Nine Nations Have Nuclear Weapons

Nine nations have nuclear weapons: USA, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Some federal sources claimed Iran was within a few months if not days before it would have a nuclear weapon. That was the justification President Trump used to order Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22, 2025, to attack three Iranian nuclear sites -- Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan -- with overwhelming munitions to destroy Iran's cache of nuclear material.

Eight months later, on February 28, 2026, the US and Israel began attacking Iran as a means of ending USIran negotiations that had begun the year before in April of 2025. We're now five months into an on-again-offagain shooting war with Iran with little hope of concluding military operations. Some American politicians and their media cousins have downplayed threats of Iranian nuclear weapons.

Even if Iran were unable to make their own weapon with their own stockpile of nuclear dust, they could conceivably still get a weapon from their allies. Iran promised not to buy a nuclear weapon, but Iran has a long history of defaulting on promises. Pandora's nuclear box has already been opened and shared with nations around the world.

What will eliminate the further spread of nuclear weapons? The USA celebrated our 250th birthday last week. Persia, the forerunner of Iran, stopped having birthdays after two or three thousand years of history.

Their leaders have always played the long game in negotiations with adversaries. And they're still here today. Last week Yaroslav Trofimov began an article in the Wall Street Journal writing, "New outbreak of fighting over the strait [of Hormuz] comes as Tehran sees itself as a winner in the war that would establish a new Pax Iranica in the Middle East." How could this be?

Haven't the US and Israel practically destroyed any military Iran had? Leadership in Iran, whoever they are, weigh winning and losing differently from how the West sees winning. Trofimov quotes Karim Sadjadpour, Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing, "The Islamic Republic will become even more of a gangster regime.

Its takeaway from the war is that concessions are won through coercion--- by attacking its neighbors, threatening the Strait of Hormuz and driving up the price of oil." He explained, "Like Putin's Russia, the Islamic Republic believes that its security depends not on the prosperity of its people, but on the insecurity of its neighbors." To achieve US objectives of no nuclear weapon for Iran, and peace and prosperity among neighbors in the Middle East, we must think differently. Blasting Iran and their proxies continually until they surrender is not likely to end, much less end well. The US faced similarly minded enemies in WWII.

That's the only time nuclear weapons have been used in warfare. At the time, the US was the only nation that had nuclear weapons. After Russia developed their own nuclear weapons, "mutually assured destruction" became a new international military strategy.

II Peter 3:10 "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up." The USA just celebrated her 250th birthday guaranteeing citizens the free exercise of religion and speech.