“I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.
The World’s peoples have an obligation to demand of their political leaders their Right to Live. When the life of humankind, of your people and your most beloved human beings run such a risk, nobody can afford to be indifferent; not one minute can be lost in demanding respect for that right; tomorrow will be too late.” – Fidel Castro Ruz (October 15, 2010)
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As 2025 opens up, concern swirls around major powers confrontations, most notably in Ukraine-Russia and in the looming encounter between Israel and Iran. [1]
In the former, the usage of long-range missiles aimed deep into Russia by the United States, France and the United Kingdom triggered Russia’s decision to reconsider its nuclear doctrine and consider NATO members as directly involved in the war in Ukraine. Some elements of the Neo-Nazi government in Kiev are reportedly salivating at the prospect of firing nukes at their adversaries in Russia because, in the words of S14 leader Yevhen Karaas: “Ukraine is ready for nuclear war.” [2]
In the latter, the Syrian government was overthrown and replaced by Western-backed jihadists. They are right next door to Iran and could plausibly stir up trouble for their new neighbours similar in many respects to their adversarial counterparts in “The Borderland.” Israel has nukes and Iran also could have them. [3]
There was also recently an incident in South Korea involving the president attempting to launch swarms of drones at Pyongyang in an attempt to create a pretext for rule by martial law. Had he succeeded, the Korean Peninsula may well be a radioactive ashtray by now. [4]
In January of 2024, nearly one year ago, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight – the closest we have ever come to global catastrophe. [5]
No one is talking about the likelihood of an event which, unless people around the world put a stop to it fast, will catapult everyone and everything we know into a thermonuclear fireball from which absolutely no one can expect to escape. At Global Research we are committed to warning listeners of the dangers we face on this planet and endeavouring to alert as many people as possible to ways we can strive to peel the D-Clock’s minute hand back on this start to the new year episode of the Global Research News Hour.
In our first half hour, we are joined by intrepid Canadian anti-war activist Tamara Lorincz to talk about the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and a Canadian petition to have the Treaty finally signed and ratified by Canada. In addition, we will discuss the other actions being taken in Canada at a time when few people seem to be paying attention to the threat of nuclear war.
In our second half hour, Drago Bosnic joins us to explain in more detail the multiple threats of war alive and unfortunately well this coming year. He talks about some of the factors that could give global citizens a fighting chance to ultimately avert the atomic horror and shows us the stakes if we fail.
Tamara Lorincz is a long-time member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. Tamara is also a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada. As well, she is on the advisory committee of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, World Beyond War and the No to War, No to NATO Network. Tamara was awarded the Rotary International World Peace Fellowship in 2013. In addition to her activism, Tamara is currently a PhD candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
Drago Bosnic is a military and geopolitical analyst, regular author on Global Research and a frequent guest on the Global Research News Hour radio program. In December 2024, he received an award for his writings on geopolitical analysis and on nuclear war from the Mexican Press Club.
(Global Research News Hour episode 455)
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Transcript of Drago Bosnic, January 2, 2025
Global Research: In your writing, you mentioned several different vantage points by which a nuclear war could be triggered. One was in the Russia-Ukraine-NATO conflict. One was in the Middle East after nuclear-armed Israel targeted Iran.
And one was actually in South Korea just last month. Maybe you could start there, because our listeners may not know too much about a nuclear strike possibly occurring there. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind.
Could you remind our listeners of essentially what happened in Korea and why?
Drago Bosnic: Well, I want to remind people about the strange and unexpected martial law that was imposed in the country by President, now removed, President Yoon. What people didn’t know is that he wanted to start a sort of a confrontation with North Korea to justify this martial law. And he wanted to stay in power, and he needed a reason to do that, to accomplish that.
And of course, how else are you going to accomplish that without having an actual emergency, a nationwide emergency. And for some reason, he and the people around him thought that it was a good idea to try to challenge the nuclear-armed North Korea into some sort of an attack. And for months before the martial law was imposed, North Korea was talking about these sudden drone incursions into the North, including Pyongyang, that were coming from the South. And these news were completely discarded by everyone.
Everybody was saying that North Korea was lying and that this was an overreaction and they were trying to find a reason to attack South Korea and so on and so on. And when the martial law happened in South Korea, it was essentially discovered that these attacks were true. And these were launched on the orders of the former, now disgraced, South Korean Defense Minister, who even tried to commit suicide while in prison, obviously to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit that he actually listened to the orders from the president and that he ordered these drones to be launched.
And of course, he couldn’t explain it, like why would you want to launch drones in North Korea, a country that could obliterate South Korea in minutes? And of course, he had no viable explanation for that. And this is why he tried to commit suicide. And then we have the situation that the government was, I mean, that the government tried to block the parliament from taking over the country from this tyrannical government that was essentially trying to cause this war.
And there was also a tacit US support, because the US government doesn’t want the US government in South Korea to have normal relations with either China or North Korea, because that removes the necessity for the US military to be there. And of course, this is a massive problem, because for South Korea, South Korea needs good relations with all of its neighbors, including China and North Korea, not just for security reasons, but also for economic reasons, especially in terms of its relations with China. China is a huge market for South Korea.
It’s also an important trading partner. And of course, it’s an important market for South Korean pop culture. So there are very important growing ties between two countries.
And if there is a very compliant pro-US government in Seoul, then the US doesn’t have to worry about that. The US can still use South Korea as a power projection point, not just towards North Korea, but also to China. And we can see that the US is ready to go to all lengths, regardless of how dangerous those moves are, to ensure that its vassals are kept in place and that they are compliant.
And the fact that in all three places that you mentioned, the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, and of course, East Asia, in all three places, it’s ready to go to the length of nuclear war just to ensure that its global power remains untouched, or it wants to increase it, essentially. So we can see that the people who are running the show in Washington, DC, they’ve become verifiably insane, if they ever were normal. So I know it’s a strong word, but I have no other way to describe it, because whoever promotes nuclear war cannot be a sane person.
GR: Yeah. Well, I know with what happened in Syria last month, I mean, that came to a lot of people as a surprise, certainly came to me as a surprise, because I thought it was mostly resolved. I mean, is there another point that could potentially lead to war, like maybe something more targeting China in the East Pacific, or is it just the three scenarios?
DB: Of course.
Of course. I mean, there’s also the issue in the South China Sea, where there’s the Philippines and Vietnam, and these other countries that have these disputes over the islands and territorial waters. But of course, all of these could be resolved.
It’s not a death or life issue. The problem is the U.S. wants to use all of these countries as sort of like a forward operating base that could be used to limit China’s influence or to hurt China, because right now in the Philippines and also in Japan, we have the U.S. installing the previously banned medium and intermediate range missiles, all of which could be nuclear tipped or nuclear armed if you want. And the issue is, of course, China is going to have to respond to this in kind, which means all of these countries will suddenly become potential targets for a nuclear strike or a retaliatory nuclear strike by China.
And again, any sane leader or a sovereign leader, at least, would want to avoid this. So the issue is for a country the size of Japan, no matter how big it is or how unimportant of an economy it is, it doesn’t have sovereignty, because why would you want to get nuked? Why would you want to have bases or nuclear weapons that are targeting another nuclear power that could easily retaliate? Because it’s not the U.S. the thing to suffer the consequences of something like that. It’s going to be the local people, the Filipinos, the Japanese, the South Koreans or whoever.
And then in the end, all of us, because at some point, a country like China is going to say, OK, enough is enough. We understand that we cannot deter the U.S. in the region. So we’re going to try to deter the U.S. globally.
And of course, if the U.S. thinks it can compartmentalize conflict, that’s a very optimistic way of looking at things, because nuclear powers are not going to allow the U.S. or anyone else to destroy them and then leave the U.S. unscathed. It doesn’t work like that. The U.S. is going to be targeted directly, which is why I’m saying that these people in Washington, D.C. are insane, because they’re risking the lives of 330 million Americans and the lives of 8 billion people around the world simply by pushing their aggression against the world.
It’s sort of like the world is essentially at a breaking point because these people cannot think straight.
GR: Of the two major conflicts that we’ve, in our program, we have followed in detail, there’s one being Ukraine now having the right from the United States to fire long-range missiles into Russia and the ongoing essentially terrorist tactics they’re using. And Russia may be firing Oreshniks, and that seems to be escalating all the time.
But you also have the Middle East with basically Iran basically engaging Israel for the first time several months ago, and then now they’re going into Syria, which is kind of a launching pad for new escalations by some terrorist factions, the ISIS people. I’m wondering, which of those scenarios do you think is the more likely to evolve to the nuclear use scenario, do you think?
DB: Well, I think it’s going to depend on how the U.S. and its allies and vassals and satellites in the region will react to Iran, because Iran right now is under a lot of pressure because it is, with the fall of Syria to these terrorist proxies, Iran is cut off from its allies in Lebanon, specifically Hezbollah, and of course this is going to be a big issue for them. There’s also the problem that, as you mentioned, there are terrorists who are now expanding in the region, and for them the concept of state borders means nothing, and all they want is to create chaos and death and destruction, and of course for them this is also a personal matter.
It’s not just about religion, it’s about their personal desire to gain money and power, and they can get this if it’s given by the U.S. and its allies in the region. So, we can see an incursion into Iraq very soon, because Iraq is essentially an ally of Iran, because its PMU units, these Shia militias, are part of the Iraqi military, they are very well connected with the Iranian military, so that means that the Sunnis and these other Takfiri terrorists, as they’re called, they have the interest to go into Iraq. And of course, this could destabilize the country for God knows which time in the last 40 years.
We’ve seen everything from the Iran-Iraq war during the Saddam era, to invasions, of course, of Iraq, and then we had the ISIS uprising in 2013-14, which escalated to the destruction of pretty much half of the Middle East in the last 10 years or so. So, what we see now is another rise of ISIS, it’s just rebranded into other things like HTS and Free Syrian Army and so on and so on. And then, if Iraq falls, or if it’s pushed into another destabilization, then Iran doesn’t have any other choice except to push back directly, which could be the reason for what is called a casus belli for the U.S. and Israel and these other countries to directly attack Iran.
And at this point, we don’t know if Iran has nuclear weapons. There are some indications that it’s building some nuclear warheads, or that it’s very close to being able to. And then, of course, we have the U.S. and Israel, both of which are nuclear armed.
So, this brings us to another level of escalation that might lead to nuclear war, and in turn, it could also lead to global nuclear war, because countries like Russia and China cannot allow such destabilization of the Middle East and of the multipolar world, because Iran now is part of not just BRICS, but also the SCO, or Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is extremely important for Eurasian security, because Iran is the country that prevents these terrorists from moving into Central Asia and affecting the global security and geopolitical and geostrategic security of Russia and China. And these things are going to affect the world. And it might seem that it’s not something that concerns any of us, but it actually does, because we have no idea how global powers are going to react to those events, and it could lead to nuclear war.
GR: You’re familiar with the scenario of Churia, Nemezi, and so on, back in 2006. Nearly 20 years later, there have been some changes, I think, that need to be revised in order to launch a so-called successful nuclear war.
I mean, for instance, Russia appears to be a lot more of a threat to the U.S. single power status than it was before, and they’ve developed much more powerful missiles. Could you go over some of the things that maybe the U.S. war planners need to keep in mind so that we’re not launching a war that’s so 2005, if you know what I mean? Yeah.
DB: This specific document was declassified later on, and of course, we know what they were thinking then.
It’s almost a certainty. I mean, it’s pretty much a certainty that they already have updated versions of this document for 2025, and 2026, and 2030 probably, so I’m pretty sure they got that covered. They’ve updated their programs.
That’s for certain. The problem is, from what I was able to see, many people in the Pentagon think that they can win a nuclear war, including against a country like Russia. They’ve been talking about these so-called decapitation strikes, not just against smaller countries, but even against Russia, and even against China.
One of the things they wanted to do, which is why I mentioned the connection between the U.S. and South Korea, they know that they could use South Korean territory to hit Beijing very fast, because Beijing is relatively close to South Korea, and the same goes for Ukraine, which is relatively close to Moscow. Of course, if they get Iraq, again, if they manage to reoccupy the country, then Tehran is essentially in range in minutes. Again, we have this veOy dangerous concept that you can win a nuclear war, even against countries which have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, that being Russia, obviously.
You mentioned Oreshnik. The Oreshnik is a conventionally armed IRBM, or intermediate-range ballistic missile, but it can always be nuclear-armed, because what most people don’t know is nuclear warheads are actually lighter than conventional warheads. A thousand-kilogram nuclear warhead could have the destructive power of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs.
On the other hand, if you put a regular conventional explosive on it, it can destroy, let’s say, a military base or certain parts of military infrastructure that’s very important. The point is, if the Russians decide to respond in that way to this NATO aggression from Ukraine, essentially, where they’re using these long-range missiles to strike Russia, Russia could certainly do that. Russia could launch a conventional strike with the Oreshnik at a certain NATO military base, but NATO doesn’t have such weapons.
What can NATO do to respond? It could launch a nuclear strike on Russia, and then, of course, Russia launches its own nuclear strike. This is where things could escalate. This is why it’s impossible to predict or control the level of escalation in nuclear war.
The dangerous idea is that many in the Pentagon think they can do that. They have this so-called escalate-to-de-escalate strategy, where they think if they inflict enough damage, they could force a certain country to surrender, but why would any country surrender if it has a tool to ensure its own sovereignty and independence? In this case, in the case of Russia, they have around 6,000 thermonuclear warheads, so how are you going to control the escalation with a country like that? They might try that with Iran. Let’s say Iran makes 10 nuclear warheads.
They fire all 10. Now, the US and Israel and NATO could attack Iran, and then they can use this as a leverage to impose their will on Iran, but this is not achievable against Russia. This is where we get to the question, who are these people who are making these war plans? Who are they? What their goal is? What is their strategic thinking? How can they be sure that whatever they’re wargaming about is going to play out exactly as they want? Because there’s this saying in the military, every war plan survives until the first hour of the war, because it’s an extremely dynamic situation where you have to be ready to massive changes to your war plans.
You never know how things can go sideways. This is the main issue. They don’t understand.
They don’t have the concept. They don’t understand the concept of escalation, or they simply refuse to accept the fact that these plans are going to fail the moment that the red button is pressed.
GR: Are there schisms that have developed within US-NATO on one side and on the Russia, China, Iran on the other? I know you have countries like Turkey, for example, which seem to be playing economic and political games in ways with both the US and with Russia.
Are there opportunities there which could be developed or that could give peacemaking citizens around the planet an opportunity to deflect the prospect of nuclear escalation anyway?
DB: Absolutely. It’s not just individual citizens and groups of people that are trying to achieve this, but there are actually countries within NATO, namely Hungary under Viktor Orban and Slovakia under Robert Fico, and both of these countries are speaking openly against the policy of constant escalation, with Russia specifically. The Turks, on the other hand, they’re very much in line with NATO, but they also don’t want nuclear war because they know they would be one of the first countries to be targeted because they’re the second most powerful conventional military in NATO.
They have dozens of NATO bases on their territory, including those with nuclear weapons, so they know that in the case of a nuclear war, those bases will be targeted, and they are on the territory of Turkey, so that means Turkey would suffer the consequences whether they want it or not. Also, Turkey’s trying to build closer ties with Iran. This is not something that’s going perfectly, obviously.
There are hiccups, and there’s also the issue that Turkey is working with NATO allies to destabilize countries like Syria, which has been successful, unfortunately. But still, both Iran and Turkey, they want to maintain a normal relationship, and of course, Turkey would not want to see, if intentions towards Iran are true, and if they’re not part of some ruse or something, then Turkey certainly wouldn’t want to see a nuclear war on Iran happening anytime soon. But, you know, I mean, there are countries that are pushing against it, but still, they are not powerful enough.
Unfortunately, they’re not powerful enough to sway the opinion in the U.S. government towards another direction, but they’re trying. And of course, this is important because it gives us, the regular people, the hope that we might actually have someone on our side who is part of the establishment and who understands the dangers of such conflicts. And, you know, I think it’s important for us to talk about it.
I think it’s important for us to raise awareness about the dangers of nuclear war, because there’s not a living person on Earth that’s not going to be affected by this. Like, people who are completely oblivious to what’s going on, or people who are not connected directly to whatever is happening in those regions that we just talked about, they will be affected. Like a person in Brazil or Spain or a person in Nigeria or Yemen or Vietnam or Canada, for that matter, all of us are going to be affected.
No matter who you are, where you live, you’re going to be affected by this.
GR: Yeah. Well, could you just maybe briefly paint us a picture based on your research of what all the nuclear weapons on the books would actually do to the planet beyond a lot of destructions from this baby nuke or whatever you call it? I mean, what is the consequence that people would see and then thoroughly realize that, you know, we got to stop this war?
DB: Well, that’s a good question.
I can mention just several nuclear weapons. For example, the Hiroshima, the Nagasaki bomb was 21 kilotons, which is 21,000 kilograms of TNT exploding at once. For comparison, there are nuclear-armed torpedoes or drone torpedoes in the Russian Navy, which could carry a 100 megaton nuclear warhead.
So in comparison, that would be 50,000 times more powerful than the Nagasaki bomb. So if you can imagine 100 megaton, that’s 100 million tons of TNT exploding at once. And they could have up to 30 of these torpedoes.
And this is just like one weapon system. In Russia, there are around 5,500 to 6,000 nuclear weapons. But now they are rearming because, of course, we have the new Cold War happening.
There are around 5,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S., and that’s around those two countries, Russia and the U.S., control around 90% of the world’s arsenal. But there’s also China, which is increasing its nuclear arsenal. It has around 500.
That’s the estimate. It could have more, but the latest estimate is 500 nuclear warheads. There’s also India and Pakistan and the U.K. and France, all of which have hundreds of nuclear weapons.
So the point is, even if we have 1,000 nuclear weapons hitting certain cities, it will be a bloodbath. It would completely destroy these areas. It would make them uninhabitable for years or decades.
And, of course, if we have so many nuclear weapons exploding at once in all of these areas, then it would be the end of our civilization as we know it. Everything that we take for granted, like, for example, the internet, would be gone. The EMP effect of a nuclear warhead will destroy your internet connection.
You’re not going to have it. Even if the bomb doesn’t hit your city, the EMP effect is going to completely fry all electronics, and suddenly it will be—
GR: The electromagnetic pulse.
DB: Exactly.
The EMP is the electromagnetic pulse. And, of course, that’s going to take you back to the 19th century, whether you like it or not. So that alone should be enough of a deterrent for all of us not to have a nuclear war, because, I mean, can you imagine 21st century people living in the 19th century and what sort of a humanitarian disaster that would be for all of us? So, again, that alone should be a deterrent.
But, you know, not to even mention the horrifying effects of a nuclear explosion on a person. And I would advise people to look up the word de-gloving and how dangerous that is. And a de-gloving is just a physical consequence of a nuclear weapon, not even, you know, like burns.
You wouldn’t even get burns, but a person would get de-gloved just by the sheer destructive force of a nuclear weapon going off. So, and can you imagine hundreds or thousands of these exploding at once? Also, countries like the U.S. and Russia have these nuclear-powered submarines with hundreds of nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles, SLBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles on these submarines. So even if Russia and the U.S. would disappear tomorrow, they would still have the power to devastate the rest of the world with nuclear-powered submarines alone.
So, you know, the combination of all these missiles and all these weapons that we have is something that is beyond deadly because it would not just kill hundreds of millions of people. It would also arrest the possibility of a civilization recovery.
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.
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Notes:
- https://thebulletin.org/2025/01/the-nuclear-year-in-review-welcome-to-the-antechamber-of-the-next-nuclear-crisis/
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/neo-nazi-junta-thrilled-prospect-thermonuclear-war/5875836?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/eye-witness-syria-last-12-days/5874714
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/neo-nazi-junta-thrilled-prospect-thermonuclear-war/5875836
- https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
