nuclear weapon

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump declined to say Friday whether he plans to resume underground nuclear detonation tests, as he had seemed to suggest in a social media post this week that raised concerns the U.S. would begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades.

The president told reporters “You’ll find out very soon,” without elaborating when asked if he means to resume underground nuclear detonation tests.

Trump, who spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to Florida for a weekend stay, said, “We’re going to do some testing” and “Other countries do it. If they’re going to do it, we’re going to” but then refused to offer more details.

His comments on nuclear testing have drawn confusion inside and outside the government when the president seemed to suggest in a brief post that the U.S. would resume nuclear warhead tests on an “equal basis” with Russia and China, whose last known tests were in the 1990s. Some of Trump’s comments seemed to refer to testing missiles that would deliver a warhead, rather than the warhead itself. There has been no indication that the U.S. would start detonating warheads.

The U.S. military already regularly tests its missiles that are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, but it has not detonated the weapons since 1992. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. signed but did not ratify, has been observed since its adoption by all countries possessing nuclear weapons, North Korea being the only exception.

The Pentagon has not responded to questions. The Energy Department, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile, declined to comment Friday.

Trump’s post on nuclear tests came as Russia this week announced it had tested a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone and a new nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Russia responded to Trump’s post by underscoring that it did not test its nuclear weapons and has abided by a global ban on nuclear testing. The Kremlin warned though, that if the U.S. resumes testing its weapons, Russia will as well — an intensification that would restart Cold War-era tensions.

Vice Adm. Richard Correll, Trump’s nominee to lead the military command in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, struggled to interpret the president’s comments when he testified before senators during a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, telling them, “I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out of it.”

Price and Ceneta write for the Associated Press. Price reported from Washington.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump’s comments Thursday suggesting the United States will restart its testing of nuclear weapons upends decades of American policy in regards to the bomb, but come as Washington’s rivals have been expanding and testing their nuclear-capable arsenals.

Nuclear weapons policy, once thought to be a relic of the Cold War, increasingly has come to the fore as Russia has made repeated atomic threats to both the U.S. and Europe during its war on Ukraine. Moscow also acknowledged this week testing a nuclear-powered-and-capable cruise missile called the Burevestnik, code-named Skyfall by NATO, and a nuclear-armed underwater drone.

China is building more ground-based nuclear missile silos. Meanwhile, North Korea just unveiled a new intercontinental ballistic missile it plans to test, part of a nuclear-capable arsenal likely able to reach the continental U.S.

The threat is starting to bleed into popular culture as well, most recently with director Kathryn Bigelow ‘s new film “A House of Dynamite.”

But what does Trump’s announcement mean and how would it affect what’s happening now with nuclear tensions? Here’s what to know.

Trump’s comments came in a post on his Truth Social website just before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In it, Trump noted other countries testing weapons and wrote: “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

The president’s post raised immediate questions. America’s nuclear arsenal is maintained by the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within it — not the Defense Department. The Energy Department has overseen testing of nuclear weapons since its creation in 1977. Two other agencies before it — not the Defense Department — conducted tests.

Trump also claimed the U.S. “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country.” Russia is believed to have 5,580 nuclear warheads, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, while the U.S. has 5,225. Those figures include so-called “retired” warheads waiting to be dismantled.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute further breaks the warhead total down, with the U.S. having 1,770 deployed warheads with 1,930 in reserve. Russia has 1,718 deployed warheads and 2,591 in reserve.

The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s atomic warheads.

U.S. last carried out a nuclear test in 1992

From the time America conducted its “Trinity” nuclear bomb detonation in 1945 to 1992, the U.S. detonated 1,030 atomic bombs in tests — the most of any country. Those figures do not include the two nuclear weapons America used against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

The first American tests were atmospheric, but they were then moved underground to limit nuclear fallout. Scientists have come to refer to such tests as “shots.” The last such “shot,” called Divider as part of Operation Julin, took place Sept. 23, 1992, at the Nevada National Security Sites, a sprawling compound some 65 miles from Las Vegas.

America halted its tests for a couple of reasons. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. There have been tests since the treaty, however — by India, North Korea and Pakistan, the world’s newest nuclear powers. The United Kingdom and France also have nuclear weapons, while Israel long has been suspected of possessing atomic bombs.

But broadly speaking, the U.S. also had decades of data from tests, allowing it to use computer modeling and other techniques to determine whether a weapon would successfully detonate. Every president since Barack Obama has backed plans to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, whose maintenance and upgrading will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The U.S. relies on the so-called “nuclear triad” — ground-based silos, aircraft-carried bombs and nuclear-tipped missiles in submarines at sea — to deter others from launching their weapons against America.

Restarting testing raises additional questions

If the U.S. restarted nuclear weapons testing, it isn’t immediately clear what the goal would be. Nonproliferation experts have warned any scientific objective likely would be eclipsed by the backlash to a test — and possibly be a starting gun for other major nuclear powers to begin their own widespread testing.

“Restarting the U.S. nuclear testing program could be one of the most consequential policy actions the Trump administration undertakes — a U.S. test could set off an uncontrolled chain of events, with other countries possibly responding with their own nuclear tests, destabilizing global security, and accelerating a new arms race,” experts warned in a February article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

“The goal of conducting a fast-tracked nuclear test can only be political, not scientific. … It would give Russia, China and other nuclear powers free rein to restart their own nuclear testing programs, essentially without political and economic fallout.”

Any future U.S. test likely would take place in Nevada at the testing sites, but a lot of work likely would need to go into the sites to prepare them given it’s been over 30 years since the last test. A series of slides made for a presentation at Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2018 laid out the challenges, noting that in the 1960s the city of Mercury, Nevada — at the testing grounds — had been the second-largest city in Nevada.

On average, 20,000 people had been on site to organize and prepare for the tests. That capacity has waned in the decades since.

“One effects shot would require from two to four years to plan and execute,” the presentation reads. “These were massive undertakings.”

Gambrell writes for the Associated Press.

LONDON — Former British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said Thursday he is forming a new left-leaning political party to advocate “mass redistribution of wealth and power” and take on his former colleagues at the ballot box.

The new formation has a website — yourparty.uk — but does not yet have a name.

“It’s your party,” Corbyn said. “We’re going to decide [a name] when we’ve had all the responses, and so far the response rate has been massive.”

Corbyn said he hoped the new party would have its inaugural conference in the fall.

Corbyn, 76, led Labor to election defeats in 2017 and 2019, but the veteran socialist campaigner remains popular with many grassroots supporters. and the new party has the potential to further fragment British politics. The long-dominant Labor and Conservative parties now have challengers on both left and right, including the environmentalist Green Party and hard-right Reform UK.

Plans for a new party emerged earlier this month when lawmaker Zarah Sultana, who has been suspended from Labor for voting against the government, said she would “co-lead the founding of a new party” with Corbyn.

At the time, Corbyn did not confirm the news.

On Thursday he denied the party launch had been messy, saying the process was “democratic, it’s grassroots and it’s open.”

A longtime supporter of the Palestinians and critic of Israel, Corbyn was suspended from Labor in 2020 after Britain’s equalities watchdog found anti-Jewish prejudice had been allowed to spread within Labor while he was leader.

He was suspended after failing to fully accept the findings¸ claiming opponents had exaggerated the scale of antisemitism in Labor for “political reasons.”

Corbyn was reelected to Parliament last year as an independent.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer succeeded Corbyn as Labor leader in 2020 and dragged the party back toward the political center ground. He dropped Corbyn’s opposition to Britain’s nuclear weapons, strongly backed sending weapons to Ukraine and stressed the party’s commitment to balancing the books.

Starmer won a landslide election victory a year ago, but has struggled to maintain unity among Labor lawmakers as the government struggles to get a sluggish economy growing and invest in overstretched public services. He has been forced into a series of U-turns by his own lawmakers, including one on welfare reform that left his authority severely dented.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump said Thursday that the United States and Iran have “sort of” agreed to terms on a nuclear deal, offering a measure of confidence that an accord is coming into sharper focus.

Trump, in an exchange with reporters at a business roundtable in Doha, Qatar, described talks between American envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as “very serious negotiations” for long-term peace and said they were continuing to progress.

Still, throughout his four-day visit to the Gulf this week, the president has underscored that military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities remains a possibility if the talks derail.

“Iran has sort of agreed to the terms: They’re not going to make, I call it, in a friendly way, nuclear dust,” Trump said at the business event. “We’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran.”

Without offering detail, he signaled growing alignment with the terms that he has been seeking.

A top political, military and nuclear advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told NBC News on Wednesday that Tehran stands ready to get rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium that can be weaponized, agree to enrich uranium only to the lower levels needed for civilian use and allow international inspectors to supervise the process.

Ali Shamkhani added that in return, Iran wants an immediate lifting of all economic sanctions.

On Thursday, hours after Trump said the two sides were getting closer to a deal, Araghchi said Tehran’s ability to enrich uranium remained a core right of the Iranian people and a red line in nuclear talks.

“We have said repeatedly that defending Iran’s nuclear rights — including enrichment — is a fundamental principle,” the official said. “This is not something we concede, either in public discourse or in negotiations. It is a right that belongs to the Iranian people, and no one can take it away.”

Trump said his demands have been straightforward.

“They can’t have a nuclear weapon. That’s the only thing. It’s very simple,” Trump said. “It’s not like I have to give you 30 pages worth of details. It is only one sentence. They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

But Trump on Wednesday suggested he was looking for Tehran to make other concessions as part of a potential agreement.

Iran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Trump said in remarks at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, the first stop on the Mideast trip.

Before moving on to the United Arab Emirates from Qatar on Thursday, Trump stopped at a U.S. military installation at the center of American involvement in the Middle East and spoke to U.S. troops. The Republican president has used his visit to Gulf states to reject the “interventionalism” of America’s past in the region.

Al-Udeid Air Base was a major staging ground during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The base houses some 8,000 U.S. troops, down from about 10,000 at the height of those wars.

Trump told the troops that his “priority is to end conflicts, not start them.”

“But I will never hesitate to wield American power if it’s necessary to defend the United States of America or our partners,” he said.

Trump has held up Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar as models for economic development in a region plagued by conflict. He urged Qatari officials to use their influence to entice Iran to come to terms with his administration on a nuclear deal.

Trump later flew to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for the final leg of his trip. He visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the country’s largest mosque. The United Arab Emirates’ founder, Sheikh Zayed, is buried in the mosque’s main courtyard.

Trump took his shoes off, which is customary, as he stepped into the house of worship and spent time marveling at the architecture.

“It’s beautiful,” Trump said.

He later attended a state visit hosted by United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the Qasr Al Watan presidential palace. Trump and his delegation were greeted by children wearing traditional robes and waving small U.S. and United Arab Emirates flags, and they were guided through a space exhibit inside the palace.

Al Nahyan also presented Trump with the Order of Zayed, the United Arab Emirates’ highest civil decoration and credited Trump with building the two nations’ economic partnership to new heights.

“This partnership has taken a significant leap forward since you assumed office,” he told Trump.

As he made his way to Abu Dhabi on Thursday, Trump reminded reporters about President Biden’s 2022 fist bump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a moment roundly criticized by human rights activists already upset by the Democrat’s decision to hold the meeting. Trump noted in contrast that while in Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week, he had shaken many hands.

“They were starving for love because our country didn’t give them love,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “They gave him a fist bump. Remember the fist bump in Saudi Arabia? He travels all the way to Saudi Arabia … and he gives him a fist bump. That’s not what they want. They don’t want a fist bump. They want to shake his hand.”

Miller and Madhani write for the Associated Press. Madhani reported from Dubai. AP writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran and Gabe Levin in Dubai contributed to this report.