Nuclear Weapons

France prepares to host Iran’s foreign minister in Paris for high-stakes talks on nuclear and regional tensions.

France will host Iran’s foreign minister in Paris this week for talks that are set to include stalled nuclear negotiations.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot confirmed on Monday that his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi will arrive on Wednesday for discussions that Paris hopes will nudge Iran back into full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as part of a defunct nuclear deal.

“This will be an opportunity for us to call on Iran to comply with its obligations towards the IAEA and for a swift resumption of cooperation with the agency,” Barrot said ahead of the meeting.

French officials also plan to raise the status of two French nationals who were released from detention in Iran but remain unable to leave the country. Both are currently staying inside the French embassy in Tehran, and Paris has repeatedly pressed for their return.

The Paris meeting comes as Tehran has signalled it sees little urgency in resuming indirect talks with the United States over the future of its nuclear programme.

Earlier this month, Iran declared it was “not in a hurry” to restart negotiations, despite mounting pressure following the return of United Nations sanctions and growing economic strain.

Araghchi reiterated that position in an interview with Al Jazeera, saying Tehran remained open to dialogue if Washington approaches talks “from an equal position based on mutual interest”.

He dismissed reported US conditions – including demands for direct talks, zero enrichment, restrictions on missile capabilities, and curbs on support for regional allies – as “illogical and unfair”.

“It appears they are not in a hurry,” he said. “We are not in a hurry, either.”

Tehran’s top diplomat also argued that regional politics are shifting in Iran’s favour.

Referring to the Israeli prime minister, he said: “I sometimes tell my friends that Mr [Benjamin] Netanyahu is a war criminal who has committed every atrocity, but did something positive in proving to the entire region that Israel is the main enemy, not Iran, and not any other country.”

A planned sixth round of indirect US–Iran nuclear talks collapsed in June after Israel attacked Iranian nuclear sites, triggering a 12-day war that killed more than 1,000 people in Iran and caused billions of dollars in damage.

The two sides reached a ceasefire after the US bombed three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

US President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a deal between the US, Iran, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and the European Union that saw Tehran curtail its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran has since continued to violate provisions of the agreement, arguing that the US withdrawal has nullified the deal. Iranian officials maintain that the country is only developing its nuclear programme for civilian purposes.

UN sanctions against Iran were reimposed in September as part of the 2015 agreement’s “snapback” mechanism.

Annual military spending is rising globally at its steepest level since the Cold War.

And after a break of more than 30 years, the United States says it might restart testing nuclear weapons.

So if the global arms race is back on, who’s winning, how is war changing, and what’s the true cost of escalation?

Presenter: Neave Barker

Guests:

Michael Boyle – Professor of political science at Rutgers University–Camden

Elijah Magnier – Senior political risk analyst and a regional military expert

Fabrice Pothier – Former head of policy planning at NATO and a senior defence and strategy analyst

Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium stockpile ‘a matter of serious concern’ after 12-day war with Israel, watchdog says.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not been able to verify Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium since Israel and the United States struck the country’s nuclear sites back in June, according to a new report.

The watchdog circulated a confidential report to member states, claiming it had been unable to carry out “long overdue” inspections of seven of the sites targeted in the so-called 12-day war, including major facilities Fordo and Natanz.

The report, seen by several news agencies, said the watchdog needed to verify “inventories of previously declared nuclear material” to settle concerns over “the possible diversion of declared nuclear material from peaceful use”.

While the report criticised Iran’s lack of cooperation, it did say that IAEA inspectors would be visiting the country on Wednesday to conduct inspections at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre site, located some 350km (215 miles) southeast of Tehran

During the war, Israel struck buildings at the Isfahan site, among them a uranium conversion facility. The US also struck Isfahan with missiles.

Iran suspended all cooperation with the IAEA after the war with Israel, but went on to reach an agreement in Cairo at the beginning of September to resume inspections.

But later that same month, the United Nations reimposed crushing sanctions on Iran, drawing an angry response from Tehran and leading the country to halt implementation of the Cairo agreement.

In August, European powers had reimposed the UN sanctions after Iran failed to enter into direct talks with the US and clarify the status of its near weapons-grade uranium stockpile.

‘A matter of serious concern’

The US and Israel claimed they attacked Iran because it was getting too close to being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful, and the IAEA has said it has no credible indication of a coordinated weapons programme there.

Ever since the 12-day war, the agency has been calling on Iran to say what happened to its stock, which is enriched to up to 60 percent purity, a short step from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.

Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium stockpile was “a matter of serious concern”, said the report. In theory, the stockpile would be enough to produce about 10 nuclear bombs.

While some enriched uranium will have been destroyed in the attacks, diplomats say much of the stock was likely stored at a deeply buried facility at Isfahan where the entrance tunnels were hit, but damage appears limited.

The agency has so far only inspected some of the 13 nuclear facilities that were “unaffected” by Israeli and US attacks. It said that re-establishing a full picture of stocks would be arduous.

North Korea issues warning as Washington and Seoul agree on strengthening military ties.

North Korea’s defence minister, No Kwang Chol, has condemned the arrival of a United States aircraft carrier at a port in South Korea and warned that Pyongyang will take “more offensive action” against its enemies.

The minister’s warning comes a day after North Korea launched what appeared to be a short-range ballistic missile into the sea off its east coast.

“We will show more offensive action against the enemies’ threat on the principle of ensuring security and defending peace by dint of powerful strength,” the defence minister said, according to a report on Saturday by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“All threats encroaching upon the sphere of the North’s security” will become “direct targets” and be “managed in a necessary way”, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency also reported the defence minister as saying.

The missile launch on Friday followed after Washington announced new sanctions targeting eight North Korean nationals and two entities accused of laundering money tied to cybercrimes, and a visit to South Korea by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Commenting on the visit by US and South Korean defence chiefs to the border between North and South Korea, as well as their subsequent security talks in Seoul, the North Korean defence minister accused the allies of conspiring to integrate their nuclear and conventional weapons forces.

“We have correctly understood the hostility of the US to stand in confrontation with the DPRK to the last and will never avoid the response to it,” No said, using the initials of the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

According to KCNA, the defence minister made his comments on Friday in response to the annual South Korea-US Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) and the recent arrival of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier and the Fifth Carrier Strike Group at a port in Busan.

The arrival of the US strike group also coincides with large-scale joint military drills, known as Freedom Flag, between US and South Korean forces.

While in South Korea for the SCM talks this week, Hegseth posted several photos on social media of his visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the North and the South.

Hegseth said that the core of Washington’s alliance with Seoul would remain focused on deterring North Korea, although the Trump administration will also look at flexibility for US troops stationed in South Korea to operate against regional threats.

I visited the DMZ with my ROK counterpart, Minister Ahn, to meet the brave troops of the U.S., ROK, and UN Command that maintain the military armistice on the Peninsula.

Our forces remain ready to support President Trump’s efforts to bring lasting peace through strength. pic.twitter.com/Uy6gab0zwl

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) November 3, 2025

Pyongyang described the DMZ visit by Hegseth and his South Korean counterparts as “a stark revelation and an unveiled intentional expression of their hostile nature to stand against the DPRK”.

Pyongyang’s latest missile launch, which Japan said landed outside its exclusive economic zone, came just over a week after US President Donald Trump was in the region and expressed interest in a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

On Friday, the US said it was “consulting closely” with allies and partners over the ballistic missile launch.

“While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies, the missile launch highlights the destabilising impact” of North Korea’s actions, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.

US Treasury accuses Pyongyang of stealing $3bn in digital assets to finance its nuclear weapons programme over three years.

North Korea has denounced the latest United States sanctions targeting cybercrimes that the US says help finance its nuclear weapons programme, accusing Washington of harbouring “wicked” hostility towards Pyongyang and promising unspecified countermeasures.

The statement on Thursday by a North Korean vice foreign minister came two days after the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on eight people and two firms, including North Korean bankers, for allegedly laundering money from cybercrime schemes.

The US Treasury accused North Korea of operating state-sponsored hacking schemes that have stolen more than $3bn in mostly digital assets over the past three years, an amount unmatched by any other foreign actor. The Treasury Department said the illicit funds helped finance the country’s nuclear weapons programme.

The department said North Korea relies on a network of banking representatives, financial institutions and shell companies in North Korea, China, Russia and elsewhere to launder funds obtained through IT worker fraud, cryptocurrency heists and sanctions evasion.

The sanctions were rolled out even as US President Donald Trump continues to express interest in reviving talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Their nuclear discussions during Trump’s first term collapsed in 2019 amid disagreements over trading relief from US-led sanctions on North Korea for steps to dismantle its nuclear programme.

“Now that the present US administration has clarified its stand to be hostile towards the DPRK to the last, we will also take proper measures to counter it with patience for any length of time,” the North Korean vice minister, Kim Un Chol, said in a statement.

He said US sanctions and pressure tactics will never change the “present strategic situation” between the countries or alter North Korea’s “thinking and viewpoint”.

Kim Jong Un has shunned any form of talks with Washington and Seoul since his fallout with Trump in 2019. He has since made Russia the focus of his foreign policy, sending thousands of soldiers, many of whom have died on the battlefield, and large amounts of military equipment for President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine while pursuing an increasingly assertive strategy aimed at securing a larger role for North Korea in a united front against the US-led West.

In a recent speech, Kim Jong Un urged Washington to drop its demand for the North to surrender its nuclear weapons as a condition for resuming diplomacy. He ignored Trump’s proposal to meet while the US president was in South Korea last week for meetings with world leaders attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told top Kremlin officials to draft proposals for the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing, as Moscow responds to President Donald Trump’s order that the United States “immediately” resume its own testing after a decades-long hiatus.

The Russian leader told his Security Council on Wednesday that should the US or any signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) conduct nuclear weapons tests, “Russia would be under obligation to take reciprocal measures”, according to a transcript of the meeting published by the Kremlin.

“In this regard, I instruct the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the special services, and the corresponding civilian agencies to do everything possible to gather additional information on this matter, have it analysed by the Security Council, and submit coordinated proposals on the possible first steps focusing on preparations for nuclear weapons tests,” Putin said.

Moscow has not carried out nuclear weapons tests since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But tensions between the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals have spiked in recent weeks as Trump’s frustration with Putin grows over Russia’s failure to end its war in Ukraine.

The US leader cancelled a planned summit with Putin in Hungary in October, before imposing sanctions on two major Russian oil firms a day later – the first such measures since Trump returned to the White House in January.

Trump then said on October 30 that he had ordered the Department of Defense to “immediately” resume nuclear weapons testing on an “equal basis” with other nuclear-armed powers.

Trump’s decision came days after he criticised Moscow for testing its new Burevestnik missile, which is nuclear-powered and designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

According to the Kremlin transcript, Putin spoke with several senior officials in what appeared to be a semi-choreographed advisory session.

Defence Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin that Washington’s recent actions significantly raise “the level of military threat to Russia”, as he said that it was “imperative to maintain our nuclear forces at a level of readiness sufficient to inflict unacceptable damage”.

Belousov added that Russia’s Arctic testing site at Novaya Zemlya could host nuclear tests at short notice.

Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, also cautioned that if Russia does not “take appropriate measures now, time and opportunities for a timely response to the actions of the United States will be lost”.

Following the meeting, state news agency TASS quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that Putin had set no specific deadline for officials to draft the requested proposals.

“In order to come to a conclusion about the advisability of beginning preparations for such tests, it will take exactly as much time as it takes for us to fully understand the intentions of the United States of America,” Peskov said.

Russia and the US are by far the biggest nuclear powers globally in terms of the number of warheads they possess.

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (CACNP) estimates that Moscow currently has 5,459 nuclear warheads, of which 1,600 are actively deployed.

The US has about 5,550 nuclear warheads, according to the CACNP, with about 3,800 of those active. At its peak in the mid-1960s during the Cold War, the US stockpile consisted of more than 31,000 active and inactive nuclear warheads.

China currently lags far behind, but has rapidly expanded its nuclear warhead stockpile to about 600 in recent years, adding about 100 per year since 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

France, Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea comprise the remaining nuclear-armed countries.

The US last exploded a nuclear device in 1992, after former Republican President George HW Bush issued a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing following the collapse of the Soviet Union a year earlier.

Since 1996, the year the CTBT was opened for signatures, only three countries have detonated nuclear devices.

India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998. North Korea has carried out five explosive tests since 2006 – most recently in 2017 – making it the only country to do so in the 21st century.

Such blasts, regularly staged by nuclear powers during the Cold War, have devastating environmental consequences.

Trump has yet to clarify whether the resumption he ordered last week refers to nuclear-explosive testing or to flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles, which would see the National Nuclear Safety Administration test delivery systems without requiring explosions.

Security analysts say a resumption of nuclear-explosive testing by any of the world’s nuclear powers would be destabilising, as it would likely trigger a similar response by the others.

Andrey Baklitskiy, senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, said that the Kremlin’s response was a prime example of the “action-reaction cycle”, in which a new nuclear arms race could be triggered.

“No one needs this, but we might get there regardless,” he posted on X.

Russian MOD Belousov suggests Russia should start to prepare for a full-scale nuclear test in response to the US statements. Action-reaction cycle at its best. No one needs this, but we might get there regardless

— Andrey Baklitskiy (@baklitskiy) November 5, 2025

US President Donald Trump has appeared on the CBS News programme 60 Minutes just months after he won a $16m settlement from the broadcaster for alleged “deceptive editing”.

In the interview with CBS host Norah O’Donnell, which was filmed last Friday at his Mar-a-Lago residence and aired on Sunday, Trump touched on several topics, including the ongoing government shutdown, his administration’s unprecedented crackdowns on undocumented migrants, the US’s decision to restart nuclear testing, and the trade war with China.

Trump, who regularly appears on Fox News, a right-wing media outlet, has an uneasy relationship with CBS, which is considered centrist.

In October 2020, the president walked out of a 60 Minutes interview in the lead-up to the 2020 election he lost, claiming that the host, Lesley Stahl, was “biased”.

Here are some key takeaways from the interview:

The interview took place one year to the day after Trump sued CBS

The president’s lawyers sued CBS owner Paramount in October 2024 for “mental anguish” over a pre-election interview with rival candidate Kamala Harris that Trump claimed had been deceptively edited to favour Democrats and thus affected his campaign.

CBS had aired two different versions of an answer Harris gave to a question on Israel’s war on Gaza, posed by host Bill Whitaker. One version aired on 60 Minutes while the other appeared on the programme Face the Nation.

Asked whether Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, listened to US advice, Harris answered: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

In an alternative edit, featured in earlier pre-broadcast promotions, Harris had given a longer, more rambling response that did not sound as concise.

The network argued the answer was edited differently for the two shows due to time restrictions, but Trump’s team claimed CBS “distorted” its broadcasts and “helped” Harris, thereby affecting his campaign. Trump asked for an initial $10bn in damages before upping it to $20bn in February 2025.

Paramount, in July 2025, chose to settle with Trump’s team to the tune of $16m in the form of a donation to a planned Trump presidential library. That move angered journalist unions and rights groups, which argued it set a bad precedent for press freedom.

Paramount executives said the company would not apologise for the editing of its programmes, but had decided to settle to put the matter to rest.

The company was at the time trying to secure federal approval from Trump’s government for a proposed merger with Skydance, owned by Trump ally Larry Ellison. The Federal Communications Commission has since approved the merger that gives Ellison’s Skydance controlling rights.

On October 19, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, US special envoy to the Middle East, were interviewed on 60 Minutes regarding the Israel-Gaza war.

He solved rare-earth metals issue with China

After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea last Thursday, Trump praised his counterpart as a “strong man, a very powerful leader” and said their relationship was on an even keel despite the trade war. However, he blamed China for “ripping off” the US through its dominance of crucial rare earth materials.

Trump told 60 Minutes he had cut a favourable trade agreement with China and that “we got – no rare-earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone”, referring to Chinese export restrictions on critical rare-earth metals needed to manufacture a wide range of items including defence equipment, smartphones and electric vehicles.

However, Beijing actually only said it would delay introducing export controls for five rare-earth metals it announced in October, and did not mention restrictions on a further seven it announced in April this year. Those restrictions remain in place.

Xi ‘knows what will happen’ if China attacks Taiwan

Trump said President Xi did not say anything about whether Beijing planned to attack autonomous Taiwan.

However, he referred to past assurances from Xi, saying: “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president’, because they know the consequences.”

Asked whether he would order US forces to action if China moved militarily on Taiwan, Trump demurred, saying: “You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that … I can’t give away my secrets. The other side knows.”

There are mounting fears in the US that China could attack Taiwan. Washington’s stance of “strategic ambiguity” has always kept observers speculating about whether the US would defend Taiwan against Beijing. Ahead of the last elections, Trump said Taiwan should “pay” for protection.

He doesn’t know who the crypto boss he pardoned is

When asked why he pardoned cryptocurrency multibillionaire and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao last month, Trump said: “I don’t know who he is.”

The president said he had never met Zhao, but had been told he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

Zhao pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in connection with child sex abuse and “terrorism” on his crypto platform in 2023. He served four months in prison until September 2024, and stepped down as chief executive of Binance.

Binance has been linked to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial, and many have questioned if the case is a conflict of interest.

In March 2025, World Liberty Financial launched its own dollar-pegged cryptocoin, USD1, on Binance’s blockchain and the company promoted it to its 275 million users. The coin was also supported by an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates, MGX Fund Management Limited, which used $2bn worth of the World Liberty stablecoin to buy a stake in Binance.

This part of the interview appeared in a full transcript of the 90-minute interview, but does not appear in either the 28-minute televised version or the 73-minute extended online video version. CBS said in a note on the YouTube version that it was “condensed for clarity”.

Other countries ‘are testing nuclear weapons’

Trump justified last week’s decision by his government to resume nuclear testing for the first time in 33 years, saying that other countries – besides North Korea – are already doing it.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” Trump said, also mentioning Pakistan. “You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are gonna report – they don’t have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do.”

Russia, China, and Pakistan have not openly conducted tests in recent years. Analyst Georgia Cole of UK think tank Chatham House told Al Jazeera that “there is no indication” the three countries have resumed testing.

He’s not worried about Hamas disarming

The president claimed the US-negotiated ceasefire and peace plan between Israel and Hamas was “very solid” despite Israeli strikes killing 236 Gazans since the ceasefire went into effect. It is also unclear whether or when the Palestinian armed group, Hamas, has agreed it will disarm.

However, Trump said he was not worried about Hamas disarming as the US would force the armed group to do so. “Hamas could be taken out immediately if they don’t behave,” he said.

Venezuela’s Maduro’s ‘days are numbered’

Trump denied the US was going to war with Venezuela despite a US military build-up off the country’s coast and deadly air strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking ships in the country’s waters. The United Nations has said the strikes are a violation of international law.

Responding to a question about whether the strikes were really about unseating Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, Trump said they weren’t. However, when asked if Maduro’s days in office were numbered, the president answered: “I would say, yeah.”

US government shutdown is all the Democrats’ fault

Trump, a member of the Republican Party, blamed Democrats for what is now close to the longest government shutdown in US history, which has been ongoing since October 1.

Senators from the Democratic Party have refused to approve a new budget unless it extends expiring tax credits that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans and unless Trump reverses healthcare cuts made in his tax-and-spending bill, passed earlier this year.

The US president made it clear that he would not negotiate with Democrats, and did not give clear plans for ending the shutdown affecting 1.4 million governent employees.

US will become ‘third-world nation’ if tariffs disallowed

Referring to a US Supreme Court hearing brought by businesses arguing that the Trump government’s tariff war on other countries is illegal and has caused domestic inflation, Trump said the US “would go to hell” and be a “third world nation” if the court ordered tariffs to be removed.

He said the tariffs are necessary for “national security” and that they have increased respect from other countries for the US.

ICE raids ‘don’t go far enough’

Trump defended his government’s unprecedented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and surveillance on people perceived to be undocumented migrants.

When asked if the raids had gone too far, he responded: “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by [former US Presidents Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.”

Zohran Mamdani is a ‘communist’

Regarding the New York City mayoral race scheduled for November 4, Trump said he would not back democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, and called him a “communist”. He said if Mamdani wins, it will be hard for him to “give a lot of money to New York”.