sensitive to casualties over the past 80 years. This, despite our population growth from 133 million to 333 million, the end of conscription, and an ever-smaller volunteer force. In World War II we suffered 405,399 dead in four years; Korea, 36,515 in three years; Vietnam, 58,209 mostly within seven years; and Afghanistan and Iraq together, 7,056 in 20 years. It hasn’t gotten any harder, or easier, to lose a loved one.

Casualties in a great-power conflict might dwarf those since 9/11. If a conflict over Taiwan devolved into a fleet engagement between the U.S. and China, losses could be particularly severe. For example, the Royal Navy had 6,092 sailors killed in under two days in World War I’s Battle of Jutland. Would America in 2021 bear such losses?

President Biden should ask himself whether he is willing, if necessary, to hold at risk targets adjacent to the countries we are committed to defend. Otherwise, he risks the political fate of Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.

Kevin T. Carroll is a partner in Wiggin and Dana’s Litigation Department in the Washington and New York offices, and a leader of the firm’s National Security and Congressional Investigations practice groups. He served as an Army and CIA officer, senior counsel to the House Homeland Security Committee, and senior counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The views expressed here are his own

The China Horn’s Nuclear Response: Daniel 7

Massive fields of new nuclear missile silos may be China’s answer to rivals with a lot more nukes

Ryan PickrellJul 31, 2021, 6:45 AM

• Experts have identified what appear to be hundreds of new missile silos under construction in China.
• It is assumed that these silos will house the new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
• Silos are vulnerable, but with enough of them and the right missiles, they can be advantageous.

China appears to be building hundreds of new silos to house intercontinental ballistic missiles, raising some questions about its intentions. To some experts Insider talked to, the huge silo fields look to be China’s answer to rivals that have a lot more nuclear weapons.

In recent months, analysts with the Federation of American Scientists and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies relying on commercial satellite images have found that China is constructing what looks like around 250 new missile silos. It previously had only about 20 silos.

Silo construction is clearly visible and appears to be underway in Hami in Xinjiang province, Yumen in Gansu province, and Jinlantai in Inner Mongolia. The Hami site, which is still in the early stages of construction, is roughly 300 square miles and the Yumen site is around 700 square miles.

The silos are grouped but spaced roughly two miles apart in grid patterns, which is very different from the way China has approached silos in the past. The country’s older silos are scattered, isolated, and somewhat camouflaged.

Sharing a report on the findings, US Strategic Command tweeted this weekthat “the public has discovered what we have been saying all along about the growing threat the world faces and the veil of secrecy that surrounds it.”

Silos are much more vulnerable than some alternative launch platforms because they do not move, making them easy to find and even easier to target, but with enough silos and modern missile technology, they can be advantageous.

A lot more silos

Having a significant number of missile silos makes it more difficult for an adversary to eliminate a country’s nuclear weapons before it has the chance to use them, and it is not even necessary to fill them all with missiles.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at MIIS, suspects that China will employ a “shell game” strategy, putting missiles in only some of the silos. The US military pursued a similar strategy during the Cold War.

“If there are silos, you have to take them seriously as being full. That is precisely how the shell game works. You don’t know, and you have to assume that,” he said.

The “shell game” strategy is a reasonable approach if China wants to retain its retaliatory capability while maintaining its minimum deterrence stance. Even empty silos would potentially help deter an adversary given the cost of destroying missile silos versus the cost to build them.

“They can add silos more cheaply than we can add missiles with warheads,” Lewis explained.

He said that the layout of the silos, which are far enough apart that a single warhead could not take out multiple silos but close enough that missiles could be shuffled among the silos as needed, suggests a “shell game” strategy.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at FAS, acknowledged that a “shell game” strategy is certainly possible.

“You could say the Chinese have created a nuclear sponge by building all these silos,” Kristensen said. “If it is a shell game, then it is partly the intention to force United States planners to waste a lot of warheads trying to chase down loaded missile silos.”

“But if you’re China, is that necessarily the way you think, or is it much more straightforward?” he asked.

Kristensen and his colleague Matt Korda wrote in a report on developments in Hami this week that China’s silo construction may represent “the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever.”

The pair suggested that China may have decided it needs more silos for a more robust nuclear force that ensures it can deliver a retaliatory strike able to break through an adversary’s defenses and hold strategic positions at risk.

It could also be a matter of national prestige, part of China’s pursuit of great power status. China has yet to acknowledge the silo construction, so its intentions are unclear.

The Chinese arsenal of nuclear weapons is significantly smaller than those of the US and Russia, both of which have thousands of nuclear weapons, but if it is expanding the size of its arsenal, it could be seen as a departure from minimum deterrence.

Kristensen and Korda wrote that “the build-up is anything but ‘minimum’ and appears to be part of a race for more nuclear arms to better compete with China’s adversaries.”

The new silos China appears to be building are positioned at more secure locations deeper in the country, likely improved compared to China’s older silos, and will likely be armed with better ICBMs.

Kristensen explained that a motivating factor for ongoing construction efforts might simply be a desire for “harder silos with better missiles capable of responding in a way that ensures the survivability of the retaliatory capability.”

Adm. Charles Richard, the head of US Strategic Command, explained to lawmakers in April that China is “moving to solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles, silo-based,” describing the weapons as “very responsive compared to a liquid fuel one.”

At least some, if not all, of the silos under construction are believed to be for China’s new solid-fueled DF-41 ICBM, which can be fueled in advance, is less dangerous to work with, and requires far less preparation time than the older liquid-fueled silo-based DF-5 missiles.

The DF-41 was first showcased during a military parade on a transporter erector launcher, indicating it, like many others in the Chinese arsenal, would be a road-mobile missile.

The problem is that the size and weight of the missile hinders mobility in this configuration.

“While it’s mobile, it’s going to tear up your roads,” Lewis explained. “It is going to have trouble getting over bridges. It has a terrible turning radius. It is not really able to go offroad.” And those are not the only potential issues.

Xu Tianran, an Open Nuclear Network analyst, said that the “DF-41 TEL is very large,” explaining that “with today’s and future surveillance technology, the mobile platform would also bear more risk of being taken out or suppressed.”

“We focus on road mobility because it seems almost like a submarine on land,” Lewis said, “but we kind of gloss over the real limitations of those systems, especially when you’re handling a big missile.” A silo might actually be a better choice comparatively.

The US, though it considered road-mobile missiles, keeps its ICBMs in a collection of roughly 450 silos.

Fielding the new solid-fueled DF-41 ICBMs in silos would also allow China to shift its silo-based force to a launch-on-warning (LOW) status to increase survivability.

“They have the radars. They have the missiles that are ready to go. It would be the easiest thing in the world for them to just keep the ones in the silos on alert,” Lewis said.

In its latest report on China’s military power, the Pentagon said that evidence, including “further investment in silo-based forces,” indicates “that China seeks to keep at least a portion of its force on a LOW posture.”

Nuclear modernization and posture changes are always challenging though because it is difficult for a country to bolster its own security without creating unease elsewhere.

“On the one hand, you have to deter an adversary from using nuclear weapons, but you don’t want to deter them or threaten them so much that they take steps to increase their force and its capability and its readiness in such a way that you end up facing something that is more dangerous than it was before,” Kristensen said.

There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the silos. Pushing for arms control, Kristensen said that “the United States and China have to be really careful about how they move forward on this because it can very rapidly spin out of control.”

Iraq: Shiite Factions Scramble to Win Parliamentary Majority After Withdrawal of the Antichrist

Iraq: Shiite Factions Scramble to Win Parliamentary Majority After Withdrawal of Sadrist Movement

Saturday, 31 July, 2021 – 09:00 

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on a billboard in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, June 21, 2021. REUTERS/Ahmed SaadBaghdad – Asharq Al-Awsat

An announcement made by Moqtada al-Sadr that he won’t run in Iraq’s parliamentary elections has increased the chances of those seeking to postpone the early polls scheduled for Oct. 10 to their constitutional date in April 2022

Sadr’s Sairoon bloc is the biggest in the Iraqi parliament with 54 out of 329 seats.

Several other prominent factions and parties have recently announced their rejection to run in the elections, including the Iraqi Communist Party, the Iraqi Forum Movement led by Ayad Allawi, the National Dialogue Front led by Saleh al-Mutlaq, the Iraqi Republican Gathering of Saad Asim al-Janabi, and others.

A well-informed Iraqi politician told Asharq Al-Awsat that the priority was now to hold the elections in October.

Setting this date was part of the commitment made by Prime Minister Mustafa to hold early elections, deal with the foreign presence in Iraq, reveal the killers of demonstrators during protests that erupted in 2019, as well as address the economic crisis and confronting the Covid-19 pandemic, said the politician.

The Iraqi premier has now set an early date for the elections, achieved progress in the assassinations case, and reached an agreement over the withdrawal of the US combat forces in Iraq by the end of the year.

While none of the Shiite factions and parties have announced their support or rejection of Sadr’s position, the surprise came from the leader of the State of Law Coalition, Nuri al-Maliki, Sadr’s most prominent opponent.

In a statement on Thursday, Maliki announced that the parliamentary elections would not be postponed and would take place on time. He also declared his rejection of an “emergency government because it means a rebellion against democracy and the principles of parliamentary transfer of power.”

The Fallout of the First Nuclear War: Revelation 8

A Nuclear War Between India and Pakistan Would Cause Fallout Elsewhere

Here’s What You Need To Remember: Between February 26 and 27 in 2019, Indian and Pakistani warplanes launched strikes on each other’s territory and engaged in aerial combat for the first time since 1971. Pakistan ominously hinted it was convening its National Command Authority, the institution which can authorize a nuclear strike.

The two states, which have retained an adversarial relationship since their founding in 1947, both deploy nuclear warheads that can be delivered by land, air and sea.

However, those weapons are inferior in number and yield to the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by Russia and the United States, which include megaton-class weapons that can wipe out a metropolis in a single blast.

Some commenters have callously suggested that means a “limited regional nuclear war” would remain an Indian and Pakistani problem. People find it difficult to assess the risk of rare but catastrophic events; after all, a full-scale nuclear war has never occurred before, though it has come close to happening.

Such assessments are not only shockingly callous but shortsighted. In fact, several studies have modeled the global impact of a “limited” ten-day nuclear war in which India and Pakistan each exchange fifty 15-kiloton nuclear bombs equivalent in yield to the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Their findings concluded that spillover would in no way be “limited,” directly impacting people across the globe that would struggle to locate Kashmir on a map.

And those results are merely a conservative baseline, as India and Pakistan are estimated to possess over 260 warheads. Some likely have yields exceeding 15-kilotons, which is relatively small compared to modern strategic warheads.

Casualties

Recurring terrorist attacks by Pakistan-sponsored militant groups over the status of India’s Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state have repeatedly led to threats of conventional military retaliation by New Delhi.

Pakistan, in turn, maintains it may use nuclear weapons as a first-strike weapon to counter-balance India’s superior conventional forces. Triggers could involve the destruction of a large part of Pakistan’s military or penetration by Indian forces deep into Pakistani territory. Islamabad also claims it might authorize a strike in event of a damaging Indian blockade or political destabilization instigated by India.

India’s official policy is that it will never be first to strike with nuclear weapons—but that once any nukes are used against it, New Dehli will unleash an all-out retaliation.

The Little Boy bomb alone killed around 100,000 Japanese—between 30 to 40 percent of Hiroshima’s population—and destroyed 69 percent of the buildings in the city. But Pakistan and India host some of the most populous and densely populated cities on the planet, with population densities of Calcutta, Karachi and Mumbai at or exceeding 65,000 people per square mile. Thus, even low-yield bombs could cause tremendous casualties.

A 2014 study estimates that the immediate effects of the bombs—the fireball, over-pressure wave, radiation burns, etc.—would kill twenty million people. An earlier study estimated a hundred 15-kiloton nuclear detonations could kill twenty-six million in India and eighteen million in Pakistan—and concluded that escalating to using 100-kiloton warheads, which have greater blast radius and overpressure waves that can shatter hardened structures, would multiply death tolls four-fold.

Moreover, these projected body counts omit the secondary effects of nuclear blasts. Many survivors of the initial explosion would suffer slow, lingering deaths due to radiation exposure. The collapse of healthcare, transport, sanitation, water and economic infrastructure would also claim many more lives. A nuclear blast could also trigger a deadly firestorm. For instance, a firestorm caused by the U.S. napalm bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more people than the Fat Man bomb killed in Nagasaki.

Refugee Outflows

The civil war in Syria caused over 5.6 million refugees to flee abroad out of a population of 22 million prior to the conflict. Despite relative stability and prosperity of the European nations to which refugees fled, this outflow triggered political backlashes that have rocked virtually every major Western government.

Now consider likely population movements in event of a nuclear war between India-Pakistan, which together total over 1.5 billion people. Nuclear bombings—or their even their mere potential—would likely cause many city-dwellers to flee to the countryside to lower their odds of being caught in a nuclear strike. Wealthier citizens, numbering in tens of millions, would use their resources to flee abroad.

Should bombs beginning dropping, poorer citizens many begin pouring over land borders such as those with Afghanistan and Iran for Pakistan, and Nepal and Bangladesh for India. These poor states would struggle to supports tens of millions of refugees. China also borders India and Pakistan—but historically Beijing has not welcomed refugees.

Some citizens may undertake risky voyages at sea on overloaded boats, setting their sights on South East Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Thousands would surely drown. Many regional governments would turn them back, as they have refugees of conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar in the past.

Fallout

Radioactive fallout would also be disseminated across the globe. The fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, for example, wounds its way westward from Ukraine into Western Europe, exposing 650,000 persons and contaminating 77,000 square miles. The long-term health effects of the exposure could last decades. India and Pakistan’s neighbors would be especially exposed, and most lack healthcare and infrastructure to deal with such a crisis.

Nuclear Winter

Studies in 2008 and 2014 found that of one hundred bombs that were fifteen-kilotons were used, it would blast five million tons of fine, sooty particles into the stratosphere, where they would spread across the globe, warping global weather patterns for the next twenty-five years.

The particles would block out light from the sun, causing surface temperatures to decrease an average of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit across the globe, or 4.5 degrees in North American and Europe. Growing seasons would be shortened by ten to forty days, and certain crops such as Canadian wheat would simply become unviable. Global agricultural yields would fall, leading to rising prices and famine.

The particles may also deplete between 30 to 50 percent of the ozone layer, allowing more of the sun’s radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, causing increased sunburns and rates of cancer and killing off sensitive plant life and marine plankton, with the spillover effect of decimating fishing yields.

To be clear, these are outcomes for a “light” nuclear winter scenario, not a full slugging match between the Russian and U.S. arsenals.

Global Recession

Any one of the factors above would likely suffice to cause a global economic recession. All of them combined would guarantee one.

India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result. A massive decrease in consumption and production would obviously instigate a long-lasting recessionary cycle, with attendant deprivations and political destabilization slamming developed and less-developed countries alike.

Taken together, these outcomes mean even a “limited” India-Pakistan nuclear war would significantly affect every person on the globe, be they a school teacher in Nebraska, a factory worker in Shaanxi province or a fisherman in Mombasa.

Unfortunately, the recent escalation between India and Pakistan is no fluke, but part of a long-simmering pattern likely to continue escalating unless New Delhi and Islamabad work together to change the nature of their relationship.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article was first published in 2019.

Image: Reuters

Israel strikes outside the Temple Walls after Hamas launches incendiary balloons: Revelation 11

Israel strikes Gaza after Hamas launches incendiary balloons

Updated 02 July 2021 

AP 

July 02, 202105:15

JERUSALEM: Israeli fighter jets struck a weapons manufacturing site in Gaza overnight in response to incendiary balloons launched over the frontier into Israel, the military said early Friday.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the strike, which the military said targeted a facility used by the Islamic militant group Hamas to research and develop weapons.
It was the third time Israel has carried out airstrikes in Gaza since the end of the 11-day war it fought with the territory’s militant Hamas rulers in May. Each came after activists mobilized by Hamas launched incendiary balloons that caused fires in nearby Israeli farming communities.
Hamas uses such tactics to pressure Israel and international mediators to ease a crippling blockade imposed on Gaza when it seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. Israel has vowed to respond to even minor attacks.
Egyptian and international mediators have been trying to shore up the informal cease-fire that ended the most recent war. In recent days, Israel has eased restrictions to allow in Qatar-funded fuel, extend Gaza’s fishing zone and permit increased cross-border commerce.
Israel says such steps are contingent on Hamas preserving calm along the frontier.