With the pandemic and climatic upheavals, we have forgotten the threat posed to humanity by the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by nine countries.
The growing risk of atomic war is rarely mentioned in the media. The 2021 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) ‘end of the world clock’ hand is 100 seconds from midnight. This is his way of estimating the growing threat of nuclear war.
Many fingers near the button
It is that the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are currently developing new atomic weapons and also new “modes of”. employment ”.
The Strategic Command, in charge of the American nuclear arsenal, recently declared that it must “take into account the possibility of a conflict which could very quickly lead an adversary to consider the use of nuclear as the least bad option.” When Trump boasted that his nuclear “button” was bigger and more effective than Kim Jong-Un’s, he was bolstering the illusion that the leaders of nuclear countries alone control their weapons of mass destruction. The very nature of nuclear weapons makes the power to use them decentralized and dispersed. In fact, there are thousands of people who can start nuclear war “inadvertently” or otherwise. And there is the combination of unforeseeable circumstances which can have fatal consequences for nuclear installations located in conflict zones.
Last week, a Syrian missile exploded near Israel’s Dimona nuclear center. The missile, fired against Israeli planes 40 km north of Damascus, missed its target to crash 30 km from Dimona atomic installations in the Negev desert some 250 km south of the Syrian border.
Israel has admitted that its air defenses were unable to intercept the missile in its airspace, which is one of the best protected on the planet.
Dimona, a frequent target
Israeli media had just reported that the air defenses around the Dimona reactor had been reinforced in anticipation of a possible missile or drone attack from Iran-backed forces. An Iranian newspaper had called for targeting the Dimona reactor to avenge the recent Israeli sabotage operation against the Natanz nuclear site in Iran.
Even an accidental missile strike against Dimona could have triggered a war with Iran. In October 2012, an Iranian drone Shahed 129, operated by Lebanese Hezbollah, was shot down near the research center by an Israeli hunter.
In 2014, Hamas fired three long-range missiles at the Dimona reactor located 40 km from the Gaza Strip. One of the missiles was intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system, the other two fell into the desert without causing damage. Built with help from France in the 1950s, Dimona produced Israel’s 90 or so nuclear warheads.