East Coast Quakes and the Sixth Seal: Revelation 6

Items lie on the floor of a grocery store after an earthquake on Sunday, August 9, 2020 in North Carolina.

East Coast Quakes: What to Know About the Tremors Below

By Meteorologist Dominic Ramunni Nationwide PUBLISHED 7:13 PM ET Aug. 11, 2020 PUBLISHED 7:13 PM EDT Aug. 11, 2020

People across the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic were shaken, literally, on a Sunday morning as a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck in North Carolina on August 9, 2020.

Centered in Sparta, NC, the tremor knocked groceries off shelves and left many wondering just when the next big one could strike.

Fault Lines

Compared to the West Coast, there are far fewer fault lines in the East. This is why earthquakes in the East are relatively uncommon and weaker in magnitude.

That said, earthquakes still occur in the East.

According to Spectrum News Meteorologist Matthew East, “Earthquakes have occurred in every eastern U.S. state, and a majority of states have recorded damaging earthquakes. However, they are pretty rare. For instance, the Sparta earthquake Sunday was the strongest in North Carolina in over 100 years.”

While nowhere near to the extent of the West Coast, damaging earthquakes can and do affect much of the eastern half of the country.

For example, across the Tennesse River Valley lies the New Madrid Fault Line. While much smaller in size than those found farther west, the fault has managed to produce several earthquakes over magnitude 7.0 in the last couple hundred years.

In 1886, an estimated magnitude 7.0 struck Charleston, South Carolina along a previously unknown seismic zone. Nearly the entire town had to be rebuilt.

Vulnerabilities

The eastern half of the U.S. has its own set of vulnerabilities from earthquakes.

Seismic waves actually travel farther in the East as opposed to the West Coast. This is because the rocks that make up the East are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of years older than in the West.

These older rocks have had much more time to bond together with other rocks under the tremendous pressure of Earth’s crust. This allows seismic energy to transfer between rocks more efficiently during an earthquake, causing the shaking to be felt much further.

This is why, during the latest quake in North Carolina, impacts were felt not just across the state, but reports of shaking came as far as Atlanta, Georgia, nearly 300 miles away.

Reports of shaking from different earthquakes of similar magnitude.

Quakes in the East can also be more damaging to infrastructure than in the West. This is generally due to the older buildings found east. Architects in the early-to-mid 1900s simply were not accounting for earthquakes in their designs for cities along the East Coast.

When a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck Virginia in 2011, not only were numerous historical monuments in Washington, D.C. damaged, shaking was reported up and down the East Coast with tremors even reported in Canada.

Unpredictable

There is no way to accurately predict when or where an earthquake may strike.

Some quakes will have a smaller earthquake precede the primary one. This is called a foreshock.

The problem is though, it’s difficult to say whether the foreshock is in fact a foreshock and not the primary earthquake. Only time will tell the difference.

The United State Geological Survey (USGS) is experimenting with early warning detection systems in the West Coast.

While this system cannot predict earthquakes before they occur, they can provide warning up to tens of seconds in advance that shaking is imminent. This could provide just enough time to find a secure location before the tremors begin.

Much like hurricanes, tornadoes, or snowstorms, earthquakes are a natural occuring phenomenon that we can prepare for.

The USGS provides an abundance of resources on how to best stay safe when the earth starts to quake.

The first nuclear war could kill a third of world’s population: Revelation 8

People watch a TV showing a file image of a North Korea missile launch in the fall of 2019. (Associated Press)

Even a limited nuclear war could kill a third of world’s population, study shows

Alex Wigglesworth

August 15, 2022·8 min read

As escalating tensions among the United States, Russia and China revive old fears of nuclear war, some researchers are warning that even a limited-scale exchange between such nations as India and Pakistan could have catastrophic consequences for global food supplies and trigger mass death worldwide.

A nuclear conflict involving less than 3% of the world’s stockpiles could kill a third of the world’s population within two years, according to a new international study led by scientists at Rutgers University. A larger nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States could kill three-fourths of the world’s population in the same timeframe, according to the research published Monday in Nature Food.

“It’s really a cautionary tale that any use of nuclear weapons could be a catastrophe for the world,” said climate scientist and study author Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in Rutgers’ Department of Environmental Sciences.

The findings come at a time when — 30 years after the end of the Cold War — the threat of a nuclear holocaust may be greater now than it ever was.

Recently, U.K. National Security Advisor Stephen Lovegrove argued that the breakdown in dialogue between nations, as well as the loss of safeguards that had been created between nuclear superpowers decades ago, has plunged the world into “a dangerous new age.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also warned that “the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.”

Although Robock and others have previously projected that nuclear war would result in tremendous disruption to the climate and food supplies, the recent study marks the first time that researchers have calculated the potential extent of the famine that would result and how many people would die.

The detonation of even just a small fraction of the world’s nuclear weapons would spark massive firestorms that would rapidly inject sun-blocking soot into the atmosphere, touching off a sudden cooling of the climate, the researchers theorized.

Researchers used climate models to calculate how much smoke would reach the stratosphere — where no precipitation occurs to wash it away — and how this would change temperature, precipitation and sunlight. Then they calculated how these changes would affect the production of various crops, as well as how fish would respond to changes in the ocean.

As a result, they projected that tens of millions of immediate fatalities in the war zone would be followed by hundreds of millions of starvation deaths around the globe.

That’s without taking into account the effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on crops due to the destruction of the ozone layer caused by the heating of the stratosphere, Robock said. Such an effect, which researchers hope to quantify in future studies, would likely worsen the results, he said.

“In my opinion, our work is an existential threat to nuclear weapons — it shows you can’t use nuclear weapons,” Robock said. “If you use them, you’re like a suicide bomber. You’re trying to attack somebody else but you’ll die of starvation.”

The data is being released on the heels of a growing consensus among experts that the threat of nuclear war is greater than it’s ever been, said Ira Helfand, immediate past president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

“The general public needs to understand the enormity of the danger we face, the immediacy of the threat and the urgency of eliminating these weapons before they eliminate us,” he said.

Most of the scenarios the researchers considered involved a hypothetical nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, which they believe is the most likely region where such a conflict could erupt, Robock said. The two countries have fought in four wars and still have frequent border skirmishes.

If India and Pakistan were to each target urban centers in the opposing country with 250 100-kiloton nuclear weapons, which they are believed to possess, about 127 million people in South Asia would be killed by explosions, fires and radiation, the study found. An estimated 37 million metric tons of soot would be injected into the atmosphere, sending temperatures across the planet plunging by more than 5 degrees Celsius, a range last experienced during the Ice Age, according to earlier research by Robock and others. Food production would consequently collapse, with the number of calories available from major crops and fisheries falling by up to 42% and the resulting famine killing over 2 billion people worldwide, according to the most recent study.

In the event of a larger war between the U.S. and Russia, which together are believed to hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear stockpile, an estimated 5 billion out of 6.7 billion people worldwide would die, according to the research.

But any of the nine nuclear-armed nations, which also include China, North Korea, France, Israel and the United Kingdom, have enough firepower at their fingertips to cause immense worldwide suffering and death, with soot rising into the sky and touching off a domino effect of catastrophic cooling and famine, the study suggests.

Although it’s not possible to test the theory directly, there are real-world analogues, Robock said. Massive wildfires in British Columbia in 2017 and in Australia in 2019 and 2020 pumped smoke into the stratosphere, a finding confirmed by satellite observations. The sun then heated the smoke particles, lofting them five to 15 miles farther into the atmosphere, he said.

“By lofting them up higher, it increases their lifetime and they get blown around the world before they fall out,” Robock said. “It’s the same process we modeled in our nuclear winter simulation with a lot more smoke.”

The researchers’ modeling was able to predict the effects of these fires, giving them more confidence the models would also be accurate when it came to predicting the effects of nuclear detonation, he said.

Edward Geist, a policy researcher at Rand Corp., said that the relatively recent discovery that wildfires can loft smoke into the stratosphere bolsters the researchers’ theory. They are doing the world a service by drawing attention to nuclear war’s potential effects, he said.

Still, there is a debate about the extent to which solar lofting would occur with nuclear detonation, Geist said. Although it’s certainly possible it would occur in a city attacked by nuclear weapons, that doesn’t necessarily mean it would happen simultaneously in every city that is attacked, as the paper assumed, he said.

“The big question is, you have a nuclear war of a certain size, how much of this smoke ends up in the upper atmosphere?” Geist said. “You can make a plausible case for both — very little will end up there, all the way out to, we’ve got to assume it basically all ends up there, which is what [these] sorts of papers do.”

He pointed out that a 2018 paper by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory also modeled a hypothetical conflict between India and Pakistan and concluded that previous research by Robock and others had overestimated how much soot would be produced, how high the smoke would reach and how dramatically the climate would change as a result.

Robock, however, disputes those findings. The Los Alamos researchers chose an area of suburban Atlanta to represent a dense city in India or Pakistan and failed to include in their modeling atmospheric processes such as cloud formation that would carry air upward, he argued. Robock said they also assumed winds that blew too strong and ran their simulation for too short a time.

“They had a number of assumptions, all of which made the effects much less,” he said.

A 2020 paper by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory also considered the India-Pakistan scenario and concluded there were uncertainties. Although the team projected that an exchange of 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons would cool the climate if densely populated urban areas were to ignite, they projected there would be little to no effect on the climate if fires were limited to suburban areas.

In contrast, the Rutgers-led study assumes that the countries would target each others’ cities, where fuel concentrations are densest and the climatological effects would be most dramatic, Geist said. But Pakistan has said that if it were to use nuclear weapons against India, it would use tactical nuclear weapons to stop a conventional invasion, not to attack cities wholesale, he said.

“It really comes down to how much stuff do you burn, how much of it ends up being smoke and how much of that smoke ends up in the upper atmosphere, and how much real plausibles for nuclear wars translate into that,” Geist said. “We really don’t know, and hopefully we don’t find out.”

Although there’s a popular notion that nuclear weapons will never be used because they are so powerful that their destructiveness is a deterrent, that’s wishful thinking, Helfand said. That they have not yet been deployed is simply a matter of chance.

“We do know what’s going to happen if these weapons stay around,” he said. “Sooner or later our luck is going to run out.”

Obama’s Iranian Nuclear Disaster

Iranians Understand Trump Sanctions, Obama Nuclear Deal Was ‘Disastrous,’ Shah’s Son Says

David BrennanOn 12/12/19 at 7:34 AM EST

Courtesy of Reza Pahlavi

Iran is being convulsed by its worst unrest for 40 years, with cities across the country paralyzed by thousands of anti-government protesters.

Though sparked by a spike in fuel prices, the explosion of anger has been a long time coming. Iranians are living under an authoritarian regime while battling falling living standards and a faltering economy, exacerbated by crippling American sanctions levied to stifle Tehran’s nuclear program and regional influence.

Hundreds—perhaps more than 1,000 according to U.S. authorities—of dissenters have been cut down in the streets by regime gunmen. Human rights groups accuse the authorities of hiding away the bodies of the dead to conceal the true death toll while throttling internet to prevent survivors communicating with each other and the world.

According to Reza Pahlavi—the last surviving son and heir of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, deposed in the Iranian Revolution—the reported “massacre” shows the desperation and ruthlessness of the regime.

Pahlavi spoke to Newsweek from Washington, D.C., where he still lives in exile after his family fled the country in 1979. He has consistently called for a secular democracy to replace the current system.

Pahlavi said the current turmoil is indicative of widespread anger at the government in Tehran, and that the only solution is a rehabilitated secular democracy—whether or not he is directly involved.

How should we characterize the current unrest in Iran?
The protests in our country are driven by a broad-based, grassroots desire to replace this regime. The 200 percent rise in fuel prices may have been the trigger of this latest round of widespread national street protests, but this does not come close to capturing the essence or aspirations of what they have become.

These protests represent a rejection of the regime as a whole and communicate a desire to end forty years of clerical oppression. All one has to do to understand this is to listen to my compatriots in the streets.

They do not chant for reforms, or about fuel prices, they chant, “We don’t want the Islamic Republic!” and, “Khamenei, get out of the country!” and by the hundreds they are giving their lives for the cause of freedom.

Reza Pahlevi, son of the deposed Shah of Iran and his third wife Farah Diba, as a young boy with his parents in 1967.Universal History Archive/Getty

What does the response of the security forces tell us about the priorities and mindset of those in power?
We have known for forty years that the regime’s only priorities are safeguarding and expanding its own power and control, including enriching itself. This massacre is not surprising. It is rather what one expects when such a regime feels threatened.

Simultaneously, we are witnessing the beginning of a peeling away of the security forces from the regime. As a result, the Islamic Republic is forced to import foreign nationals to attempt to control the protests.

This simply shows that the regime will stop at nothing to protect itself, even at the cost of an effective genocide. Yet despite all this, the people are still fighting. The message they give me to tell the world is, “We deserve better than this. Why are you abandoning us?”

What should replace the current regime in Iran?
For four decades I have consistently advocated for a secular, democratic system in Iran. Not only have I advocated this for Iran because it is the best way to ensure the human rights, well-being, and happiness of Iranians but also because it is my sense that the Iranian people overwhelmingly want and demand such a system.

Today’s generation of young Iranians, more than ever, are aware of other countries where sovereignty is routine in their liberal and free societies. They would like to have the very same opportunities and self-determination.

This undated photo shows Reza Pahlavi—the exiled heir to Iran’s defunct monarchy—giving a speech. Pahlavi told Newsweek that the current unrest in Iran is a direct reaction to the authoritarian regime in Tehran.The Secretariat of Reza Pahlavi Media Relations

Is there any legitimate opposition in Iran that can be trusted in this regard? U.S. officials have previously pushed for the involvement of controversial groups such as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran—how do you feel about this?
It is less a matter of how I feel and more about fundamental truths. Our national aspiration is to have a secular democracy and therefore the people of Iran will decide what groups, parties, or individuals are relevant and constructive to our nation’s future. The future of Iran is to be decided by Iranians, not by any foreign leader’s advisors.

Would you like to return to Iran and be involved in a political process to establish a new system of governance?
I view my role as the advocate of the Iranian people. My aspirations are to support the movement for liberty and dignity and are not driven by any ambition for political power in Iran’s future.

That said, I am eager to return to Iran and I will always be there for our people to defend their fundamental and inalienable rights against any and all forces foreign or domestic. I intend to be of assistance in any way that I can to provide proper guidance in our nation’s critical transition to a secular democracy.

Do you think the Iranian people would welcome the return of royal influence?
The future system of government will be subject to intense debate in the constitutional process. It is this process, these democratic mores, on which I am focused and not on the future system of government.

Our country has of course, apart from this forty year interlude, a history of monarchic service and tradition. So naturally many Iranians, in line with this history and culture, have an affinity for the monarchy.

But the present moment is not about monarchy or republic, it is about the fight to reclaim our nation from an anti-Iranian occupying force and to develop this democratic order along with all of its principles, tenets, and values.

What do you think of the current U.S. “maximum pressure” strategy on Iran
It is unfortunate for the Iranian people that the regime, through its nefarious, destabilizing and antagonizing behavior in the region and across the world has brought the ire of so many of its neighbors and of the free world on our country.

To the extent that the sanctions limit or reduce the regime’s resources from being used for such actions, this is something the people of Iran understand and appreciate. Iranians realize that they are first and foremost under maximum pressure socially, politically and economically from the Islamic regime itself.

Therefore, my concern and that of the Iranian people is getting rid of this regime. The people don’t chant in the streets against sanctions, they chant against this regime in hundreds of cities across the country.

Was President Donald Trump right to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?
I do not tell Americans how to run their country, my focus is Iran. I know that any deal or negotiation with this regime and which ignores the Iranian people and their desires and demands are illegitimate.

All those who still aspire to finding a solution by negotiating with this regime only prove how out of touch they are with the real aspirations and sentiments of the Iranian people. My focus, rather, is on removing the maximum pressure of this regime on our people.

Trump’s hardline approach is directly pushing down living standards of normal Iranians—is this a price worth paying to try and contain the Iranian regime?
Containment and appeasement have proven to be the policy of sustaining the status quo. It is the policy of continuously taking the same steps and expecting different results.

To the extent that the regime is cut off from the resources used to oppress at home and abroad, the Iranian people understand and appreciate that.

But the determining factor in Iran’s future will be the Iranian people not foreign policies, as I have always told our people. To that end, if any nation wants to deal with Iran it must deal with those who hold the answers to its future: the people, not the regime.

I have said for decades that the West has a role to play in supporting the Iranian people in their movement because this support and solidarity will lower the cost of our ultimate victory. The burden of conscience lays heavily on all those who claim liberty and freedom as values and are astonishingly silent now, when their voices are most needed.

Should the White House change its strategy on Iran?
After forty years of failed attempts to appease this irreformable regime, isn’t it time for a different strategy?

Do not try to engage this regime. The previous administration made this mistake to disastrous effect for the Iranian people and for the region. Instead, engage the Iranian people and the secular democratic opposition.

For example, use the frozen assets of this regime and return them to their rightful owners, the people. Use it to support a strike fund to give my compatriots the ability to go on mass strikes and bring this regime to its knees through widespread, peaceful civil disobedience.

As an additional example, the administration should take measures to promote and safeguard uninterrupted access to the internet, and limit the regime’s ability to promote its own propaganda while it asphyxiates our people’s access to information.

Are you in touch with Trump administration officials and do you give advice on their approach?
For all of these years, I have communicated the same, consistent message to international leaders, including those in the United States.

That message has been simple: you cannot properly develop a policy for the future when you are focused on dealing with this illegitimate regime, you must recognize the people’s demand for fundamental change, and you must engage the people. I will continue to advocate this message.

The problem is not that the regime has not changed it’s behavior, because it never will, but rather that the world has not changed its behavior looking to appease this regime.

Hamas Is Planning For War Outside The Temple Walls: Revelation 11

Hamas Is Planning the Next War; Is Israel’s Current Government Ready?

People hold Hamas flags as Palestinians gather after performing the last Friday of Ramadan to protest over the possible eviction of several Palestinian families from homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, in Jerusalem’s Old City, May 7, 2021. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

For the past year, Israel and the Palestinians have been in escalation mode, a phase that began under the previous Israeli government.

The sparks that lit the current escalation are unrelated to whether a right-wing or center-left government is in power, but Hamas is prepared to use the new right-wing Israeli government as justification for further conflict and violence if it finds it necessary to do so.

The escalation originates in a calculated strategy by Hamas, which envisioned, with considerable foresight, a Palestinian civil war — a scenario that appears to be around the corner — and a new opportunity to both weaken its rival, Fatah, in the West Bank, and ignite a regional explosion against Israel.

While some observers have attributed the deterioration in the security situation to the power vacuum in the northern West Bank, where the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA) is indeed losing control, the more significant catalyst driving it is the clash between the narratives promoted by Hamas and the PA, led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Both Hamas and Fatah ultimately seek to rule the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, yet both are realistic in understanding that Israel will not vanish any time soon — and neither for that matter will the Palestinians. While Hamas believes that in the long run, it will succeed in destroying Israel, it still needs to answer the question of how it envisions the Palestinians living alongside Israel in the same land in this current phase of history.

Hamas’ answer to this question is, first, to reject any possibility of a peace treaty. Due to this position, Abbas’ PA has felt unable to enter into any real substantial diplomatic process with Israel over the years, and Abbas has rejected Israeli two-state offers made in the past, such as the one put forward by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.

Abbas realizes that he will never be able to defeat Hamas. While Israel is powerful enough to deal with any threat posed by Hamas, Fatah’s existence as a ruling party is under direct threat from it, as the Hamas coup against Fatah in Gaza 2007 so clearly demonstrated.

As a result, Abbas has settled for the vision of seeking a more comfortable existence for Palestinians in the West Bank. At the same time, he is resigned to the division of Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank, and to the idea that he is not strong enough to reach an agreement with Israel.

Hamas, for its part, promotes the Mukawama, the Arabic word for resistance, a word often misunderstood in the international community to mean resistance against occupation, when in fact it is resistance to acceptance of Israel — and the promotion of terrorism.

Since Ismail Haniyeh left Gaza to become the head of Hamas’s political bureau (he is now based in Qatar), the organization has decided that it wishes to be the legitimate representative of all Palestinians at the global level.

As Hamas navigates the region, reaching tense understandings with Egypt, while also moving closer once again to Syria’s Bashar Assad — after years in which it backed the anti-Assad rebels in Syria — it continually maintains its resistance narrative, claiming that it is leading Palestinians on the path to the destruction of Israel.

To market this narrative further, Hamas sparked an intense conflict in May 2021 in order to present itself as the defender of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet a little over a year later, in July 2022, it cleverly sat out a clash between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), as the IDF pulverized PIJ operatives and positions. Hamas was able to get the message across to Palestinians: Only Hamas can challenge Israel, fire rockets at Jerusalem, incite riots among Israeli Arabs, and create Palestinian unity. Only it can lead the fight against “the Zionist enemy.”

Abbas sees the ground underneath his feet shaking, and he is gradually enabling the PA to join the fight against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). These days, it’s not just Hamas — but also Fatah and the PA — that post “martyr” posters glorifying terrorists. The dead terrorists receive PA state burials, and this is accompanied by declarations by the PA of ending security coordination with Israel.

Ironically, this dynamic has created an opportunity for Hamas to present itself as the new “responsible adult,” and thereby gain regional and international credit. Despite the escalation in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Hamas has not directly joined in hostilities, and it is only the PIJ that has fired rockets, before being “stopped” by Hamas in a manner that is convenient to its current positioning.

After building itself up as the ruler of Gaza and protector of Jerusalem, Hamas is, in a highly calculated manner, proceeding towards its next goal — taking over the West Bank, and consolidating itself as the legitimate Palestinian representative.

Hamas will also seek to find ways to escape the terrorism designation that the Western world has correctly placed it under, without compromising on its “resistance” credentials.

Ultimately, as Hamas moves towards its next objectives, it is walking a tightrope. While it wishes to take over the West Bank without exposing its Gazan base to a new round of fighting with Israel, a high casualty dynamic or major incident could compel Hamas to act and lead it into a new round of fighting with Israel.

Hamas has made it clear that if this scenario comes to pass, it will use Israel’s new right-wing government to justify such actions, and for leveraging future achievements.

As a result, any action taken by Israel, perceived by Palestinians to be radical, will serve as justification by Hamas for opening fire.

The more that Israel’s government markets its steps vis-à-vis the Palestinians as vengeful, or stemming from a far-right ideology, the more that could potentially serve Hamas as legitimization for it to use violence against Israel.

Col. Grisha Yakubovich (IDF, Ret.) is a publishing Expert at The MirYam Institute. He concluded his military service in 2016 as the head of the civil department for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.)

The MirYam Institute is the leading international forum for Israel focused discussion, dialogue, and debate, focused on campus presentations, engagement with international legislators, and gold-standard trips to the State of Israel. Follow their work at www.MirYamInstitute.org.

Iranian Horn Admits They Are Nuclear Ready: Daniel 8

Iran Acknowledges Claim It Enriched Uranium to 84% Purity

Several new generation centrifuges on display for Iran’s National Nuclear Energy Day in Tehran, Iran, April 10, 2021. (Iranian Presidency Office/West Asia News Agency/Handout)

The Media Line Staff

02/24/2023

Iran on Thursday acknowledged accusations by international inspectors that it has enriched uranium to 84% purity, in a news outlet directly linked to the regime’s most senior leaders. Weapons-grade uranium requires 90% purity.

The acknowledgement of the higher enrichment claim came through Nour News, a website linked to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Associated Press reported.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, discovered uranium enriched to 84% purity during a visit to Iran last week, Bloomberg said, citing two unnamed senior diplomats.

In the wake of the report, the IAEA said it was in discussions with Iran about the detection of the uranium. Until the most recent inspection, Iran was only known to have enriched uranium to 60% purity, which has been doing since April 2021.

The IAEA now is working to determine if the higher enrichment level is an “unintended accumulation within the network of pipes connecting the hundreds of fast-spinning centrifuges used to separate the isotopes,” according to Bloomberg.

It is not known where the more highly enriched uranium was discovered.

The Debate on the South Korean Nuclear Horn: Daniel 7

Credit: AP Photo/Lee Jin-man

What’s Driving South Korea’s Debate on Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

Why is interest in nuclear weapons acquisition growing in South Korea?

The Diplomat’s Asia Geopolitics podcast hosts Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) and Katie Putz (@LadyPutz) discuss the ongoing debates in South Korea on nuclear weapons acquisition.

Staff Author

Ankit Panda

Ankit Panda is editor-at-large at The Diplomat and the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow him on Twitter.

Staff Author

Catherine Putz

Catherine Putz is managing editor of The Diplomat. She tweets @LadyPutz.

Here are the Nuclear Horns of Daniel 7-8

Russia Has The Most Nuclear Weapons In The World—Here Are The Other Countries With The Largest Nuclear Arsenals

Emily WashburnFeb 24, 2023,

Topline

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to expandRussia’s nuclear arsenal Thursday, once again hinting at the threat of using nuclear weapons, as Russia’s arsenal already edges out that of the United States, the Federation of American Scientists estimates.

Key Facts

Putin unveiled plans to deploy Russian RS-28 Sarmats—long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying up to 10 large nuclear warheads—and hypersonic missiles in 2023.

On Tuesday, Putin suspended Russia’s role in the New START nuclear arms control treaty with the U.S. after President Joe Biden visited Kyiv, with the Russian president saying he won’t let NATO inspect Russia’s nuclear arsenal, as Article XI of the treatystipulates.

RS-28 Sarmats, nicknamed “Satan 2,” were supposed to enter service in 2018 after they debuted but have experienced several delays, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Hypersonic missiles fly too fast to be destroyed.

Countries’ Nuclear Arsenals from Largest to Smallest

1. Russia (5,977 warheads)
2. United States (5,428)
3. China (350)
4. France (290)
5. United Kingdom (225)
6. Pakistan (165)
7. India (160)
8. Israel (90)
9. North Korea (20)

Tangent (U.S. versus Russia)

Russia has more total nuclear weapons than the U.S., but the Federation of American Scientists estimates they don’t have as many deployed, or ready to use. The U.S. has deployed 1,644 strategic, long-range weapons to target cities and military support structures and 100 tactical weapons designed for battlefield use. Russia has deployed 1,588 strategic missiles and no known tactical weapons as of 2022. In a hypothetical Russian nuclear attack against Ukraine, experts told Forbes that Russia would likely use tactical missiles to attack Ukrainian troops or command centers. The U.S. has more weapons earmarked for destruction (1,720) than Russia (1,500), but Russia has far more undeployed missiles (2,889) than the U.S. (1,964). It’s unclear what kinds of weapons make up that number.

Key Background

Friday marks a year since Russia invaded Ukraine in what it called a “special military operation.” Tens of thousands of people, including Ukrainian civilians, have reportedly been killed. The U.S. gave roughly $47 billion of military support to Ukraine between January 24, 2022 and January 15, 2023, according to the Kiel Institute—more than any other country, and a further $500 million when Biden made a surprise—and historic—visit to Kyiv to mark one year of war. Citing NATO and U.S. aggression, Putin has repeatedly threatened nuclear destruction, implicitly and explicitly, since he increased the readiness of Russia’s nuclear arsenal three days after invading Ukraine.

Big Number

50 megatons. That’s how many pounds of TNT it would take to equal the destructive power of Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated. Set off by the U.S.S.R on October 30, 1961, the hydrogen bomb was 1,500 times more powerful than the combined yield of the bombs detonated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The explosion reportedly shattered windows 560 miles away, and the resulting mushroom cloud reached 40 miles into the air and spanned 59 miles at its top. The previous record holder for largest nuclear bomb was the U.S.’ Castle Bravo with less than half Tsar Bomba’s explosive yield. Modern weapons usually have less power than bombs of old, between 10 and 100 kilotons according to The Washington Post, but they could still dwarf the ones deployed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had blasts equivalent to 15,000 and 21,000 tons of TNT, respectively.

Surprising Fact

On January 24, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock, which measures humans’ proximity to self-extinction, to the highest threat level since the project’s inception: 90 seconds to midnight. Created in 1947 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other scientists from the famed Manhattan Project, the clock illustrates the seriousness of biological, nuclear and climate-related threats to human survival. According to the clock, humans were farthest from destruction at 17 minutes following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The clock moved closer to midnight this year because of the increased risk of nuclear destruction following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the Bulletin, though Covid-19 and climate change also played a role.