Nuclear bombs cannot be used without the permission of the US president
The sky’s the limit seems to be the attitude of this Labour government – at least when it comes to spending on arms. On Tuesday it committed to 5% of GDP on ‘defence’ spending by 2035 at the Nato summit – which will mean around double being spent on war than at the beginning of Keir Starmer’s term of office. The next day, defence secretary John Healey announced that Britain was buying 12 F35 jets, which are nuclear capable, and which are to carry US nuclear bombs.
These bombs cannot be used without the permission of the US president and will be on the frontline of nuclear confrontation with Russia.
The cost of these fighter planes is around $82.5 million, with millions more on preparing the air force base at RAF Marham to house them and paying for the bombs. While these Labour ministers seem to delight in amassing ever more weapons of war, they are singing a different tune when it comes to public services and welfare payments. Indeed, Starmer faces one of the biggest rebellions of his own party for decades as he tries to put through cuts for disability payments to some of the poorest people in the country.
It is hard to credit the logic of the cuts when we are told that the government must cut welfare payments to balance its books but grovels to Donald Trump and the Nato leaders to implement policies which will make the vast majority of people in Britain poorer and more of a target in the event of war.
It is also hard to credit a government that supports the bombing of Iran, supposedly to rid it of nuclear weapons, but in that very same month decides that it will spend huge amounts expanding its already substantial nuclear arsenal.
This United States Air Force photo shows an aerial view of al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. (Photo: Scott Reed/USAF)
Sources also said Iran launched at least one missile at a U.S. base in Iraq.
Loud explosions were heard over Qatar’s capital Doha Monday as Iran launched missiles targeting a military base in the Gulf nation used by U.S. forces and another American installation in Iraq in retaliation for last week’s illegal and unprovoked bombing of Iranian civilian nuclear strikes ordered by President Donald Trump.
An unnamed Israeli source told Axios that at least 10 missiles were launched toward Qatar and one at Iraq. The attack on Qatar targeted al-Udeid Air Base, located approximately 20 miles outside Doha. More than 8,000 U.S. troops are stationed at al-Udeid, which also hosts Qatari, British, and other forces.
Iranian officials said they launched the same quantity of missiles as the number of bombs used in the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites on Saturday.
Iran fires ballistic missiles at US military bases in Qatar.Explosions seen over Doha.The US deployed THAAD systems in Qatar in anticipation of Iranian attacks.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that “following the blatant military aggression of the criminal regime of the United States of America against the peaceful nuclear facilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the clear violation of international law” IRCG “has targeted the Al-Udeid base in Qatar with a devastating and powerful missile attack.”
An announcement on Iranian state media called the attack “a mighty and successful response by the armed forces of Iran to America’s aggression.”
However, there have not yet been any reports of casualties or damage at al-Udeid or any other U.S. base. There have also not been any reports of U.S. military response.
The New York Times reported that Iran warned the U.S. of the imminent attack. Iran’s apparently symbolic retaliation was similar to Tehran’s response to the 2020 Trump-ordered assassination of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani and likely meant to give both sides a deescalatory offramp, experts said.
The Qatari Ministry of Defense said the country’s air defenses “successfully intercepted a missile attack targeting al-Udeid Air Base.”
Qatar, which enjoys good relations with Tehran, condemned the Iranian attack and stressed that it “reserves the right” to respond “directly” and “in line with international law.”
Monday’s developments came amid Israel’s ongoing U.S.-backed wars on Iran and Palestine and Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on Israel.
Responding to the Iranian retaliation, Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said on X that “there is a scenario, similar to the 2020 strikes against Iraqi bases, in which both sides call it quits after one round of fire.”
“But I find that scenario unstable because of the Israeli element,” he continued. “Israel will continue to strike Iran and vice versa, and as long as that is the case, the Israelis will continue to put relentless pressure on Trump to join the war in various ways.”
“None of this would have happened had Trump rejected the first step that Israel pushed him to take—shifting his red line to ‘zero enrichment,'” Parsi asserted. “That misstep deliberately set up a cascade of events that predictably led to this current war.”
“Trump’s only exit out of this is to discard the Israeli red line of zero-enrichment and return to the American red line of no weaponization,” he added.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Responding to news of US attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay MP said:
“We utterly condemn the reckless attacks on Iran by the United States that can only lead to further dangerous conflict in an already volatile region. There is no international legal basis for this unilateral action that poses a serious threat to international peace and security.
“Our prime minister has shamefully decided to echo the rhetoric of Trump and Netanyahu rather than condemn the indefensible aggression of both Israel and the US. Keir Starmer has further implied that it is justifiable for the Iranian regime to be bombed back to the negotiating table. I fully recognise the brutal nature of the Iranian regime but this unilateral action is no way to build peace and risks making the UK once again complicit in escalating a Middle East crisis.”
The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s the stark warning from more than 60 of the world’s leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming.
Nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above levels of the late 1800s in a landmark agreement in 2015, with the aim of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change.
But countries have continued to burn record amounts of coal, oil and gas and chop down carbon-rich forests – leaving that international goal in peril.
“Things are all moving in the wrong direction,” said lead author Prof Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.
“We’re seeing some unprecedented changes and we’re also seeing the heating of the Earth and sea-level rise accelerating as well.”
These changes “have been predicted for some time and we can directly place them back to the very high level of emissions”, he added.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be dragged into another Middle East war based on lies.”
While a number of statements by members of Congress in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities focused largely on the fact that the White House acted without congressional authorization—a constitutional violation—U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders expressed anger over another aspect of the unilateral military action: the “lies” that the Trump administration is telling the public to justify the bombing.
The White House’s act of war against Iran, said the Vermont independent senator, was just the latest in a long line of military boondoggles that followed lies powerful politicians told about the threats posed by foreign countries—before taking action that ultimately killed millions of people while doing nothing to protect U.S. security.
“In the 1960s the United States government lied to the American people and took us into a terrible war in Vietnam,” said Sanders. “The result of that war was that over 58,000 young Americans died and many more came back wounded both in mind and in spirit. Millions of Vietnamese were also killed.”
Decades later, Americans were told by then-President George W. Bush that the U.S. must act quickly to stop Iraq from building “weapons of mass destruction”—with U.S. officials following the guidance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The United States invaded Iraq and became embroiled in a long civil war there. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That war was based on a lie—a lie which cost us 4,492 young Americans, 32,000 wounded, over half a million Iraqis and trillions of dollars,” said Sanders.
“The American people are being lied to again today,” he added. “We cannot allow history to repeat itself.”
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran is not attempting to build a nuclear weapon with its enriched uranium stockpile, backing up repeated statements from Iranian officials who have said the country’s nuclear program is used only for peaceful civilian purposes.
Sanders’ statement came several hours after he learned while speaking at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that Trump had bombed Iran, authorizing strikes on three nuclear facilities, which Iranian officials condemned as a violation of international law.
At the rally, supporters erupted in a chant of “No more war!” after Sanders read Trump’s statement on the attack.
I learned about Trump’s unconstitutional attack on Iran at a large rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here is the response: pic.twitter.com/eziVpp3Y54
The spontaneous display of outrage over the latest U.S. attack on the Middle East underscored the reality of the moment, said The Nation writer Jeet Heer, as one poll released Thursday showed that just 8% of Americans favored the U.S. becoming directly involved in Israel’s attacks on Iran that began earlier this month.
“There is only one off-ramp from Trump’s mad rush to war: the quick mobilization of an anti-war opposition,” said Heer. “The people are ready.”
3. In 2003, Bush/Cheney actually had a very sophisticated public relations campaign that won over large segments of the establishment (NY Times, New Yorker published WMD lies) and Dem party (half of congressional Dems, including Biden & Clinton, voted for war). Trump hasn't…
As the Trump administration boasted about the “severe damage” the strikes had done to Iran’s nuclear program, progressive strategist Waleed Shahid called on Democratic lawmakers to tap into voters’ palpable outrage—not about Trump’s failure to seek congressional authorization for the strikes, but about the fact that the U.S. is pursuing a war in Iran at all while repeating Netanyahu’s unsubstantiated claims about the Iranians’ ability to produce a nuclear bomb.
“No one ever won a fight yelling, ‘Congressional authorization.’ Voters need clarity amid the chaos,” said Shahid. “Lead with this: No more blank checks for corrupt and endless foreign wars, we’re here to focus on fighting for working Americans.”
“The U.S. faces enormous problems here at home, which we must address,” said Sanders. “We cannot allow ourselves to be dragged into another Middle East war based on lies.”
