Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke out against intervention by ‘alien Westerners’ during a rally to mark the anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Celebrations have been taking place after weeks of US threats of military action.
Published On 11 Feb 202611 Feb 2026
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Washington wants Beijing to join a new nuclear weapons treaty after expiration of the New START accord between the US and Russia.
Published On 7 Feb 20267 Feb 2026
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An international monitor said it has seen no evidence to support the claim by a senior United States official who accused China of carrying out a series of clandestine nuclear tests in 2020 and concealing activities that violated nuclear test ban treaties.
US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNanno made the assertions about China at a United Nations disarmament conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, just days after a nuclear treaty with Russia expired.
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“I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tonnes,” DiNanno said at the conference.
China’s military “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognised these tests violate test ban commitments,” he said.
“China conducted one such yield-producing nuclear test on June 22 of 2020,” he said.
DiNanno also made his allegations on social media in a series of posts, making the case for “new architecture” in nuclear weapons control agreements following the expiration of the New START treaty with Russia this week.
“New START was signed in 2010 and its limits on warheads and launchers are no longer relevant in 2026 when one nuclear power is expanding its arsenal at a scale and pace not seen in over half a century and another continues to maintain and develop a vast range of nuclear systems unconstrained by New START’s terms,” he said.
Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, said in a statement on Friday that the body’s monitoring system “did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion” at the time of the alleged Chinese test, adding that that assessment remains unchanged after further detailed analyses.
China’s ambassador on nuclear disarmament, Shen Jian, did not directly address DiNanno’s charge at the conference but said Beijing had always acted prudently and responsibly on nuclear issues while the US had “continued to distort and smear China’s national defence capabilities in its statements”.
“We firmly oppose this false narrative and reject the US’s unfounded accusations,” Shen said.
“In fact, the US’s series of negative actions in the field of nuclear arms control are the biggest source of risk to international security,” he said.
Later on social media, Shen said, “China has always honored its commitment to the moratorium on nuclear testing”.
Diplomats at the conference said the US allegations were new and concerning.
China, like the US, has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans explosive nuclear tests. Russia signed and ratified it, but withdrew its ratification in 2023.
US President Donald Trump has previously instructed the US military to prepare for the resumption of nuclear tests, stating that other countries are conducting them without offering details.
The US president said on October 31 that Washington would start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Moscow and Beijing, but without elaborating or explaining what kind of nuclear testing he wanted to resume.
He has also said that he would like China to be involved in any future nuclear treaty, but authorities in Beijing have shown little interest in his proposal.
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The U.S. government has accused China of secretly conducting at least one “yield-producing nuclear test” in recent years despite the country having a stated moratorium on such activities. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to engage in new nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with China and Russia, but it remains unclear what that might mean and what action has been taken. The new test allegation also comes as American officials continue to call for a new nuclear arms control treaty that includes China to succeed the New START agreement with Russia, which sunset yesterday.
“Today, I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” Thomas DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said during a speech at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland this morning. “The PLA [China’s People’s Liberation Army] sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments.”
China is a signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), but has never ratified it. The same is true of the United States. Both countries have stated self-imposed moratoriums on yield-producing nuclear testing. The CTBT does not prohibit sub-critical testing, which does not involve a full-fledged nuclear reaction. China’s last acknowledged critical-level nuclear test was in 1996. The last U.S. test of that kind was in 1992.
“China has used decoupling – a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring – to hide its activities from the world,” DiNanno added. “China conducted one such yield-producing nuclear test on June 22nd of 2020.”
China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons… China has used decoupling – a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring – to hide its activities from the world. China conducted one such…
— Under Secretary of State Thomas G. DiNanno (@UnderSecT) February 6, 2026
The CTBT’s primary verification method is a global network of hundreds of seismic monitoring stations.
As an aside, the last official nuclear test in Russia came in 1990, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. The United Kingdom, France, India, and Pakistan also conducted yield-producing nuclear tests at various points in the 1990s. North Korea is the only country known to have conducted such tests since 2000, with the detonation of five devices in separate instances between 2006 and 2017.
The video below offers an excellent graphical representation of the extent of known nuclear testing, covering detonations between 1945 and 1998.
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 – by Isao Hashimoto
At the time of writing, the U.S. government does not appear to have provided further details about the newly alleged Chinese nuclear testing. When American officials arrived at their current assessments about these activities is also unclear.
The U.S. State Department made no mention of any such testing in China in its most recent routine international arms control compliance report, published in April 2025. That report did reiterate previous U.S. accusations that Russia has engaged in supercritical nuclear testing in violation of its commitments to multiple test ban treaties, something DiNanno also highlighted in his speech today. Russia is a signatory to the CTBT and had previously ratified it. Russian President Vladimir Putin revoked that ratification in 2023 after the country’s parliament, or Duma, passed a law approving that action.
The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, published in December 2025, also makes no mention of Chinese nuclear testing.
President Trump may have alluded to this allegation in an interview with CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” last November.
“They [China and Russia] don’t go and tell you about it,” Trump said. “You know, as powerful as they are, this is a big world. You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing. They — they test way under — underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test.”
“You feel a little bit of a vibration. They test and we don’t test,” Trump continued. “But Russia tests, China — and China does test, and we’re gonna test also.”
In an earlier compliance report, the State Department had raised concerns about work China was observed doing at its Lop Nur nuclear test site in 2019. That report was notably published in June 2020, the same month Under Secretary DiNanno says the PLA conducted the yield-producing test.
“China’s possible preparation to operate its Lop Nur test site year-round, its use of explosive containment chambers, extensive excavation activities at Lop Nur, and lack of transparency on its nuclear testing activities – which has included frequently blocking the flow of data from its International Monitoring System (IMS) stations to the International Data Center operated by the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization – raise concerns regarding its adherence to the ‘zero yield’ standard adhered to by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in their respective nuclear weapons testing moratoria,” the report explained.
Following Trump’s interview in November 2025, Chinese authorities had pushed back and reiterated the country’s stated commitment to its moratorium on nuclear testing.
“China notes that the U.S. continues in its statement to hype up the so-called China nuclear threat. China firmly opposes such false narratives,” Chinese Ambassador Shen Jian, Deputy Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerland, said today following Under Secretary DiNanno’s remarks, according to Reuters. “It (the United States) is the culprit for the aggravation of the arms race.”
For years now, China has been engaged in a massive expansion of its nuclear arsenal, both in terms of warheads and delivery systems, something that was showcased at a military parade in Beijing last September. This has included the construction of huge new fields of silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles and work on a system that involves launching a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle into orbit, among other new capabilities. The U.S. government has assessed that the Chinese have around 600 warheads in their stockpile at present, but that this number is on track to grow to 1,000 by 2030 and to 1,500 by 2035.
It should also be pointed out that the United States and Russia are both generally assessed to have roughly 4,000 warheads each. The U.S. figure has been declining in recent years, while the Russian one has been growing, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) think tank in Washington, D.C.
As noted, successive U.S. administrations have been pushing for a new nuclear arms control regime that includes China. Negotiations in the past have focused more heavily on bilateral agreements with Russia, and the Soviet Union before it. The most recent of these deals, New START, expired as scheduled yesterday, following the conclusion of a one-time five-year extension. There are still unconfirmed reports that the U.S. and Russia may be working on an interim and non-legally-binding arrangement to keep the New START limits at least for some amount of time, as you can read more about here.
“New START was signed in 2010 and its limits on warheads and launchers are no longer relevant in 2026, when one nuclear power is expanding its arsenal at a scale and pace not seen in over half a century and another continues to maintain and develop a vast range of nuclear systems unconstrained by New START’s terms,” Under Secretary DiNanno also said in remarks today. “[China’s] buildup is opaque and unconstrained by any arms control limitations.”
“Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” President Trump had written yesterday on his Truth Social platform.
Trump:
Rather than extend “NEW START” (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future. pic.twitter.com/MPlDNeTWLZ
— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 5, 2026
“The President’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile,” U.S. Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio also said during a press conference on Wednesday in response to a question about New START.
SECRETARY RUBIO: The President has been clear that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China — because of their vast & rapidly growing stockpile. pic.twitter.com/FiYVUsBAVb
— Dylan Johnson (@ASDylanJohnson) February 5, 2026
Chinese officials have repeatedly rebuffed calls to join negotiations on a new nuclear arms control agreement.
The allegations Under Secretary DiNanno raised today prompt new questions about the future of U.S. nuclear testing, as well. As mentioned, there has been little elaboration on exactly what President Trump meant by his announcement last year about future testing “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. At that time, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright had downplayed the possibility of a resumption of American yield-producing nuclear tests.
“Since the President’s statement, we have received many questions about what he meant,” DiNanno said during his speech in Geneva today, before diving into the accusations about Chinese and Russian tests. However, the Under Secretary did not explicitly say whether or not this meant the United States intends to conduct its own testing at this level going forward. He did say later on in his remarks that the U.S. government is committed to efforts to “restore responsible behavior when it comes to nuclear testing.”
You can read more about what it would actually take for the U.S. government to resume full-scale nuclear testing in this previous TWZ feature.
The end of New START has already been fueling renewed concerns about a new nuclear arms race, and one that would not necessarily be limited to the United States, Russia, and China.
Following today’s revelations in Geneva, more details at least about the new U.S. allegations about Chinese nuclear testing activities may begin to emerge.
Update: 1:50 PM EST –
In light of today’s remarks from Under Secretary DiNanno, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s (CTBTO) Executive Secretary Robert Floyd has issued a statement.
”The CTBTO’s International Monitoring System (IMS) is capable of detecting nuclear test explosions with a yield equivalent to or greater than approximately 500 tonnes of TNT, including detecting all six tests conducted and declared by the DPRK [North Korea]. Below 500 tonnes is roughly 3 percent of the yield of the explosion that devastated Hiroshima,” Floyd says. “Mechanisms which could address smaller explosions are provided by the Treaty but can only be used once the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty enters into force. That is why it is important that the nuclear arms control framework includes the entry into force of the CTBT. The need is more urgent now than ever.”
“Regarding reports of possible nuclear tests with yields in the hundreds of tonnes, on 22 June 2020, the CTBTO’s IMS did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion at that time. Subsequent, more detailed analyses have not altered that determination,” he adds. “Any nuclear test explosion, by any state, is of deepest concern.”
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
Ukraine braced for more attacks on its energy infrastructure this week as winter temperatures continued to fall to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), and sought to adapt its defences against Russian drones.
On Thursday, Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyal, warned Ukrainians to prepare for more power blackouts in the coming days as Russian air attacks continued.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia had struck energy infrastructure 217 times this year. Shmyal said 200 emergency crews were working to restore power to 1,100 buildings in Kyiv alone.
Russia has been targeting Ukrainian power stations, gas pipelines and power cables since mid-January, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heat or electricity at various points.
On January 29, US President Donald Trump told a cabinet meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week, something the Kremlin confirmed.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that,” Trump said.
It was unclear when that conversation happened, exactly, but on Tuesday this week, Russia unleashed one of its biggest strikes ever on energy infrastructure in Kyiv and Kharkiv, deploying 71 missiles and 450 drones.
Ukraine’s Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said Ukraine had only managed to shoot down 38 of the missiles because a very high proportion of them were ballistic.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed it was targeting storage sites for unmanned aerial vehicles, defence enterprises and their energy supply.
The strike coincided with a visit to Kyiv by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and came a day before tripartite talks among Russia, Ukraine and the US resumed in Abu Dhabi.
“Last night, in our view, the Russians broke their promise,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his news conference with Rutte. “So, either Russia now thinks that a week is less than four days instead of seven, or they are genuinely betting only on war.”
The strike also came just as Kyiv had managed to reduce the number of apartment buildings without heat from 3,500 three days earlier, to about 500.
At least two people, both aged 18, were killed as they walked on a street in Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine.
Even on relatively quiet days, Russia causes civilian deaths. On Sunday, February 1, Russia killed a dozen miners when a drone struck the bus that was taking them to work in Ukraine’s central Dnipro region.
During the few days in which it did observe the moratorium on energy-related strikes, Russia focused on striking Ukrainian logistics instead and made attempts to extend the reach of its drones.
Ukrainian Defence Ministry Adviser on Technology and Drone Warfare Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov reported that Russian drones were striking Ukrainian trucks 50km (31 miles) from the front line. He also said Russia had adapted its Geran drone to act “as a carrier” for smaller, first-person view (FPV) drones, doubling up two relatively cheap systems for greater range.
Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne said Russia had begun these new tactics in mid-January.
Ukraine’s Air Force has managed to down about 90 percent of Russia’s long-range drones, and a high proportion of its missiles – almost 22,000 targets in January alone.
Zelenskyy recently demanded better results, however, and one of the Ukrainian responses to Russian tactics has been a new, short-range “small air defence” force that uses drones to counter drones.
“Hundreds of UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] crews have already been transferred to the operational control of the Air Force grouping – they are performing tasks in the first and second echelons of interception,” wrote Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii on Wednesday this week.
Ukraine’s second response has been to disable Russian Starlink terminals, which Russia uses extensively on the battlefield, and has recently begun mounting on UAVs.
Starlink uses low-orbit satellites and is impervious to jamming, allowing Russia to change a drone’s intended target while it is in mid-flight.
Ukraine’s newly installed defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been creating a “white list” of Starlink terminals used by the armed forces of Ukraine, and sent them to Starlink owner Elon Musk, asking him to keep these operational while shutting down all others in the Ukraine theatre.
“Soon, only verified and registered terminals will operate in Ukraine. Everything else will be disconnected,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Fedorov and Beskrestnov have been asking Ukrainian soldiers and civilians to register any Starlink terminals they acquire privately on the white list.
On the day of Russia’s large strike, Zelenskyy appealed to the US to pass a bill long in the making that would impose more sanctions on buyers of Russian oil. China is the biggest, followed by India.
The previous day, Trump said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian oil. “He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela. This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine,” he wrote on his social media platform.
A Russian government source told Reuters that an assumed 30 percent drop in oil sales to India, and lower sales to other customers, could triple Moscow’s planned budget deficit this year from 1.6 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent or 4.4 percent. Government data released on Wednesday showed the Kremlin’s revenues from energy at $5.13bn in January, half the level of January 2025.
Zelenskyy also discussed a 20th sanctions package under preparation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We can already see what is happening to the Russian economy and what could follow if the pressure is applied effectively,” he said.
Russia has made little headway in its ground war in the past three years, a fact repeatedly documented, most recently by a CSIS report. Despite this, its top officials continued to insist last week on terms of peace that would force Ukraine to give up control of four of its southeastern regions, cut down its armed forces and agree not to join NATO – terms Ukraine refuses.
The resumed talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday yielded only a prisoner-of-war exchange of 157 a side.
Friedrich Merz said concerns about a further escalation with Iran have dominated his trip to the Gulf region.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned of the threat of a military escalation in the Middle East before talks between Iran and the United States in Oman on Friday.
Speaking in Doha on Thursday, Merz said that fears of a new conflict had characterised his talks during his trip to the Gulf region.
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“In all my conversations yesterday and today, great concern has been expressed about a further escalation in the conflict with Iran,” he said during a news conference.
Merz also urged Iran to end what he called aggression and enter into talks, saying Germany would do everything it could to de-escalate the situation and work towards regional stability.
The warning came in the run-up to a crucial scheduled meeting between officials from Tehran and Washington in Muscat.
Mediators from Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt have presented Iran and the US with a framework of key principles to be discussed in the talks, including a commitment by Iran to significantly limit its uranium enrichment, two sources familiar with the negotiations have told Al Jazeera.
Before the talks, both sides appear to be struggling to find common ground on a number of issues, including what topics will be up for discussion.
Iran says the talks must be confined to its long-running nuclear dispute with Western powers, rejecting a US demand to also discuss Tehran’s ballistic missiles, and warning that pushing issues beyond the nuclear programme could jeopardise the talks.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said the US is eager for the talks to follow what they see as an agreed-upon format.
“That agreed-upon format includes issues broader than what the US understands Iran is willing to discuss in this initial set of talks,” she explained.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that talks would have to include the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for armed groups around the Middle East and its treatment of its own people, in addition to its nuclear programme.
A White House official has told Al Jazeera that Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key figure in his Middle East policy negotiations, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, have arrived in the Qatari capital, Doha, in advance of the talks.
Halkett said that Qatar is playing an instrumental role in trying to facilitate these talks, along with other regional US partners, including Egypt.
“We understand, according to a White House official, that this is perhaps part of the reason for the visit – to try and work with Qatar in an effort to try and get Iran to expand and build upon the format of these talks.”
The talks come as the region braces for a potential US attack on Iran after US President Donald Trump ordered forces to amass in the Arabian Sea following a violent crackdown by Iran on protesters last month.
Washington has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East, as well as an aircraft carrier, other warships, fighter jets, spy planes and air refuelling tankers.
Trump has warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached, ratcheting up pressure on Iran.
This is not the first time Iranian and US officials have met in a bid to revive diplomacy between the two nations, which have not had official diplomatic relations since 1980.
In June, US and Iranian officials gathered in the Omani capital to discuss a nuclear agreement, but the process stalled as Israel launched attacks on Iran, killing several military leaders and top nuclear scientists, and targeting nuclear facilities. The US later briefly joined the war, bombing several Iranian nuclear sites.
As negotiations are scheduled, Alex Gatopoulos breaks down how the US is applying pressure from the air, sea and sky
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These are the key developments from day 1,435 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Here is where things stand on Thursday, January 29: