Global Nuclear Threat Rises

Good morning!

Nuclear weapons are back in vogue after decades of efforts to phase them out. More governments are looking to these potent weapons for national defense. And as worldwide nuclear arms buildup intensifies, so do the risks.

[BRIEF]

• That’s the key finding of sipri Yearbook 2026, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security, published today.

Repeated warnings in biblical prophecy of nuclear war in our day should make us pay close heed to this grave assessment.

The global inventory as of January stands at an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads across nine countries—the U.S., Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

• About 9,745 of these are in active military stockpiles—about 130 more than a year earlier. Of those, 4,012 are thought to be deployed on missiles and aircraft, and 2,100 to 2,200 are on high operational alert.

Think about that. A rough estimate of the average yield is around 300 to 500 kilotons per warhead. Applied across 12,000 warheads, that means a total destructive yield in the range of 3,600 to 6,000 megatons—equal to 3.6 to 6 billion tons of tnt.

• The Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. So the global arsenal represents something like 240,000 to 400,000 Hiroshima-scale weapons.
• That’s the scale of catastrophic energy Jesus warned about in Matthew 24:22: “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (New International Version).

Given such numbers, minor ups and downs in supply are practically moot. Last year the overall warhead count declined slightly, but only because Russia and the U.S.—which possess 83 percent of the total—are dismantling retired weapons.

• Yet the rate of decline is slowing and will likely reverse soon, sipri writes, “as the pace of dismantlement is slowing, while the deployment of new nuclear weapons is accelerating.”

Decades of post-Cold War reductions are history. Today, nuclear arsenals are growing as a strategic factor for several nations.

• All nine nuclear states are modernizing their arsenals and deploying new systems. Many are increasing stockpiles or diversity of weapons.
• China is updating its nuclear forces faster than any other country. At a military parade last September, it presented a complete nuclear triad—weapons deployable from land, sea and air—for the first time.
• Russia, China and others are making nuclear-capable glide vehicles and cruise missiles capable of maneuvering to evade defenses.
• mirvs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) are proliferating thanks to Russia and China, while India, Pakistan and North Korea are developing them. The difficulty of defending against multiple warheads in every missile increases the strategic rationale for other nations to launch preemptive strikes.
• Dual-capable systems (with both nuclear and conventional weapons on the same platforms) are growing. This too complicates crisis decision-making and heightens the danger of escalation.
• AI integration into command systems also adds uncertainty and risk.

All this comes amid rising regional and global tensions, wars and rumors of wars.

Prophetic warnings about the threats posed by these weapons of mass destruction truly must be heeded. Read Gerald Flurry’s booklet Nuclear Armageddon Is ‘At the Door.’

Iran and Israel Back to Direct Combat

Iran on Sunday fired a missile at Israel for the first time since the ceasefire went into effect April 8—apparently a reprisal for an Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon. Israel retaliated with air strikes on Iran, including on Tehran. This renewed conflict threatens the ceasefire United States President Donald Trump has been working hard to make permanent.

• Iran claimed its attack was a warning for Israel to leave Hezbollah alone and that it would send further attacks if Israel continued. This is as Hezbollah continues to strike Israel of its own accord.

President Trump has been pressuring Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon because they could derail his peace negotiations with Iran.

• Trump reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran’s Sunday attack. Netanyahu did it anyway.
• After the strikes, President Trump told the Financial Times that the flare-up is “not going to have any impact on the deal.”

“I call the shots. I call all the shots. [Netanyahu] doesn’t call the shots.”
—President Trump to the Financial Times

Trump appears desperate to reach an agreement with Iran, even as Iran blatantly shows it doesn’t want peace.

• For Israel, permanently neutering Iran is a matter of national survival.
• Though the U.S. and Israel entered the war as allies, the U.S.’s rush to get a peace agreement with Iran at apparently any cost could rupture the alliance.

Late theologian Herbert W. Armstrong proved in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy (request your free copy) that the American and Jewish peoples are brother nations descended from ancient Israel. America specifically is descended from the Israelite tribe of Manasseh. Prophecies like Isaiah 9:21 foretell Manasseh and Judah suffering from dangerous division. The fallout from the Iran war could heavily contribute to this.

SPLC Reimbursed KKK for Cross-Burnings

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center paid Ku Klux Klan members, fascists and other extremists $4.1 million to remain in their notorious hate groups, according to a superseding indictment filed last week. Some of this money was used to fund cross-burning events in America.

The original indictment, filed in April, accused the splc of secretly funneling more than $3 million to individuals associated with the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America and other hate groups from 2014 to 2023. The superseding indictment raises the figure to $4.1 million.

• In one alleged example, a leader of the National Socialist Party of America who wanted to leave the white nationalist movement approached the splc. Instead of helping him exit, prosecutors say, the splc offered him a monthly salary, funneled through a fictitious entity, to keep the organization active.
• In another, two Ku Klux Klan members sought help leaving the group in 2010, citing safety fears. The splc instead allegedly offered the pair $1,200 per month plus expenses through a shell corporation to remain in the Klan. Among the reimbursed expenses were costs “incurred for cross-burning events,” including wood and fuel.

The splc maintains that the payments were necessary to monitor these groups and prevent violence.

• Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at an April 21 news conference that the splc was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

Joe Biden told a joint session of Congress in 2021 that “the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today is from white supremacist terrorism.” To counter this threat, his administration explored contracting private cybersecurity firms to monitor online conversations and search activities of American citizens without traditional warrants.

• Now we are learning that much of the “white supremacist” threat was manufactured by groups like the splc, trying to create a threat to combat.

The Obama and Biden administrations tried to destroy America’s constitutional republic, as Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains in America Under Attack. Far-left organizations like the splc played a big part in the Democrats’ attempts to destroy America through lies, propaganda and subterfuge.

• Yet God is now exposing many of these lies so people have a chance to turn the country around.

Groups like the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America are evil, but they are evils that the radical left is trying to keep alive in its efforts to turn America into a police state.

Gay Pride Is Back in Israel

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, celebration of the homosexual movement has been slightly muted. This year, it is back in full swing.

Jerusalem’s pride march, held on June 4, was more political than in previous years, now that an election is imminent. The traditional route changed to finish with a rally in Sacher Park, near the Knesset.

“It’s always more like a protest than anything else. This year, especially.”
—Hadas Bloedmendal, chair of the march’s organizer, Jerusalem Open House

Israel will hold elections by October 27, and homosexual issues are becoming part of the campaign.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest rival, Naftali Bennett, is a religious Zionist but has compromised with the “lgbt movement,” saying that if he is elected, he will move Israel closer to legalizing homosexual “marriage.”

Over 2,000 police guarded the 10,000 marchers. Some who came to counterprotest reported that they were treated as criminals, despite breaking no law.

Tel Aviv’s much larger pride parade is scheduled for June 12. It will be the first full-sized parade since Oct. 7, 2023.

• The 2024 parade was a shrunken “Pride and Hope Rally.” 2025’s event was cancelled due to Iranian bombs.

“Pride Land” celebrations at the site of Sodom and Gomorrah near the Dead Sea appear to have been postponed. Originally scheduled for June 1–4, it appears they have been pushed back to July 1–4.

• The Mideast’s largest “pride event” will, according to Israel’s Walla, “transform the Dead Sea region into a full-fledged gay city.” It will include 15 hotels, a central performance area and festivals for families.

Israel is still reeling from the October 7 attack. Missiles rain down from Hezbollah into Northern Israel daily. Iran launched missiles just this weekend.

One member of the Knesset said the nation’s homosexual movement is “the most dangerous thing for the State of Israel, more than Islamic State, more than Hezbollah, more than Hamas.”

• That statement was read out and loudly booed at the Jerusalem event, but it is spot on.
• Herbert W. Armstrong warned that the “downward plunge” in morals was “rapidly becoming a greater threat to humanity than the hydrogen bomb!”

Whether or not people want to believe it, it is this “downward plunge” that reveals why God did not protect Israel from Hamas on October 7. Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in “What Is Israel’s Sin?”:

Isaiah 59:2 says that when we harbor sin in our life, God hides Himself from us. He will not hear our prayers, and we lose His protection. That sin separates us from God and joins us together with the chief terrorist, our adversary, the devil.

That is why Satan’s primary objective is to get us to coexist with evil—even if just a little bit. Because he knows it will grow.

Many of Hamas’s victims on October 7 were attending an all-night rave, full of illegal drugs, on the Sabbath. That attack was a warning. Israel is depriving itself of God’s protection.

IN OTHER NEWS

Russian satellites can interfere with gps in Europe: Russian satellites have caused at least 3 second-long gps outages in Europe since 2019, the New York Times reported Friday. The outages caused no issues, and the European Union’s investigation into the incidents is classified; however, this demonstrates a key Russian hybrid warfare capability and constitutes yet another motivation for Europeans to militarize and develop their own high-tech defense and strike capabilities.

Somalian government restores order in capital city: Somalia’s government declared on Friday that the opposition groups that began fighting government forces in Mogadishu on Wednesday after the Parliament’s decision to extend President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed’s term have been “disarmed and removed.” The New York Times reported Thursday that residents called the fighting “the worst violence there in years.” Somalia is strategically located on the Red Sea, and its continuing instability poses an opportunity for Iran to boost its influence in the region.

Pope Leo rallies Spain against the U.S. and Israel: After being welcomed by Spain’s king on Saturday, Pope Leo xiv praised the Spanish government’s opposition to wars. Spain has been a vocal critic of Israel and the U.S. war against Iran and its terrorist proxies. Yesterday, he was greeted by more than 1.2 million people. Not even the most famous soccer teams draw such a crowd. He used the opportunity to encourage Spain’s opposition to the U.S. In a historic first, he addressed members of Spain’s parliament at the Congress of Deputies in Madrid today. “Every war ultimately constitutes a painful defeat of the capacity to negotiate,” he said. “True security, however, stems from justice, patient dialogue, respect for international law and a policy capable of placing the lives of peoples above the interests that profit from war.” International law did not prevent Iran-backed Hamas terrorists from murdering, raping and torturing Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Nor did it prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons with the goal of wiping out Israel. Bible prophecy shows that the Catholic Church will fuel even more hostility toward the U.S. and Israel in the future.

Lebanon’s president tells Iran to get out: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told cnn on Friday that the Lebanese people “are fed up and we want to live in peace,” adding “they deserve not seeing their homes being destroyed every five to 10 years.” Notably, he mainly blamed Iran, telling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: “It’s not your country; it’s our country.” He also said, “The people of Lebanon are paying the price … for the sake of your own interest” and added that Lebanon’s interests “do not coincide with your interests.” Such direct accusations from the leader of what until recently was an Iranian proxy are jarring. It is another demonstration of how Lebanon is desperate to decouple from Iran and join the West.

American pleads guilty to spying for China: Thomas Pauken ii, son of Republican politician Tom Pauken, pleaded guilty on Thursday to working as an unregistered foreign agent. “By his own admission, not only did Thomas Pauken attempt to infiltrate U.S. political circles at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security, but he gathered intelligence on his American targets and reported it back to his Chinese intelligence handlers,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the fbi’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. “This case illustrates the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party will go to undermine our democratic institutions and degrade our political freedoms ….” America needs to wake up to the threat from China.

Iranian-American charged with selling U.S. technology to Iran: On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Jamshid Ghomi, a dual citizen of Iran and the United States, had been charged with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Ghomi allegedly sold computer equipment to Iran’s nuclear program and received more than $15 million from 2011 to 2024. While the U.S. fights a war abroad, it must also combat traitors within its borders.