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Iran's MASSIVE Win Over US Forces Exposes Trump's NUCLEAR Endgame | Peter Kuznik
Danny Haiphong
Streamed live 51 minutes ago #iran #nuclearwar #iranwar

Historian and Directorof the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University Peter Kuznik breaks down Trump's shocking nuclear endgame over Iran War and why the world should be very concerned about the US empire's string of defeats and what they mean for the future of the world order,



Transcript

Welcome back to the show. As you can see, I am joined for the first time and I'm honored to have him, Professor Peter Knik, uh, of the American University. He's also the director of nuclear studies there, the director of the nuclear institute there. Uh, Professor Knick, thanks for so much for joining. I want to just ask you right away uh about, you know, we've been covering the

war, the US war on Iran here for quite some time now. Developments seem that we are in a phase of the US denying that it's a war. Yet Iran continuing to try to meet its objectives as the US has not let up in trying to uh squeeze blockade and of course attack Iran when it suits it. So my question to you is there's been talk about nuclear conflict in this war actually

for quite some time. There are reports that the Trump administration was even putting tactical nuclear weapons on the agenda. Then he rejected and denied that that was the case. Guess I'm wondering in your perspective, how much closer to nuclear conflict are we now that the Iran war has been added to this equation alongside what's happening in Ukraine uh against nuclear armed Russia? Your thoughts? Sure, Danny. Um it's clearly we're in a

very precarious moment right now. We've got two ongoing wars, neither of which is going well for the invader. Uh, but especially the war in Iran. This Israeli US illegal, [snorts] stupid war has put the US in a desperate position right now. You know, Netanyahu have been trying to find an American president ignorant enough, stupid enough, [snorts] reckless enough to go to war with Iran for more than three decades. He finally found

his mark in Donald Trump. So, the US attacked. Trump had been warned from the beginning of exactly what could happen here. You know, Tulsi Gabbard warned him explicitly about the straight of Hormuz, about Iran hitting US allies and assets in the region, about the difficulty of getting out once this started and he ignored it. Even JD Vance would pre tried to convince him that this was not a good idea. But Trump

went ahead and did it. And now the US is trapped just as he was warned it would be uh with the effects on energy prices, on food prices, on the global economy and the US cannot get out. And so Iran effectively has its foot on Trump's neck and is not letting up. So Trump makes these threats. He threatens to wipe out a civilization within , turn Iran into rubble to make so

won't won't be anything left and won't be recognizable to use these other weapons or as Vance says, we've got stronger weapons in our toolkit we haven't used yet. Well, what have we not used yet? The first art I became a columnist not too long ago for Al Jazer and the first article that or op-ed that my friend [clears throat] Ivana Hughes the president of the nuclear age peace foundation in a Colombia

professor and I wrote was titled breaking the nuclear taboo and we said Trump has already broken every custom every norm every tradition US law international law. The only one, the only norm he hasn't broken yet, the only taboo he hasn't broken yet is the nuclear taboo. and that with people like Hegath Miller, Sebastian Gora, Netanyahu whispering in his ear that he's going to go down as the bravest, most courageous, best president

ever to break this 81-year taboo as something that would really appre appeal to Trump. and he's put out these posts that, you know, his ex rants that show his finger on the nuclear button. And we know from his first uh first term in office, you know, he said, "What's the point of having nuclear weapons if we can't use them?" Which to a normal sane person means let's get rid of the nuclear

weapons. To Donald Trump, it means let's make them more usable. And so uh you know and it was during the first term when he was told that the US nuclear arsenal had declined demonstrably and his response was well we should incl. It was at that point that Secretary of State Tillerson called him a you know. But it's more than that. It's too dangerous to have somebody who's so unstable, so easily provoked,

uh, so impulsive with control over the nuclear arsenal. And there's nobody standing between him and the use of nuclear weapons. So he where he's trapped. So he tries more economic pressure. That doesn't work. He tries diplomacy. That doesn't work. Even though he's tried escalation then militarily and that hasn't worked. He still has one ace in the hole and that's the nuclear arsenal. So I I mean Marger Taylor Green has warned about

this. Tucker Carlson has warned about this. A lot of other people have warned about it. I don't have inside information that says for sure that Trump is seriously contemplating this. But I think that logically it makes sense that it's just too dangerous because what that could trigger, we don't know. But you know, the the Pentagon for years has been trying to war game limited nuclear war. They've never been able to do

it. It never stops after exchange of one or two or five or 10 nuclear weapons. Starts with small tactical nuclear weapons, ends in full-scale nuclear annihilation every time. So I'm very very worried about this. Yeah, I think your worries are understandable, Professor Khnik. And I wanted to ask you about the historical precedent of this. Uh you are a historian and you were the co-author of the untold history of the United States.

This moment in many ways feels historically unprecedented in that you're talking about the possibility of the United States using nuclear weapons in its wars. uh despite the fact that these wars seem to not be going well, what do you believe the connection is between those two things and is there any historical precedent? Of course, the US used nuclear weapons at one time, but it were it seems like far different circumstances. Now,

how do you compare this to the arc of history that the US has traveled on um up until this point? Well, one of the topics I've written about extensively is the use of nuclear weapons in World War II. you know, because it was such an unnecessary use. The United States knew the Japanese were trying to surrender, that the Japanese knew they were defeated. The United States, they had been intercepting the cables

that were going back and forth between foreign minister Togo in Tokyo and the ambassador uh in uh in um Moscow. And it was clear that the only obstacle to surrender was the US insistence on unconditional surrender which meant to the Japanese that the emperor would be tried as a war criminal and executed and they considered the emperor a deity. So that now the but they knew there was another way to end

the war and that was to wait for the Soviet invasion. Ever since the US got hit at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had been trying to convince Stalin to come in to the Pacific War. But Stalin was fighting the off the Nazis. You know, throughout most of the war in Europe, the US and Britain had 10 were confronting 10 German divisions. The Soviets alone were confronting more than 200. So, but at Yalta in

February of 45, Stalin agreed to come into the Pacific War three months after the end of the war in Europe. which put that date right around August 8th or August 9th. And the US intelligence had been saying for months that Soviet entry into the war would convince all Japanese that further resistance is feudal. So they knew that would provoke the Japanese surrender. Truman knew that. Truman said as after he had lunch

with Stalin at Potam on July 17th, he wrote in his diary diary, Stalin will be in the war by August 15th. He got the date wrong, but then he said, "Finish when that occurs." He writes home to his wife Best the next day. The Russians are coming in. We'll end the war a year sooner now. Think of all the kids who won't be killed. But the US used those bombs because it

wanted to send a message to the Soviet Union that if they interfered with US plans in Europe or in the Pacific, they were going to get this and much much worse, which is exactly how the Soviet leaders in the Kremlin interpreted it. So, you know, the first use of nuclear weapons and the lies that were spread about it that somehow this was the only alternative to a US invasion that would have

cost the lives of a half million American men and millions of Japanese and was therefore humane and but that's what ended the war. You know, that's just the kind of lies that we deal with as historians. But then the next, you know, there are so many times when we've come close, no closer of course than during the Cuban missile crisis, which we could talk about at length if you'd like, but we've

had incident after incident where either the Soviets were getting reports of an incoming US missile attack or the US was getting reports of an incoming Soviet missile attack. and but we had people in positions who refused to go by the book and order a a response. But we were lucky because we've come very very close. And during the Cuban missile crisis, uh the uh the one of the Soviet subs that was

accompanying the other ships to the quarantine line was getting hit with depth charges from the US destroyer and the electricity went out. The carbon dioxide was raising. People were passing out and they couldn't reach the Kremlin. So the commander on that ship gave the order arm and get ready to launch the nuclear torpedo. The US didn't know there were nuclear weapons aboard. And fortunately Araov who was the number two on that

ship. He's above the commander on on land but number two on the ship convinced him to stand down you know or else that's war II was about to start. So, you know, much of the world would not have survived that. And we don't know how many nuclear weapons would have been used on Okinawa. There were American missiles aimed not at the Soviet Union or Cuba, but aimed at China. So, you know,

when Dan Ellburg asked the Pentagon when for McNamera how many people would be killed in a nuclear war, they found out that from America's weapons alone, more than 600 million people would likely die. But now we know about nuclear winter. And we know that that would have triggered a nuclear winter and probably most people on the planet if not everybody would have died. So, but there's been so many of these close

calls u and you know we've we really have to think seriously about getting rid of these nuclear weapons which are the scourge where the main main existential threat to humanity and that threat only increases when you've got situations like we have now with Iran and Trump in charge uh and the people around Trump. I mean you look at Trump's adviserss, have you ever seen a more stupid and incompetent group of people

advising a president? I mean, we know there's been a lot of discussion lately about Hegath because he's in so far over his head and and you know, just wants to look like a, you know, central casting tough guy. um but is exactly the the worst secretary of defense or he likes to say secretary of war that we've ever had in this country and most dangerous but and even worse than hex is

Steven Miller you know who is an outright Nazi and uh believes doesn't believe you know believes might makes right and the US can use force wherever it wants and send these thugs into the streets of American cities or use force globally, you know, and so these people advising Trump who, you know, indeed indeed in his own right uh and out of his mind in a lot of ways, you know, how deranged

this guy is. An example that I sometimes use is of a Christmas party at the White House with friends and family close to AIDS. And with in the middle of this talk, greeting them, Trump goes off on a 10-minute tangent about poisonous snakes in Peru. And he says they got black mambas and white mambas. And he says, "You know how many people die every year from poisonous snake bites in Peru? 28,000."

And so people looked it up and they found that o over a 15-year period, only 10 people total had died of poisonous snake bites in Peru. That doesn't stop Trump. I mean, the man was really non-composant. He should be put away. He should be put, you know, in a safe padded cell where he can't hurt anybody. But that's not what's happening, unfortunately. No. And uh you know it's not a good sign

when Pete Hegseth, your secretary of defense has a nickname Pete Kegseth because of what is been a documented drinking problem and and this is somebody who believes himself to be a crusader. He wrote in a 2020 book of his covered with crusader tattoos on his body. Yeah. and identifies the left and China and essentially anybody that supposedly challenges so-called US superiority as uh worthy of destruction. So, uh, I'm wondering though, uh,

Professor Kznik, this reality, you you brought us all the way back to when the US used nuclear weapons on Japan and a lot have said to your argument and and the evidence you laid out that indeed the US was trying to send a message to the Soviet Union. And I'm wondering if we're here now in 2026 with Russia uh making significant headway against Ukraine and of course the NATO US forces backing

it. Uh Iran making significant headway in terms of being able to stand up to itself against US aggression and Israeli aggression. uh if if this these this kind of trajectory in history leads us to another moment where the United States might be wondering and wanting to send another message because it's both the nuclear weapons and it also seems the uh the ideas behind the weapons and the people behind the weapons that

that can be so concerning. Your thoughts on this and this kind of historical possible connection here? [snorts] Yeah, I mean one sane people would draw the lesson that war is obsolete as a means of settling disputes. The fact that the two most powerful countries in the world have struggled as much as they have. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is 4 and a half years old. They've been on the verge of taking the

Dawnbass for a couple years now. They can't close the deal. And Ukraine has been bombing deeper and deeper inside Russia, shutting down a lot of Russian shipping, destroying oil and military facilities, you know, creating this crisis inside Russia. Now, uh, and the United States can't defeat Iran with asymmetrical warfare, artificial intelligence, drone warfare. The war does not work as a way of settling disputes. You look at the history since World War

II. What has the 18 minutesUnited States won? Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. The US was able to defeat a couple dozen Cuban construction workers, but at a very high price. Maybe the first Gulf War when we were able to slaughter so many Iraqis could be considered a military victory, but certainly not a political one. But but Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, I mean, where do any of these work? Iran is just the

latest example. So, but that's not the lesson, I'm afraid, that all the leaders are drawing. So, if we but we look at what the warnings are. June 10th, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, who was still DNI at that point, released a two and a half minute video starting off with Hiroshima and showing that the bombs that the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was peanuts compared to the weapons we have today. And she said that

with these wararm mongers in the major cities now that we're closer to nuclear annihilation today than we've ever been. And then later in October, Sergey Nishkin, the head of Russia's SVR, Foreign Intelligence Agency, said that civilization is at its most fragile moment since World War II and that the danger of of World War II looms around around us. But we've been knowing this for years. You go back to uh the general

Mike Minhan who said in 2023 that he thinks the US is going to be at war with China by 2025. Fortunately, that didn't happen. But Admiral Davidson said in back in 2021 that China is going to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Where did he get that? Nobody knows. uh or Admiral Thomas Buchanan who said that uh the United States is going is capable of fighting and winning a three-front nuclear

war simultaneously against Russia, China and North Korea and still keeping enough nuclear weapons in reserve to maintain US agy. Now that crazy idea is not so crazy. Uh I mean it's crazy but it's not so esoteric. For example, on August 20th, 2024, David Sanger had a front page piece in the New York Times in which he argued that or he reported that the US is planning to fight a three-front simultaneous nuclear

war against Russia, China, and North Korea. That very same day, the Bulletin Atomic Scientists had a big piece saying that there are now two schools of nuclear planners in the US. One believes an old style deterrence theory, mutually assured destruction, which makes a nuclear war unwinable, therefore unfightable. But a second school of nuclear planners believes that the US can strike preemptively and fight and win a nuclear war without Russia or China

being able to retaliate. And they say that with modern sonar technology and AI and other advanced technology, the US can now pinpoint the location of every Russian and Chinese submarine, which is the stable part of the triad that everybody said that you could always retaliate and therefore nuclear war cannot be fought. And now they think they can wipe out the uh sub the submarines, knock out the ICBMs with the preemptive attack

and not shoot down the bombers. And so there are people who are seriously contemplating this again. And they should be locked up. They they there's no place on this planet for people who are so reckless, so willing to gamble with the future of life on the planet that they are actually looking at these kinds of things. But on top of that, you add the madness that we're seeing in Europe where this

kind of provocative behavior. I mean, it's got me very, very worried. And I look, for example, what's the discourse now? What are they everybody talking about? They're talking about the alleged Russian acts of sabotage across Europe. Now, in fact, David Ignatius had a piece in the Washington Post today, and he says, I'll quote a little, he says, Russian hybrid activity in Europe became more ambitious and dangerous over the past six months,

according to private analysis shared with me by TD International, the Washingtonbased strategic advisory firm. TDI analysts counted 63 Russia link incidents against European targets since March, including 43 drone or other airspace incidents, six sabotage operations or plots, six cyber or electronic warfare attacks, and five hostile maritime incidents. The New York Times today has a big article talking about all these sabotage. This stuff is being bandied about everywhere. Is it true? I

don't know. I don't know how we can know if any of this is true, but we know why Russia might be doing it. And that's because the Europeans are supplying the armaments to Ukraine to fight the war as well as the intelligence to fight the war against Russia. And so it is to me plausible, but I don't know if it's true or not, that Russia might be trying to sabotage the munitions

factories in Europe right now. But I know that it's very very dangerous. And so you had you had Ratcliffe flying over to Moscow, the uh the intelligence chief, head of the CIA flying over to Moscow. Was it because he's warning about nuclear war and the possibility of nuclear war or just telling the Russians that they're losing [laughter] as if Putin doesn't know the situation a lot better than Radcliffe knows the situation?

You know, we don't know. But we know that things are escalating and they're getting more crazy. That's why I began an initiative uh where I drafted a letter to uh to Pope Leo. Pope Leo who took the name Pope Leo I 14th to carry on the progressive traditions of Pope Leo I 13th. Pope Leo the 14th has denounced warfare. He's denounced, he's called for nuclear abolition, for getting rid of nuclear weapons.

He's been a moral voice who one of the few people who speaks for the planet and that's why I admire him. Uh, you know, you've got she wanting to make China great again and Trump want to make America great again and Putin want to make Russia great again and Netanyahu wanted to make Israel great again. Modi want to make India great again. But the pope has been talk calling speaking for the

planet. What we need at this moment is planetary consciousness that as the human species what unites us is so much greater than what divides us now. And so we need to be viewing the environment and the global warming from a planetarism perspective and diplomacy. Under Biden, diplomacy became a dirty word, a four-letter word. And you know, we 26 minuteshaven't regained that now. So there's no thinking in Europe about how we're going

to peacefully resolve these questions. There's thinking everywhere. We have to remilitarize. we have to spend more and more of our money on our militaries. It's the only thing that's going to stop Russia. You know, this kind of mad thinking that's going on. So, we're appealing send this appeal to Pope Leo. I sent it yesterday to uh Cardinal um Pero Perolan who's the Vatican Secretary of State. I got a preliminary letter to

Pope Leo through Cardinal Samero. I was in Italy last month for uh an exciting program called Tonal Estate. It's an alternative international university program. Six of my students accompanied me last year and again this year. Uh and Cardinal Samero poke and uh so and he agreed to give the letter to the Pope. Um, so we're trying to get it to him and we're asking him to call an emergency global summit minimally

of Putin, Xiinping, and Donald Trump to get the world off this course of unending war and of threatened nuclear war. The nuclear threats are just escalating by the day and the situation's become more desperate. I know that Putin is under enormous pressure from the hawks in Russia to act much more aggressively to escalate and some have publicly called for Russia use of tactical nuclear weapons. Carggonov Medve and others who are very

influential in Russia and I know that there are hawks who are urging Trump to do the same 28 minutesthing. So, and then the situation in in Asia, you know, that could blow up at any time. The US is sending ships through the Taiwan Strait as are other countries, you know, and so we see these the dangerous situations with desperate leaders in some situations. And Putin told a friend of mine that he's

under enormous pressure from the hawks inside of Russia. We know that the war is not popular in Russia. I'm going to Russia next week, you know, and to and I'll be giving three four four talks and sharing the documentary jury of an international film festival. Uh, and I'll be urging my Russian colleagues and others there from all over the world, 150 plus countries are going to be there. uh that we need

to think about how we can settle these differences in a peaceful way through diplomacy and not through war. Narendra Modi likes to say this is not a time of war but it is a time of war in reality because the wars are going on. It should not be a time of war. Yeah. And uh two things I want to put you to your attention and for you to comment on given all

that you just said. You know, you said Biden uh made diplomacy a dirty word in many ways uh cutting the cords of a lot of diplomatic channels of course with Russia and with much of the world during that period. And then Trump use has used diplomacy all throughout this administration as a weapon uh to uh escalate and start the war against Iran. faking diplomacy, using diplomacy to buy time to strike Iran

later. Uh this is something incredibly dangerous. And then you have the propaganda, Professor Kznik, where even just recently Trump goes on and says that the US war in Iran helped prevent a nuclear attack on the UK. So this is what's coming out. You just laid out all the examples of where US officials have literally been planning nuclear attacks with an actual nuclear arsenal. And here Trump in the Trump administration since the

very beginning of it as well as since the first Trump administration has been promoting this uh fabrication of Iran has nuclear weapons and it's going to use them on on on uh you know the UK. It's going to use them on Israel. It's going to use them on us eventually. uh comment on this uh contradiction here. It's it's so loud that um on the one hand some may find it convincing. On

the others, I think there's a lot of people who are just tired of it. But your thoughts on on what you make of it and why it's important. [snorts] Well, first of all, I don't think that very many people believe anything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. I mean, the man is a pathological liar. During his first term, the Washington Post cataloged what was it 25,573 blatant lies that he told.

Um, so you know, so anything that Trump says is immediately dismissed or discounted uh and disbelieved. However, you know, the the irony that you're pointing out is a very very important one. We're talking about Iran supposedly having nuclear weapons even though the CIA reported that Iran gave up its nuclear program back in 2003. Even though under the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal that Obama negotiated in 2015 after years of negotiations, we

know that Iran was the most heavily surveiled, scrutinized, investigated country in the world. The IAEA was sending in spot negot spot investigators without any advanced warning anytime they wanted. and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that there's no evidence at all that Iran is doing anything other than abiding by by this. And so that allowed for enrichment of uranium to 3.67%. Way way below the 90% really needed for

weapons. We know that Iran shipped out 97 to 98% of its enriched uranium. That it moth balled most of its centrifuges. That Iran was abiding by this. But because it was Obama's only good foreign policy achievement really, when Trump got in there, it was dedicated to blowing it up, which he did in 2018. And so Iran didn't have a nuclear program. After the Trump blew up the JCPOA, then Iran began enriching

up to 60% in order to have this as a negotiating tool. Uh but the United States did not negotiate. The United States had sucker punched Iran twice uh back in June and then again in February. So June the previous year. So you know the situation but the craziness that I deal with. For example, you've got Mcronone and Starmer and Meritz and Burnham and Tusk and the Scandinavians all warning saying as Rut

said, the head of head of NATO said that if Russia gets a win in Ukraine, it's going to they're going to march against all of Europe and gobble up one piece of Europe after another. And that's what the Europeans believe and that's what they keep saying. As a result, Narraki, the the president of Poland, says Poland needs its own nuclear weapons. Zilinski says, "Either let us join NATO or give us nuclear

weapons." France is expanding its nuclear umbrella over Germany and Austria and other places. We've got this not just in Europe. 73% of South Koreans want South Korea to have its own nuclear weapons. We've got a planetary sickness right now. But it's not just the leaders. the military leaders, the intelligence chiefs, the other political leaders. But one of the craziest things I heard was French General Fabian Mandon, who's the highest ranking military

official in France said recently told the uh a meeting of French governors. He said that the problem with France is not stopping Russia is that France doesn't want to lose its children in a war with Russia. Yeah, of course France doesn't want to use lose its children. During World War I, France lost 50% of its young men between the ages of 15 and 30. France didn't recover from that for a long,

long time. And yes, the French don't want to lose their children. But we're hearing the same thing from the intelligence chiefs across Europe and the leaders and the uh military officials. It's crazy. It's taking Europe taking Russia 5 years to try to defeat Ukraine to try to get 20% of Ukraine. And so is Putin going to want to go to war with NATO? He's not a a mad man. And he says

that this is ludicy. This is idioty what these people are saying. Tulsi Gabbard said the same thing. In her lucid moments, Tulsi was terrific. In her other moments, she was a sickopant toward Trump and that was embarrassing, but she said a lot of things that were smart, which is part of why Trump wanted to get rid of her. He was furious with her for releasing that video about the nuclear threat uh

in June of 2025. So, you know, we're in a dangerous situation. So, we're appealing to Pope Leo as the one figure. Maybe Gutteras has that. Sometimes Luna has that. Lula has that. Sometimes even Xiinping speaks for the planet. But we want to convene an emergency summit because I see with my kids, my students, you know, they they know how tenuous the future is. For young people, they know about global warming. That's

what they know about the most. They're learning now about nuclear war. They were outraged by what they saw Israel do to Gaza. They were they also were angry about the October 7th attack on Israel. But the burning moral issue for that generation has been Gaza. And so, you know, we need to get rational leadership once again. And what happened, what we say in our appeal to Pope Leo is that during the

Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the determinative uh things that was done was Pope John the 23rd issued an appeal to the leaders to get us off the the get us away from the likelihood of World War II back in 1962. And Cruchev cited that. And we know that the Pope's appeal influenced Kennedy also, our first Catholic president, but it but explicitly Kruev talked about how it gave him the cover in part

to end the Cuban missile crisis peacefully. So let's give cover to Trump and Putin to end the wars today and let's give cover to to settle things peacefully in the Pacific as well. You know the it's just too dangerous. We can't play with our planet. As Jonathan Shell said, we don't have two planets where we can experiment with one and then save the other one. We have one planet. If this goes

wrong, then there's not going to be anybody left alive to tell them that they were idiots to do what they did. Yeah, those are wise words. And uh, Professor Knick, you know, as we uh, get toward the end here, uh, I I would like your actually your assessment of how close because the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have really put the doomsday clock very close to midnight. Um, the Cuban Missile Crisis is

often viewed as the moment in US history, in world history, where uh, a full-scale nuclear war was on the brink. And some I mean over the years, ever since I've been covering geopolitics, covering world politics, studying world politics, seen many commentators and analysts also say that this great power confrontation that the United States is engaging with with Russia, China, now we can say with Iran, given that Iran has uh certainly elevated

its stature during this war, that that leads us closer to a Cuban missile crisis scenario, almost like a trip wire, like the the risks, the act the potential for a so-called accident or a misread or something like this are higher than ever. What do you make of this? And maybe you give some context about the Cuban missile crisis which can help us understand just how correct or incorrect or or factual this

is. What happened in ' 62? I mean, Kruev made a stupid mistake by putting the missiles into Cuba and the nuclear warheads and not announcing it to the world. Had he announced it, it would have been an effective deterrent. But the fact that he did announce it meant that it put the world on a trip wire toward nuclear war. He was planning to announce it on November 7th on the anniversary of

the Russian Revolution. And but he did that because the US was planning an invasion to overthrow the government in Cuba, which we're still trying to do. uh and because uh the US had nuclear weapons right on Russia's doorstep in in Turkey. So they thought this was the equalizer also because they had they believed that the US was planning for a first strike against the Soviet Union because of the fact that the

US had a 10 to 100 to1 advantage and McNamera announced we were going to build a thousand more in ICBMs. 41 minutesuh the numbers that the joint chiefs uh and Stratcom wanted was far more than a thousand. McNar thought that was the lowest number he could get away with. So it was a very very dangerous moment. And even though one of the big difference between then and now is then we had

Kennedy and Cruchev in control and they both hated the thought. They both had known war in the past and they hated the thought of war and they did everything they could to avoid a nuclear confrontation and yet they both realized that they had lost control that in a crisis you can't keep the control and so uh the Cubans shot down a U2 plane which was the pretext for the joint chiefs to

go in there and that was very very close to happening. There was that incident at sea that I mentioned before. Uh what pro a computer malfunction in the US and reports that incoming missiles were going to take out US cities. US flights going over the Soviet Union. I mean there's so many things that could have triggered a war. And so right after that ended the Cuban missile crisis, partly with the Pope's

intervention, Kruev writes an incredible letter to Kennedy on October 30th, 1962, just a couple days after the missile crisis ended. And he said, "Our from evil, some good must come. Our people have both felt the burning flames of thermonuclear war. What we have to do now is [laughter] elim eliminate every conflict between us that could trigger a new crisis. And Kennedy was slow in responding, but he finally got it. And the

culmination of that, his new thinking was the his incredible commencement address on June 10th, 1963 at my university, American University. the best speech by an American president in the 20th century and he calls for an end to the cold war and he calls for an end to the nuclear arms race. Uh and then he goes ahead and he concludes the first test ban nuclear arms control treaty the 63 partial testban treaty

you know and he wanted to change the world and had he lived and Kruev remained in power they might have been able to do it but that was the last time we came that close the last time. Although we can say Reikovic, Reagan and Gorbachev came within one word of eliminating nuclear weapons, but Gor but Reagan would not do it. He wanted to keep his Star Wars fantasy. And so, you know,

we've come close in a lot of ways. We've had come close to doing the right thing. We've more often come close to doing the wrong thing. But these are fallible human beings who are in charge here. And you know, especially when you look at the people in charge of the US arsenal now, they scare the crap out of me. And uh you know I think that enough people are realizing that now

that an intervention by the pope at this moment. There's just also been the last couple days articles in Reuters and other places saying indicating that Putin is much more open to peace talks. is an article saying that Kushner and Witoff, the Laurel and Hardy of diplomacy are going back to Moscow and and are going to go to Kev also. You know that that people are talking about negotiations again. And so it's

the right moment for a push by the papacy, by the Vatican. Pope Leo was the right person to do it. Professor Knickik, it was incredibly an honor to have you on. I hope to have you on again very soon. My pleasure, Danny. Anytime. But you know, people can can go to the Nuclear Insanity Substack. It's founded by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. They can sign onto this appeal. We've got about 125

very, very prominent signers from all different walks of life. former presidents, former prime minister of Japan, uh, former, you know, rock musicians, uh, Roger Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd just signed on, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, you know, all kinds of leading experts around the world. And but and then we've got a thousand more signers at least. And so what we need as much support as can as we can get because

that's what's going to actually make this something that the Vatican and other can't can't do and governments can't not do if you build up that kind of pressure because a lot of people want to do the right thing and it's really a minority who are threatening our planet right now. Yeah, that is 100% the case. Uh, I'm going to put that link in the video description below right now. Uh, everybody hit

the like button before you go. That helps boost this show after we are done here. And of course, uh, you I want to thank everyone who viewed today. Uh, thanks again, Peter. Uh, we will definitely be in touch. All right, everybody. That's it for today. I will see you all again

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“AN ORDINARY INSANITY deserves the widest possible viewership, among the public and policy-makers in Washington and beyond.”
— Kevin Martin, President, Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund

Transcript

Now, you can't have a large nuclear war, the kind we've prepared for and spent trillions of dollars preparing for, where the victim in that war would be limited to the adversaries or to any particular group of adversaries. Words do not exist in human language to describe that sort of decision or that sort of machinery. There is no possibility to limit damage

any more than there is a possibility to win nuclear war. a threat and a readiness and a preparation and a rehearsal of causing nuclear winter and destroying most large life on Earth. That is insane. And you have to call it a kind of ordinary insanity because it's so widely shared. [music] [music] I've long said to my last breath, I will be doing what I can to postpone and avert the risk of

nuclear war. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] In 1971, US military analyst Daniel Ellsberg publicly released the Pentagon Papers and rocked the nation. Ellburg had secretly copied 7,000 pages of that top secret report [music] on the Vietnam War, a report he had helped write. It revealed the truth of the war that was unwinable and immoral. He risked 115 years in prison for a legendary act of whistleblowing that helped bring down [music] a

president and shorten the war. But Ellberg had also helped draft the nation's nuclear war plans. He had other secrets in his safe, nuclear secrets. He expected the FBI to come looking for them. So he gave thousands of documents [music] to someone he could trust, his brother Harry. Harry stuffed the papers in a big green garbage bag inside a cardboard box and he buried it in the local dump, [music] a place he

thought they would never be found. An old stove above marked the site so he could retrieve the papers when it was [music] safe. Then during the summer, a most unexpected twist in the story. [music] A tropical storm unearthed the box of papers and sent the stove flying down the hill. For almost a year, Harry, his wife, and friend searched for the lost papers. They found a lot of buried green garbage bags,

but not one of them had top secret nuclear documents inside. In the decades [music] that followed, Ellberg dedicated himself to reconstructing the lost nuclear secrets and doing [music] everything in his power to reduce the risk of a nuclear holocaust, [music] a catastrophe he had helped plan. Recorded shortly before his death, these are the urgent warnings of a nuclear war planner. My career for 10 years at that point had been as a

researcher or consultant for the government on classified work for the Department of Defense for the Air Force initially [music] and later as a consultant to the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera and even before that to Secretary of Defense Gates under Eisenhower on the command and control of nuclear weapons. and the design of nuclear war plants. Uh, as a young man, [sighs] a job that uh, no one ever did well. At the

Rand Corporation, I've been studying the highest stakes hypothetical gamble in human history, whether or not to launch nuclear missiles on the basis of ambiguous warning, which gives me a background with which to evaluate the risks and the possible benefits of these weapons. Uh at that point the plan I was supplanting or modifying was uh the last plan left by the Eisenhower administration. His plan was simply to strike first in nuclear terms

against the Soviet Union and China. 6 minutesThe Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated in 1961 that the effects of our carrying out those plans, the annual operational plan for which the weapons existed and were on alert, they estimated it would kill 600 million people, 100 Holocausts, 325 million in the Soviet Union and China alone. another 100 million in the satellite countries uh Hungary, Poland, the Warsaw Pact, another 100 million of our allies

in West Europe would be killed by the fallout from our attacks on the Soviet block without a single warhead of ours falling on West Europe. Collateral damage, not desired, inadvertent, but expected. Uh no way to avoid it. And finally another 100 million in areas contiguous to the Soviet Union or China neutral areas like Austria, Afghanistan, Finland, Sweden, large parts of India, Japan. Remember by our attack without considering the Soviet response. Now,

when I saw that estimate in the White House, I thought that was the most evil planning that had ever existed in the history of humanity. For only the last 40 years of the nuclear era, not considered at all before 1983, we've known soot and smoke was a crucial lethal effect of nuclear weapons. The firestorms created by nuclear weapons would have lofted the smoke uh from these burning cities into the stratosphere quickly

enveloped the globe and let out most of the sunlight. Not all of it, but about 70% of the sunlight, which would create winter, killing all harvest for at least several years and up to a decade or more, starving nearly everyone. Not quite everyone. It wouldn't be an extinction event. 98% gone within a year, starving to death. I and my friends were helping to have a nuclear war plan that was less dangerous,

less bad than the one preceding it. a low bar, but um if my improved plan had actually been carried out, the results would not have been less evil or less destructive than the Eisenhower plan. Very simply, their entire framework of uh nuclear weapons is based on the idea that bad as it would be to strike first, preempt It's less bad than to strike. Second, our entire the air force doctrine, strategic doctrine,

everything tells us that. And we build weapons to destroy enemy weapons as though they could limit damage to the United States if they went first before they were themselves destroyed. But it's not true. The truth is that our nuclear policies from the beginning, especially from the time that Russia acquired nuclear weapons in 1949, a policy of threatening first use against a nuclear armed nation, the Soviet Union, is a threat of an

insane action. Now, it's a threat of an insane action. 10 minutesIs that insane in itself? The weapons actually are designed to kill people or to threaten to kill people, which is uh the way they've actually been used a number of times quite specifically in crisis. The way you use a gun when you point it at someone in a confrontation, you are using the gun. If you get your way without pulling the

trigger, that's the best use of the gun. The threats can work. Of course, they can work. When you point a gun, uh whether you're a policeman or a vigilante or a bandit going into a 7-Eleven, no legitimacy, whatever, but of course, you can walk out with the contents of the cash register. It can work. And these threats can work and have worked. President Vladimir Putin has warned the West that Russia could

use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles. The US and Russia are the only two of the nine nuclear states that plan launch on warning and act as if a first strike is better than a second strike, which it isn't. A deadly selfdeception. China for reasons not entirely clear now, but I think they are proving their deterrent in a situation where they foresee some armed conflict with the US over

Taiwan. are not only building new ICBMs, but they are going toward launch on [music] warning, which is inevitable with ICBMs. Fixed location ICBMs [music] can only be protected from destruction by being ready to launch before the other missiles arrive on them. So, the Chinese are going in that direction. That makes the world more dangerous in part because we are openly preparing to attack their missiles with low yield submarine missiles which Trump

now has put on our Trident submarines for limited nuclear war. We're continuing year by year deliberately [music] with a posture and a policy and threats that make a nonzero significant risk of near extinction [music] possible. The idea of war between the US and Russia or the US and [music] China, which both sides are preparing for should not be a human prospect, but it is. 13 minutesThere is only one weapon in our

arsenal that confronts [music] a president with the urgent decision of whether to launch nuclear war and that is the decision to launch our ICBMs because they are vulnerable. They are fixed location known to the Russians and the Russians have missiles both sub and ICBMs as we do that can destroy the fixed location ICBMs. It is solely their vulnerability that confronts the president with the uh challenge use them or lose them. We

have currently 400 of those operational in silos on 10-minute alert. From getting an authenticated command to the time that the missiles are actually launched from their silos, it's a matter of minutes. Those missiles of course cannot be recalled. In about , they would land at their targets largely in Russia and China. We could lower that risk quite significantly by eliminating our intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, because they are vulnerable in a way

that our submarine launch weapons at sea are not vulnerable. They're invulnerable. And our planes can be called back. In fact, they don't even have to be called back. They can take off on positive control it's called and circle until they get a positive order to go ahead and they can do that for hours actually uh delaying any decision as to what the situation is. That's not true for ICBMs. from the mid

1960s when the Soviets had acquired sublaunched missiles, submarines like ours that we could not target with our ICBMs. And at the same time with the Russian ICBMs becoming very accurate, our ICBMs became very vulnerable. And thus both sides were on a [music] hair trigger unstable uh mutually threatening uh posture where each targeted on the other essentially on a launch on warning basis. And that's [music] been true ever since. At that point,

the ICBMs were no longer merely unnecessary and wasteful, as they are and always has been, but terribly dangerous, much more so to us and to the world, even than the Polaris submarines, the Trident submarines, which we still have on both sides, which at least do not tempt either leadership to decision on a matter of minutes to set off allout nuclear war. The very possibility of a false alarm setting off allout nuclear

war is based on the possession and deployment and alerting of ICBMs. What happened in 1979 was not just that enemy missiles were coming over the pole but in a coordinated synchronized way missiles were coming from both oceans from Russian Soviet submarines and bombers were in the air. Now how could that all be wrongly coming in exactly like a Soviet attack? And the answer is that someone had put an actual simulation attack

for testing the system into the operational system. I don't think it's ever been explained 40 years later how that came about. 17 minutesWilliam Perry was told on the phone at 3:00 in the morning about this incident, but he was told after it had been debunked, but he was told that 200 missiles were on the way. And he explained what he meant to do about that. He thought, "Well, 200, that must be

aimed at our ICBMs." He said, "Well, I think I would have advised Carter to send 200 or maybe 400 missiles at their ICBMs." That could not possibly do anything but set off the entire forces on both sides. No language really does justice to this, but absurd is one word. cataclysmic catastrophic evil uh is another. Still under President Carter, there were two other major alerts that went on for minutes. Well, those three

major um false alarms led Congress to call for investigation. And there had been hundreds and hundreds of false alarms which were not as serious as that. In 1983, President Andropov, at that time former head of the KGB, believed that Reagan intended a first strike. He was preparing for it. He threatened it. And they thought he was crazy. They are the focus of evil in the modern world. Colonel Sennis Petro got warning

in his center that five American missiles, first one, two, then five American missiles were on their way from launch sites in America across the pole. His subordinates in that center all believed that they were under attack. Panic basically they were all urging him to report [music] that Russia was under attack. Petro wasn't sure that it was an attack. So he lied to his superiors. He said it's a false alarm. He wasn't

sure that it was. Then he waited to see whether they were all destroyed, not knowing whether it would be. Fortunately, he was right. It wasn't sure. It was he said it was about 50/50. And he felt sure that if he'd said 50/50 truthfully, they would have gone. That would have been enough to go and we would not be here because of the nuclear winter effect. Eliminating ICBMs will not eliminate the existence,

the occurrence of false alarms, but it will eliminate the response of blowing up the world. There will be no incentive for a president or a leader of any nuclear state to respond immediately even to an actual attack. It's the ICBMs alone that create this 3:00 a.m. 10-minute warning 20 minutessituation, which is of course absurd to think that a human can deal rationally or reasonably uh with such circumstances. If we eliminated black

CPMs, then there would be no jamming, to use their word, jamming the president to act very swiftly. [music] It is not the case that a enemy missile or a terrorist missile on Washington would paralyze our ability to respond with an authentic order. It has never been true. Uh and that's true for Russia, almost certainly true for every nuclear nation. So there's a lot of fingers on a lot of buttons in the

world and that has been kept very secret from the public uh so as not to worry them. America's top general, just 2 days after the January 6th capital insurrection, so worried about the then president's angry and erratic behavior, he called a secret meeting with top deputies, including the chain of command for the country's nuclear arsenal. The specific purpose of the October and January calls were to generate or were generated by concerning

intelligence which caused us to believe the Chinese were worried about an attack on them by the United States. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Millie, was worried that the president might actually try to uh start a nuclear war to distract from his imminent removal from office having lost an election. And he actually was discussing with other officers whether they should be prepared to uh obey that or not obey it. That

would be in effect mutiny. And uh and they began to investigate whether he could be restrained by other people or whether it was really true that he could order this as a sole authority. And the answer to that is yes. And the answer to whether he could be constrained, no. Constitutionally there could be a mutiny. uh in effect there could be a refusal but that person could be fired in immediately and

replaced and if the next person refused again that process could go on. We are now engaged in modernizing it. That is replacing the doomsday machine with a whole new set of submarines, ballistic missiles, ICBMs, bombers at the cost of estimated 1.7 trillion, almost certainly to be enormously more than that. We initially thought the price for Sentinel would be about $95 billion. Now the Air Force reports that it will be $132 billion.

nearly 40% more. Why are we thinking of spending a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 30 years, a hundred billion in the next uh 10 years to produce a replacement for the Minute Man 3 when we should eliminate the Minute Man 3, the current ICBMs altogether? Why is it mainly because it's profitable to Northre Grman or its rivals Boeing or Lockheed who have channels of influence who have in effect

bought influence and let's be frank bought Congress. They have carefully distributed the earnings from that and the the jobs and the the votes across 35 states. So it's votes, it's campaign donations to the Congress people, it's revolving door uh jobs between the U highest level uh military and these corporations. The present secretary of defense for example comes from the board of Rathon Corporation. He was preceded by Esper from Boeing and uh

Mattis. All of these from the boards of these top corporations, people who are expert in the military-industrial complex. [applause] As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal. Hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and so powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else. In the case of the ICBM, we would be safer and the money

would be better spent paying Northrup Grumman not to produce the ICBM. Some part of that money would be well spent dismantling the current ICBMs than Minute Man 3. And that can't be done too soon. The highly motivated delusion has meant trillions of dollars of sales. Boeing, Northrup, Grumman, General Dynamics, Lheed, Rathon, [music] and the people who they talk to in the government and influence and hire and buy have failed humanity, failed

all of us. I repeat a judgment I've made at age 90 and before that long before that is that all humans are capable of participating participating in projects that are in their effects and their injustice evil and I'm talking now participating in the widest sense by silence and what the nuclear war planners of which I was one who have written plans for the possible destruction with weapons we possessed and readied and

alerted to kill billions of people and that's what it's always been. But it's a kind of ordinary evil in the sense of how widely we humans are vulnerable to participating in that. Uh how could I be that combination of stupid and uh irresponsible and whatever name you want to be. Well, I'm human. Uh and I wasn't the only one, which doesn't excuse me. The point is that to think that we are

led now by people smarter, more responsible than the ones who got us into World War I or two is simply wrong. So we're looking then at something that is a human capability in everybody. We're not condemned to act that way. We can transcend that and act otherwise. So we either change course, it will not come from within the Pentagon. It will not come from people who take more seriously their economic and

political relations than they do to the the survival of humanity. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. Can humanity survive the nuclear era? We don't know. I choose to act as if we have a chance. During his lifetime, Daniel [music] Ellsberg was arrested over 80 times for civil disobedience, standing up against nuclear war. He believed we could make nuclear war less of a [music] threat and avoid ending most life

on Earth. Sync to video time

Yemeni Forces Advance on Key Port City / Iran Expands Zone of Control in Hormuz
Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
Sep 7, 2026

Since Yemen's Ansar Allah demanded a lifting of the criminal Saudi blockade on Yemen, war has erupted between Ansar Allah forces and Saudi-backed mercenaries. That war now threatens Saudi control over large swaths of Yemen.

Meanwhile, Iran has announced a greatly expanded zone of control in the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters. An all-out tanker war has erupted between the U.S. military and Iranian forces.

Predictably, these developments drove up the price of oil today. More than ever, the global economy is threatened.

In this episode, Dimitri Lascaris discusses these developments. He also examines new evidence of a brain drain in the genocidal Israeli entity.



Transcript

Welcome back to the show. As you can see, I am joined for the first time and I'm honored to have him, Professor Peter Knik, uh, of the American University. He's also the director of nuclear studies there, the director of the nuclear institute there. Uh, Professor Knick, thanks for so much for joining. I want to just ask you right away uh about, you know, we've been covering the war, the US war

on Iran here for quite some time now. Developments seem that we are in a phase of the US denying that it's a war. Yet Iran continuing to try to meet its objectives as the US has not let up in trying to uh squeeze blockade and of course attack Iran when it suits it. So my question to you is there's been talk about nuclear conflict in this war actually for quite some time.

There are reports that the Trump administration was even putting tactical nuclear weapons on the agenda. Then he rejected and denied that that was the case. Guess I'm wondering in your perspective, how much closer to nuclear conflict are we now that the Iran war has been added to this equation alongside what's happening in Ukraine uh against nuclear armed Russia? Your thoughts? Sure, Danny. Um it's clearly we're in a very precarious moment right

now. We've got two ongoing wars, neither of which is going well for the invader. Uh, but especially the war in Iran. This Israeli US illegal, [snorts] stupid war has put the US in a desperate position right now. You know, Netanyahu have been trying to find an American president ignorant enough, stupid enough, [snorts] reckless enough to go to war with Iran for more than three decades. He finally found his mark in Donald

Trump. So, the US attacked. Trump had been warned from the beginning of exactly what could happen here. You know, Tulsi Gabbard warned him explicitly about the straight of Hormuz, about Iran hitting US allies and assets in the region, about the difficulty of getting out once this started and he ignored it. Even JD Vance would pre tried to convince him that this was not a good idea. But Trump went ahead and did

it. And now the US is trapped just as he was warned it would be uh with the effects on energy prices, on food prices, on the global economy and the US cannot get out. And so Iran effectively has its foot on Trump's neck and is not letting up. So Trump makes these threats. He threatens to wipe out a civilization within , turn Iran into rubble to make so won't won't be anything

left and won't be recognizable to use these other weapons or as Vance says, we've got stronger weapons in our toolkit we haven't used yet. Well, what have we not used yet? The first art I became a columnist not too long ago for Al Jazer and the first article that or op-ed that my friend [clears throat] Ivana Hughes the president of the nuclear age peace foundation in a Colombia professor and I wrote

was titled breaking the nuclear taboo and we said Trump has already broken every custom every norm every tradition US law international law. The only one, the only norm he hasn't broken yet, the only taboo he hasn't broken yet is the nuclear taboo. and that with people like Hegath Miller, Sebastian Gora, Netanyahu whispering in his ear that he's going to go down as the bravest, most courageous, best president ever to break this

81-year taboo as something that would really appre appeal to Trump. and he's put out these posts that, you know, his ex rants that show his finger on the nuclear button. And we know from his first uh first term in office, you know, he said, "What's the point of having nuclear weapons if we can't use them?" Which to a normal sane person means let's get rid of the nuclear weapons. To Donald Trump,

it means let's make them more usable. And so uh you know and it was during the first term when he was told that the US nuclear arsenal had declined demonstrably and his response was well we should incl. It was at that point that Secretary of State Tillerson called him a you know. But it's more than that. It's too dangerous to have somebody who's so unstable, so easily provoked, uh, so impulsive with

control over the nuclear arsenal. And there's nobody standing between him and the use of nuclear weapons. So he where he's trapped. So he tries more economic pressure. That doesn't work. He tries diplomacy. That doesn't work. Even though he's tried escalation then militarily and that hasn't worked. He still has one ace in the hole and that's the nuclear arsenal. So I I mean Marger Taylor Green has warned about this. Tucker Carlson has

warned about this. A lot of other people have warned about it. I don't have inside information that says for sure that Trump is seriously contemplating this. But I think that logically it makes sense that it's just too dangerous because what that could trigger, we don't know. But you know, the the Pentagon for years has been trying to war game limited nuclear war. They've never been able to do it. It never stops

after exchange of one or two or five or 10 nuclear weapons. Starts with small tactical nuclear weapons, ends in full-scale nuclear annihilation every time. So I'm very very worried about this. Yeah, I think your worries are understandable, Professor Khnik. And I wanted to ask you about the historical precedent of this. Uh you are a historian and you were the co-author of the untold history of the United States. This moment in many

ways feels historically unprecedented in that you're talking about the possibility of the United States using nuclear weapons in its wars. uh despite the fact that these wars seem to not be going well, what do you believe the connection is between those two things and is there any historical precedent? Of course, the US used nuclear weapons at one time, but it were it seems like far different circumstances. Now, how do you compare

this to the arc of history that the US has traveled on um up until this point? Well, one of the topics I've written about extensively is the use of nuclear weapons in World War II. you know, because it was such an unnecessary use. The United States knew the Japanese were trying to surrender, that the Japanese knew they were defeated. The United States, they had been intercepting the cables that were going back

and forth between foreign minister Togo in Tokyo and the ambassador uh in uh in um Moscow. And it was clear that the only obstacle to surrender was the US insistence on unconditional surrender which meant to the Japanese that the emperor would be tried as a war criminal and executed and they considered the emperor a deity. So that now the but they knew there was another way to end the war and that

was to wait for the Soviet invasion. Ever since the US got hit at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had been trying to convince Stalin to come in to the Pacific War. But Stalin was fighting the off the Nazis. You know, throughout most of the war in Europe, the US and Britain had 10 were confronting 10 German divisions. The Soviets alone were confronting more than 200. So, but at Yalta in February of 45, Stalin

agreed to come into the Pacific War three months after the end of the war in Europe. which put that date right around August 8th or August 9th. And the US intelligence had been saying for months that Soviet entry into the war would convince all Japanese that further resistance is feudal. So they knew that would provoke the Japanese surrender. Truman knew that. Truman said as after he had lunch with Stalin at Potam

on July 17th, he wrote in his diary diary, Stalin will be in the war by August 15th. He got the date wrong, but then he said, "Finish when that occurs." He writes home to his wife Best the next day. The Russians are coming in. We'll end the war a year sooner now. Think of all the kids who won't be killed. But the US used those bombs because it wanted to send a

message to the Soviet Union that if they interfered with US plans in Europe or in the Pacific, they were going to get this and much much worse, which is exactly how the Soviet leaders in the Kremlin interpreted it. So, you know, the first use of nuclear weapons and the lies that were spread about it that somehow this was the only alternative to a US invasion that would have cost the lives of

a half million American men and millions of Japanese and was therefore humane and but that's what ended the war. You know, that's just the kind of lies that we deal with as historians. But then the next, you know, there are so many times when we've come close, no closer of course than during the Cuban missile crisis, which we could talk about at length if you'd like, but we've had incident after incident

where either the Soviets were getting reports of an incoming US missile attack or the US was getting reports of an incoming Soviet missile attack. and but we had people in positions who refused to go by the book and order a a response. But we were lucky because we've come very very close. And during the Cuban missile crisis, uh the uh the one of the Soviet subs that was accompanying the other ships

to the quarantine line was getting hit with depth charges from the US destroyer and the electricity went out. The carbon dioxide was raising. People were passing out and they couldn't reach the Kremlin. So the commander on that ship gave the order arm and get ready to launch the nuclear torpedo. The US didn't know there were nuclear weapons aboard. And fortunately Araov who was the number two on that ship. He's above the

commander on on land but number two on the ship convinced him to stand down you know or else that's war II was about to start. So, you know, much of the world would not have survived that. And we don't know how many nuclear weapons would have been used on Okinawa. There were American missiles aimed not at the Soviet Union or Cuba, but aimed at China. So, you know, when Dan Ellburg asked

the Pentagon when for McNamera how many people would be killed in a nuclear war, they found out that from America's weapons alone, more than 600 million people would likely die. But now we know about nuclear winter. And we know that that would have triggered a nuclear winter and probably most people on the planet if not everybody would have died. So, but there's been so many of these close calls u and you

know we've we really have to think seriously about getting rid of these nuclear weapons which are the scourge where the main main existential threat to humanity and that threat only increases when you've got situations like we have now with Iran and Trump in charge uh and the people around Trump. I mean you look at Trump's adviserss, have you ever seen a more stupid and incompetent group of people advising a president? I

mean, we know there's been a lot of discussion lately about Hegath because he's in so far over his head and and you know, just wants to look like a, you know, central casting tough guy. um but is exactly the the worst secretary of defense or he likes to say secretary of war that we've ever had in this country and most dangerous but and even worse than hex is Steven Miller you know

who is an outright Nazi and uh believes doesn't believe you know believes might makes right and the US can use force wherever it wants and send these thugs into the streets of American cities or use force globally, you know, and so these people advising Trump who, you know, indeed indeed in his own right uh and out of his mind in a lot of ways, you know, how deranged this guy is. An

example that I sometimes use is of a Christmas party at the White House with friends and family close to AIDS. And with in the middle of this talk, greeting them, Trump goes off on a 10-minute tangent about poisonous snakes in Peru. And he says they got black mambas and white mambas. And he says, "You know how many people die every year from poisonous snake bites in Peru? 28,000." And so people looked

it up and they found that o over a 15-year period, only 10 people total had died of poisonous snake bites in Peru. That doesn't stop Trump. I mean, the man was really non-composant. He should be put away. He should be put, you know, in a safe padded cell where he can't hurt anybody. But that's not what's happening, unfortunately. No. And uh you know it's not a good sign when Pete Hegseth, your

secretary of defense has a nickname Pete Kegseth because of what is been a documented drinking problem and and this is somebody who believes himself to be a crusader. He wrote in a 2020 book of his covered with crusader tattoos on his body. Yeah. and identifies the left and China and essentially anybody that supposedly challenges so-called US superiority as uh worthy of destruction. So, uh, I'm wondering though, uh, Professor Kznik, this reality,

you you brought us all the way back to when the US used nuclear weapons on Japan and a lot have said to your argument and and the evidence you laid out that indeed the US was trying to send a message to the Soviet Union. And I'm wondering if we're here now in 2026 with Russia uh making significant headway against Ukraine and of course the NATO US forces backing it. Uh Iran making

significant headway in terms of being able to stand up to itself against US aggression and Israeli aggression. uh if if this these this kind of trajectory in history leads us to another moment where the United States might be wondering and wanting to send another message because it's both the nuclear weapons and it also seems the uh the ideas behind the weapons and the people behind the weapons that that can be so

concerning. Your thoughts on this and this kind of historical possible connection here? [snorts] Yeah, I mean one sane people would draw the lesson that war is obsolete as a means of settling disputes. The fact that the two most powerful countries in the world have struggled as much as they have. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is 4 and a half years old. They've been on the verge of taking the Dawnbass for a couple

years now. They can't close the deal. And Ukraine has been bombing deeper and deeper inside Russia, shutting down a lot of Russian shipping, destroying oil and military facilities, you know, creating this crisis inside Russia. Now, uh, and the United States can't defeat Iran with asymmetrical warfare, artificial intelligence, drone warfare. The war does not work as a way of settling disputes. You look at the history since World War II. What has the

18 minutesUnited States won? Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. The US was able to defeat a couple dozen Cuban construction workers, but at a very high price. Maybe the first Gulf War when we were able to slaughter so many Iraqis could be considered a military victory, but certainly not a political one. But but Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, I mean, where do any of these work? Iran is just the latest example. So, but

that's not the lesson, I'm afraid, that all the leaders are drawing. So, if we but we look at what the warnings are. June 10th, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, who was still DNI at that point, released a two and a half minute video starting off with Hiroshima and showing that the bombs that the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was peanuts compared to the weapons we have today. And she said that with these wararm mongers

in the major cities now that we're closer to nuclear annihilation today than we've ever been. And then later in October, Sergey Nishkin, the head of Russia's SVR, Foreign Intelligence Agency, said that civilization is at its most fragile moment since World War II and that the danger of of World War II looms around around us. But we've been knowing this for years. You go back to uh the general Mike Minhan who said

in 2023 that he thinks the US is going to be at war with China by 2025. Fortunately, that didn't happen. But Admiral Davidson said in back in 2021 that China is going to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Where did he get that? Nobody knows. uh or Admiral Thomas Buchanan who said that uh the United States is going is capable of fighting and winning a three-front nuclear war simultaneously against Russia,

China and North Korea and still keeping enough nuclear weapons in reserve to maintain US agy. Now that crazy idea is not so crazy. Uh I mean it's crazy but it's not so esoteric. For example, on August 20th, 2024, David Sanger had a front page piece in the New York Times in which he argued that or he reported that the US is planning to fight a three-front simultaneous nuclear war against Russia, China,

and North Korea. That very same day, the Bulletin Atomic Scientists had a big piece saying that there are now two schools of nuclear planners in the US. One believes an old style deterrence theory, mutually assured destruction, which makes a nuclear war unwinable, therefore unfightable. But a second school of nuclear planners believes that the US can strike preemptively and fight and win a nuclear war without Russia or China being able to retaliate.

And they say that with modern sonar technology and AI and other advanced technology, the US can now pinpoint the location of every Russian and Chinese submarine, which is the stable part of the triad that everybody said that you could always retaliate and therefore nuclear war cannot be fought. And now they think they can wipe out the uh sub the submarines, knock out the ICBMs with the preemptive attack and not shoot down

the bombers. And so there are people who are seriously contemplating this again. And they should be locked up. They they there's no place on this planet for people who are so reckless, so willing to gamble with the future of life on the planet that they are actually looking at these kinds of things. But on top of that, you add the madness that we're seeing in Europe where this kind of provocative behavior.

I mean, it's got me very, very worried. And I look, for example, what's the discourse now? What are they everybody talking about? They're talking about the alleged Russian acts of sabotage across Europe. Now, in fact, David Ignatius had a piece in the Washington Post today, and he says, I'll quote a little, he says, Russian hybrid activity in Europe became more ambitious and dangerous over the past six months, according to private analysis

shared with me by TD International, the Washingtonbased strategic advisory firm. TDI analysts counted 63 Russia link incidents against European targets since March, including 43 drone or other airspace incidents, six sabotage operations or plots, six cyber or electronic warfare attacks, and five hostile maritime incidents. The New York Times today has a big article talking about all these sabotage. This stuff is being bandied about everywhere. Is it true? I don't know. I don't

know how we can know if any of this is true, but we know why Russia might be doing it. And that's because the Europeans are supplying the armaments to Ukraine to fight the war as well as the intelligence to fight the war against Russia. And so it is to me plausible, but I don't know if it's true or not, that Russia might be trying to sabotage the munitions factories in Europe right

now. But I know that it's very very dangerous. And so you had you had Ratcliffe flying over to Moscow, the uh the intelligence chief, head of the CIA flying over to Moscow. Was it because he's warning about nuclear war and the possibility of nuclear war or just telling the Russians that they're losing [laughter] as if Putin doesn't know the situation a lot better than Radcliffe knows the situation? You know, we don't

know. But we know that things are escalating and they're getting more crazy. That's why I began an initiative uh where I drafted a letter to uh to Pope Leo. Pope Leo who took the name Pope Leo I 14th to carry on the progressive traditions of Pope Leo I 13th. Pope Leo the 14th has denounced warfare. He's denounced, he's called for nuclear abolition, for getting rid of nuclear weapons. He's been a moral

voice who one of the few people who speaks for the planet and that's why I admire him. Uh, you know, you've got she wanting to make China great again and Trump want to make America great again and Putin want to make Russia great again and Netanyahu wanted to make Israel great again. Modi want to make India great again. But the pope has been talk calling speaking for the planet. What we need

at this moment is planetary consciousness that as the human species what unites us is so much greater than what divides us now. And so we need to be viewing the environment and the global warming from a planetarism perspective and diplomacy. Under Biden, diplomacy became a dirty word, a four-letter word. And you know, we 26 minuteshaven't regained that now. So there's no thinking in Europe about how we're going to peacefully resolve these

questions. There's thinking everywhere. We have to remilitarize. we have to spend more and more of our money on our militaries. It's the only thing that's going to stop Russia. You know, this kind of mad thinking that's going on. So, we're appealing send this appeal to Pope Leo. I sent it yesterday to uh Cardinal um Pero Perolan who's the Vatican Secretary of State. I got a preliminary letter to Pope Leo through Cardinal

Samero. I was in Italy last month for uh an exciting program called Tonal Estate. It's an alternative international university program. Six of my students accompanied me last year and again this year. Uh and Cardinal Samero poke and uh so and he agreed to give the letter to the Pope. Um, so we're trying to get it to him and we're asking him to call an emergency global summit minimally of Putin, Xiinping, and

Donald Trump to get the world off this course of unending war and of threatened nuclear war. The nuclear threats are just escalating by the day and the situation's become more desperate. I know that Putin is under enormous pressure from the hawks in Russia to act much more aggressively to escalate and some have publicly called for Russia use of tactical nuclear weapons. Carggonov Medve and others who are very influential in Russia and

I know that there are hawks who are urging Trump to do the same 28 minutesthing. So, and then the situation in in Asia, you know, that could blow up at any time. The US is sending ships through the Taiwan Strait as are other countries, you know, and so we see these the dangerous situations with desperate leaders in some situations. And Putin told a friend of mine that he's under enormous pressure from

the hawks inside of Russia. We know that the war is not popular in Russia. I'm going to Russia next week, you know, and to and I'll be giving three four four talks and sharing the documentary jury of an international film festival. Uh, and I'll be urging my Russian colleagues and others there from all over the world, 150 plus countries are going to be there. uh that we need to think about how

we can settle these differences in a peaceful way through diplomacy and not through war. Narendra Modi likes to say this is not a time of war but it is a time of war in reality because the wars are going on. It should not be a time of war. Yeah. And uh two things I want to put you to your attention and for you to comment on given all that you just said.

You know, you said Biden uh made diplomacy a dirty word in many ways uh cutting the cords of a lot of diplomatic channels of course with Russia and with much of the world during that period. And then Trump use has used diplomacy all throughout this administration as a weapon uh to uh escalate and start the war against Iran. faking diplomacy, using diplomacy to buy time to strike Iran later. Uh this is

something incredibly dangerous. And then you have the propaganda, Professor Kznik, where even just recently Trump goes on and says that the US war in Iran helped prevent a nuclear attack on the UK. So this is what's coming out. You just laid out all the examples of where US officials have literally been planning nuclear attacks with an actual nuclear arsenal. And here Trump in the Trump administration since the very beginning of it

as well as since the first Trump administration has been promoting this uh fabrication of Iran has nuclear weapons and it's going to use them on on on uh you know the UK. It's going to use them on Israel. It's going to use them on us eventually. uh comment on this uh contradiction here. It's it's so loud that um on the one hand some may find it convincing. On the others, I think

there's a lot of people who are just tired of it. But your thoughts on on what you make of it and why it's important. [snorts] Well, first of all, I don't think that very many people believe anything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. I mean, the man is a pathological liar. During his first term, the Washington Post cataloged what was it 25,573 blatant lies that he told. Um, so you know,

so anything that Trump says is immediately dismissed or discounted uh and disbelieved. However, you know, the the irony that you're pointing out is a very very important one. We're talking about Iran supposedly having nuclear weapons even though the CIA reported that Iran gave up its nuclear program back in 2003. Even though under the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal that Obama negotiated in 2015 after years of negotiations, we know that Iran was

the most heavily surveiled, scrutinized, investigated country in the world. The IAEA was sending in spot negot spot investigators without any advanced warning anytime they wanted. and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that there's no evidence at all that Iran is doing anything other than abiding by by this. And so that allowed for enrichment of uranium to 3.67%. Way way below the 90% really needed for weapons. We know that

Iran shipped out 97 to 98% of its enriched uranium. That it moth balled most of its centrifuges. That Iran was abiding by this. But because it was Obama's only good foreign policy achievement really, when Trump got in there, it was dedicated to blowing it up, which he did in 2018. And so Iran didn't have a nuclear program. After the Trump blew up the JCPOA, then Iran began enriching up to 60% in

order to have this as a negotiating tool. Uh but the United States did not negotiate. The United States had sucker punched Iran twice uh back in June and then again in February. So June the previous year. So you know the situation but the craziness that I deal with. For example, you've got Mcronone and Starmer and Meritz and Burnham and Tusk and the Scandinavians all warning saying as Rut said, the head of

head of NATO said that if Russia gets a win in Ukraine, it's going to they're going to march against all of Europe and gobble up one piece of Europe after another. And that's what the Europeans believe and that's what they keep saying. As a result, Narraki, the the president of Poland, says Poland needs its own nuclear weapons. Zilinski says, "Either let us join NATO or give us nuclear weapons." France is expanding

its nuclear umbrella over Germany and Austria and other places. We've got this not just in Europe. 73% of South Koreans want South Korea to have its own nuclear weapons. We've got a planetary sickness right now. But it's not just the leaders. the military leaders, the intelligence chiefs, the other political leaders. But one of the craziest things I heard was French General Fabian Mandon, who's the highest ranking military official in France said

recently told the uh a meeting of French governors. He said that the problem with France is not stopping Russia is that France doesn't want to lose its children in a war with Russia. Yeah, of course France doesn't want to use lose its children. During World War I, France lost 50% of its young men between the ages of 15 and 30. France didn't recover from that for a long, long time. And yes,

the French don't want to lose their children. But we're hearing the same thing from the intelligence chiefs across Europe and the leaders and the uh military officials. It's crazy. It's taking Europe taking Russia 5 years to try to defeat Ukraine to try to get 20% of Ukraine. And so is Putin going to want to go to war with NATO? He's not a a mad man. And he says that this is ludicy.

This is idioty what these people are saying. Tulsi Gabbard said the same thing. In her lucid moments, Tulsi was terrific. In her other moments, she was a sickopant toward Trump and that was embarrassing, but she said a lot of things that were smart, which is part of why Trump wanted to get rid of her. He was furious with her for releasing that video about the nuclear threat uh in June of 2025.

So, you know, we're in a dangerous situation. So, we're appealing to Pope Leo as the one figure. Maybe Gutteras has that. Sometimes Luna has that. Lula has that. Sometimes even Xiinping speaks for the planet. But we want to convene an emergency summit because I see with my kids, my students, you know, they they know how tenuous the future is. For young people, they know about global warming. That's what they know about

the most. They're learning now about nuclear war. They were outraged by what they saw Israel do to Gaza. They were they also were angry about the October 7th attack on Israel. But the burning moral issue for that generation has been Gaza. And so, you know, we need to get rational leadership once again. And what happened, what we say in our appeal to Pope Leo is that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, one

of the determinative uh things that was done was Pope John the 23rd issued an appeal to the leaders to get us off the the get us away from the likelihood of World War II back in 1962. And Cruchev cited that. And we know that the Pope's appeal influenced Kennedy also, our first Catholic president, but it but explicitly Kruev talked about how it gave him the cover in part to end the Cuban

missile crisis peacefully. So let's give cover to Trump and Putin to end the wars today and let's give cover to to settle things peacefully in the Pacific as well. You know the it's just too dangerous. We can't play with our planet. As Jonathan Shell said, we don't have two planets where we can experiment with one and then save the other one. We have one planet. If this goes wrong, then there's not

going to be anybody left alive to tell them that they were idiots to do what they did. Yeah, those are wise words. And uh, Professor Knick, you know, as we uh, get toward the end here, uh, I I would like your actually your assessment of how close because the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have really put the doomsday clock very close to midnight. Um, the Cuban Missile Crisis is often viewed as the

moment in US history, in world history, where uh, a full-scale nuclear war was on the brink. And some I mean over the years, ever since I've been covering geopolitics, covering world politics, studying world politics, seen many commentators and analysts also say that this great power confrontation that the United States is engaging with with Russia, China, now we can say with Iran, given that Iran has uh certainly elevated its stature during this

war, that that leads us closer to a Cuban missile crisis scenario, almost like a trip wire, like the the risks, the act the potential for a so-called accident or a misread or something like this are higher than ever. What do you make of this? And maybe you give some context about the Cuban missile crisis which can help us understand just how correct or incorrect or or factual this is. What happened in

' 62? I mean, Kruev made a stupid mistake by putting the missiles into Cuba and the nuclear warheads and not announcing it to the world. Had he announced it, it would have been an effective deterrent. But the fact that he did announce it meant that it put the world on a trip wire toward nuclear war. He was planning to announce it on November 7th on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. And

but he did that because the US was planning an invasion to overthrow the government in Cuba, which we're still trying to do. uh and because uh the US had nuclear weapons right on Russia's doorstep in in Turkey. So they thought this was the equalizer also because they had they believed that the US was planning for a first strike against the Soviet Union because of the fact that the US had a 10

to 100 to1 advantage and McNamera announced we were going to build a thousand more in ICBMs. 41 minutesuh the numbers that the joint chiefs uh and Stratcom wanted was far more than a thousand. McNar thought that was the lowest number he could get away with. So it was a very very dangerous moment. And even though one of the big difference between then and now is then we had Kennedy and Cruchev in

control and they both hated the thought. They both had known war in the past and they hated the thought of war and they did everything they could to avoid a nuclear confrontation and yet they both realized that they had lost control that in a crisis you can't keep the control and so uh the Cubans shot down a U2 plane which was the pretext for the joint chiefs to go in there and

that was very very close to happening. There was that incident at sea that I mentioned before. Uh what pro a computer malfunction in the US and reports that incoming missiles were going to take out US cities. US flights going over the Soviet Union. I mean there's so many things that could have triggered a war. And so right after that ended the Cuban missile crisis, partly with the Pope's intervention, Kruev writes an

incredible letter to Kennedy on October 30th, 1962, just a couple days after the missile crisis ended. And he said, "Our from evil, some good must come. Our people have both felt the burning flames of thermonuclear war. What we have to do now is [laughter] elim eliminate every conflict between us that could trigger a new crisis. And Kennedy was slow in responding, but he finally got it. And the culmination of that, his

new thinking was the his incredible commencement address on June 10th, 1963 at my university, American University. the best speech by an American president in the 20th century and he calls for an end to the cold war and he calls for an end to the nuclear arms race. Uh and then he goes ahead and he concludes the first test ban nuclear arms control treaty the 63 partial testban treaty you know and he

wanted to change the world and had he lived and Kruev remained in power they might have been able to do it but that was the last time we came that close the last time. Although we can say Reikovic, Reagan and Gorbachev came within one word of eliminating nuclear weapons, but Gor but Reagan would not do it. He wanted to keep his Star Wars fantasy. And so, you know, we've come close in

a lot of ways. We've had come close to doing the right thing. We've more often come close to doing the wrong thing. But these are fallible human beings who are in charge here. And you know, especially when you look at the people in charge of the US arsenal now, they scare the crap out of me. And uh you know I think that enough people are realizing that now that an intervention by

the pope at this moment. There's just also been the last couple days articles in Reuters and other places saying indicating that Putin is much more open to peace talks. is an article saying that Kushner and Witoff, the Laurel and Hardy of diplomacy are going back to Moscow and and are going to go to Kev also. You know that that people are talking about negotiations again. And so it's the right moment for

a push by the papacy, by the Vatican. Pope Leo was the right person to do it. Professor Knickik, it was incredibly an honor to have you on. I hope to have you on again very soon. My pleasure, Danny. Anytime. But you know, people can can go to the Nuclear Insanity Substack. It's founded by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. They can sign onto this appeal. We've got about 125 very, very prominent signers

from all different walks of life. former presidents, former prime minister of Japan, uh, former, you know, rock musicians, uh, Roger Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd just signed on, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, you know, all kinds of leading experts around the world. And but and then we've got a thousand more signers at least. And so what we need as much support as can as we can get because that's what's going to

actually make this something that the Vatican and other can't can't do and governments can't not do if you build up that kind of pressure because a lot of people want to do the right thing and it's really a minority who are threatening our planet right now. Yeah, that is 100% the case. Uh, I'm going to put that link in the video description below right now. Uh, everybody hit the like button before

you go. That helps boost this show after we are done here. And of course, uh, you I want to thank everyone who viewed today. Uh, thanks again, Peter. Uh, we will definitely be in touch. All right, everybody. That's it for today. I will see you all again