Trump says ‘hell will rain down’ if Iran gets nuclear weapons
North Korea’s latest spirited defence of its nuclear arsenal signals a strategy that goes beyond rejecting international calls to disarm and instead leans into mounting global superpower rivalry to legitimise its weapons build-up. The verbal offensive comes as North Korea could soon face renewed pressure to return to the negotiating table. Analysts say the winding down of the Iran conflict may allow Washington and its allies to refocus attention on the Korean peninsula. Pyongyang has also seized...
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent Pyongyang visit may ultimately be remembered as a turning point in the international debate over North Korea’s nuclear weapons. While most headlines focused on the visit’s timing and the many pledges made by the two leaders aimed at expanding cooperation, the most significant development may have been what was left unsaid. Throughout the visit, neither side publicly referenced the denuclearisation issue. On the contrary, Xi called for expanded cooperation in...
China might be downplaying nuclear weapons by not mentioning the issue after Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea but that does not mean it has accepted its neighbour’s growing arsenal, according to analysts. Neither Beijing nor Pyongyang mentioned nuclear weapons or denuclearisation in their statements on the Chinese president’s two-day state visit to Pyongyang this week. Since Xi’s summit with US President Donald Trump in May, observers have been speculating that Beijing’s stance on Pyongyang’s...
China expanded its nuclear warhead stockpile over the past year and might have increased the number deployed with operational forces, a Swedish think tank report said, warning that major powers were “walking away” from disarmament commitments. According to the report released on Monday as part of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) latest yearbook, China added 20 warheads to its nuclear stockpile as of January 2026, bringing the total to 620, up from 600 a year...