The Department of War announced a nearly $21 billion, five-year contract to produce Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM). While AIM-120 missiles are designed for warplanes in air-to-air combat, they can also be used as ground-launched missile interceptors.
The Pentagon announced the contract on Monday. “We are working across the defense industry to ramp production and build the Arsenal of Freedom,” said Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey. “This award strengthens our ability to equip the Joint Force and our allies with a proven air-to-air capability, ensuring our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage.”
Raytheon, or RTX, is the primary beneficiary of the contract. The deal was issued as an undefinitized contract action, meaning details of the cost and number of missiles could change. Under the contract, Raytheon will produce up to 1,900 AMRAAM missiles annually.
The AMRAAM, or AIM-120, missiles are designed to be fired from America’s fleet of fighter jets. There are multiple variants of the AIM-120 missile, and the Pentagon announcement did not disclose how many of each variant Raytheon has been contracted to produce.
While the AIM-120 is primarily an air-to-air missile, it can also be fired from the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), a ground-based air defense system. The AMRAAM-ER is an extended-range variant designed specifically for ground-based air defense.
Ukraine has relied heavily on the NASAMS system for air defenses. In April, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the US has between 4,000 and 4,500 AIM-120 missiles in its stockpile. It noted that the US could use the AIM-120s as a cheaper option to down Iranian drones compared to Patriot or Standard Missiles. However, the AIM-120s still cost $1 million each.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a letter on 29 September addressing the US population – urging it to “force” Washington to “distance” itself from Israel, and expressing a readiness for “coexistence and peace,” while also vowing to continue fighting for Iran’s rights.
“Our purpose in sending a letter to the US people goes beyond media propaganda and creating familiarity with Iran’s reasoning. This is not a short-term or purely promotional move … Choosing a ‘letter’ as a tool to convey our message directly and clearly was a method selected based on the realities on the ground,” said IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi.
“The countries neighboring or located near the US, whether along its land or maritime borders, do not possess the military and security capabilities to pose a serious threat to the US,” he added following the letter’s release, urging US citizens to question Washington’s military expansionism and the presence of hundreds of its military bases across the globe.
Mohebbi went on to ask, “What is the purpose of deploying 800 US military bases around the world?”
The letter itself poses several questions to the US people, while urging them to “see through” the official claims made by Washington.
This included US, as well as Israeli, claims regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
“For 25 years … the [US] claimed that Iran is only … months or weeks away from building a nuclear bomb … If this were true, why has Iran not yet gone through with its plan to build a bomb? If Iran was only a little while away from making the bomb 25 years ago, when it was far less technologically advanced … then it should possess dozens of nuclear bombs today.”
It also pointed to US intelligence reports acknowledging that Tehran is not looking to weaponize its program.
Additionally, it slams US official claims and declares to the US people that Washington’s bases were “decimated” throughout the war.
This has been confirmed through satellite imagery and western media, not just Iranian outlets.
Tehran, through the letter, also repeated its longstanding declarations to the people of the US that Iran is opposed to their government and not them themselves.
“The people who burn the American flag are not hostile to the American people; it is the oppression and aggression of the American government that they are denouncing,” the letter reads.
“We can live together in peaceful coexistence. Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed,” it adds.
The letter also urges the US people to “distance itself from Israel, as the occupiers of Palestine will, sooner or later, have to leave the land they occupy and return to their countries of origin.”
The letter stresses that Tehran will “continue fighting” despite “all the hardships that our enemies impose on us.”
It comes as reports indicate Washington is planning to renew bombing against Iran. Tehran has vowed much wider retaliation than before in the event of such actions.
The US, Denmark, and Greenland have signed a new agreement to expand American military activity on the island. Washington calls Greenland vital to its security, but an expanded military presence also raises an older question: What risks does the Arctic island take on in return?
The agreement builds on a defense partnership dating back to 1951. That history includes an episode that brought the risks of Washington’s Cold War strategy into sharp focus: An American mission over Greenland that ended in a nuclear disaster.
The nuclear patrols over Greenland
In the 1960s, in the middle of the Cold War, the US Air Force launched Operation Chrome Dome. This mission implied keeping bombers armed with nuclear weapons on continuous airborne alert, ready to strike the USSR if necessary. If you’ve seen the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’, you’ll remember that Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong’s crew was involved in such a patrol mission.
Theoretically, this strategy was feasible: It would have made it impossible for the USSR to disarm the US with a single blow. However, in practice, as the number of nuclear-armed aircraft patrols increased, so did the number of incidents involving nuclear weapons.
Then-US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advocated for ending this program, arguing that Americans had already established an effective early warning system for ballistic missile launches, so the US could take fewer risks and cut costs. However, the Strategic Air Command resisted this idea, fearing it would decrease their importance and result in budget cuts.
A horrific incident occurred in 1966 over Spain when a bomber collided with a refueling tanker aircraft, resulting in several fatalities and nuclear bombs landing on beaches and in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this incident, the US considered the nuclear threat from the USSR a matter of primary importance, one which justified any security measures.
Eventually, after intense debates, a compromise was reached: The number of patrolling bombers would be reduced, but the airborne patrols would continue.
Thule Air Base in northern Greenland was established in the 1950s. A Mercator projection map gives a distorted sense of distance; in reality, its location was very convenient for potentially launching missiles at the USSR and monitoring missile launches from there. It also provided a convenient vantage point for reconnaissance of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet nuclear test site.
Thus, the US Strategic Air Command built a military base in northern Greenland. The name referred to ‘Ultima Thule’ (farthest Thule) – a mythical island at the edge of the world. The base housed bombers, reconnaissance planes, radar systems, missile launch sites, and early-warning radars. In its most active period, Thule base housed about 10,000 personnel. Additionally, the US launched the highly classified Project Iceworm, which aimed to build a wide network of nuclear missile launch sites concealed in tunnels beneath the ice. One could say Greenland became thoroughly inhabited.
Seven men, four hydrogen bombs, and a fire in the sky
On January 21, 1968, a B-52 bomber rose into the air, carrying four megaton bombs. It took off from New York to visually monitor the nuclear alert system, bearing four thermonuclear bombs, each with a yield exceeding one megaton.
The standard crew consisted of five members; however, a third pilot and a substitute navigator were included on the mission.
Everything started out smoothly. But eventually, the factor of human error came into play.
The third pilot, Major Alfred d’Amario, took aboard a few cloth-covered foam cushions to make his flight more comfortable. He placed the cushions under the instructor navigator’s seat and went to replace co-pilot Leonard Svitenko, who went to take his rest period. The cushions remained in place.
Not long after, the pilots opened an engine bleed valve which channeled hot air from the engine to the heater. Unfortunately, the heater was defective and quickly became dangerously hot.
At some point, the pilots noticed the smell of burning rubber filling the cockpit. While they searched for the source of the burning, a fire had already started onboard. The navigator went looking for the flames, and, on discovering the fire, attempted to extinguish it using two fire extinguishers. However, he was unable to put it out.
Captain Haug, the aircraft commander, requested an emergency landing at the airbase. All the extinguishers had been used, but the fire continued to spread. Smoke thickened to the point that the crew could hardly see each other in the cockpit. Ultimately, as the plane neared Thule Air Base, Haug ordered everyone to abandon it.
Out of the seven crew members, six managed to eject relatively safely. Tragically, co-pilot Leonard Svitenko sustained fatal head injuries while trying to escape.
Haug and d’Amario landed directly on the airbase grounds. The base personnel immediately mobilized to search for the remaining crew. A polar night enveloped Greenland, and the weather was dreadful. A representative of the Royal Greenland Trade Department, Jens Zinglersen, significantly eased the search efforts by contacting local Inuit residents who organized dog sled teams. Thanks to their collective efforts, three other aviators were found – they had landed within a mile and a half of the base and were quickly located.
Gunner Staff Sergeant Calvin Snapp was less fortunate. He ejected first and landed nearly 10 km from the base in -30C degree temperatures. Wrapping himself in his parachute, he waited for help for 21 hours before being rescued by a search team. Miraculously, they found him alive, though severely hypothermic.
But the worst was yet to come. The aircraft carrying thermonuclear munitions was still flying northward and burning up. Finally, it crashed onto the ice about 12 km west of the airbase. There was still plenty of fuel onboard; it ignited on the ice, causing spectacular pyrotechnic effects. The bomb’s non-nuclear explosives detonated, partially melting the ice and scattering radioactive debris everywhere.
There was another poignant detail, however. Greenland belonged to Denmark, which had declared its entire territory a nuclear-free zone. And now, a bomber armed with nuclear weapons had crashed there – though the Danes (at least those who didn’t work in the government) were unaware that there was also radioactive debris all over the ground. The Danish government quickly issued a statement claiming that the aircraft was not in Greenland’s airspace and had only entered it due to an onboard emergency. This was a complete fabrication, but it served as a cover-up for the situation.
The US found itself in a delicate situation that urgently needed fixing.
Cleaning up a nuclear disaster in the Arctic night
The cleanup operation was dubbed Project Crested Ice (or unofficially, ‘Project Doctor Freezelove’). The operation was led by General Richard Overton Hunziker, a seasoned veteran and WWII hero.
A team of scientists, nuclear specialists, and a massive number of troops were dispatched to Greenland. Their mission was to remove all radioactive materials before spring arrived and the contaminated ice would be carried off into the ocean. The polar night brought fierce winds and bitterly cold temperatures, making the task even more challenging.
Radioactive elements were scattered across a 1-mile (1.6 km) by 3-mile (4.8 km) area. In the midst of it was an ice hole measuring 50 meters in diameter. A blackened patch measuring 670 by 120 meters and heavily contaminated with uranium and plutonium was clearly visible from the air.
The US suggested to the Danish authorities that they should just wait for spring when the ice would melt and everything would sink into the Arctic waters. But Denmark was outraged. The Americans were given a choice: Either clean up their mess or close down the Thule base and leave Danish territory.
It must be said that Hunziker and his team worked heroically. They established a small town on the ice, complete with igloos, a power station, a runway, a communications hub, and a decontamination chamber. An icy road connected them to the airbase.
Thousands of people toiled under the harsh conditions, illuminated by floodlights as they cut through the contaminated ice, loaded it onto transports, and hauled it to storage, where it was boxed up in tanks for shipping back to the US. Ice was collected using graders, packed into wooden crates, which were then loaded into steel tanks and onto ships. Debris was recovered manually – some pieces were sizable, but the smallest were no bigger than a battery. Contaminated areas were identified using simple Geiger counters.
The cleanup crew worked with minimal protective clothing. Most people simply wore their regular Arctic expedition clothing.
By mid-September 1968, the operation was officially concluded. In total, 1,700 Danes and 700 Americans participated in it. While the disaster was a stark illustration of the consequences of foolish and irresponsible behavior, the cleanup crew – which braved the harsh cold and literally gathered radioactive waste by hand – accomplished real feats, which, however, remained largely forgotten.
It’s believed that around 93% of the radioactive materials were collected, but some remnants remained on the seabed. One hydrogen bomb likely sank among other debris. Attempts to locate it with a submersible were unsuccessful. A heap of wreckage was discovered on the ocean floor, and somewhere down there, it appears that the remains of the nuclear weapon still lie undisturbed.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, a scandal erupted. Danish cleanup workers launched a legal battle against the American government. Though they lost the case, they succeeded in forcing the release of numerous classified documents. Subsequent investigations revealed that cancer mortality rates among Danish workers involved in the cleanup operation were about one and a half times higher than those of the general population. It also turned out that the health monitoring of the cleanup crews after the incident was inadequate. Ultimately, officials concluded that radiation exposure wasn’t significant and found no link between the increased cancer rate and the 1968 accident.
A heated debate arose around the actions of Danish prime ministers Jens Otto Krag and H. C. Hansen. Krag portrayed himself as a naïve yet honest figure, insisting that he wasn’t aware of aircraft carrying nuclear weapons over Greenland. However, declassified US documents indicated that the Danish government was aware of everything. As for Hansen, he was the one who secretly approved the US to use Thule Air Base as part of its nuclear shield. However, by then, both prime ministers had passed away, and were unable to answer to the population.
After the incident, Operation Chrome Dome was officially shut down. After all, it was the second nuclear disaster in three years, and that was too much even for the ‘hawks’. Secondly, both Russians and Americans already had plenty of missiles, and the use of bombers seemed somewhat archaic. Finally, the USSR and the US initiated another period of détente and developed protocols for handling any accidental incidents involving nuclear weapons. While this didn’t help those who suffered or died from cancer as a result of the accident in Greenland, it did significantly reduce the risk of similar events in the future.
Evgeny Norin is a Russian journalist and historian focused on war and conflict in the former Soviet Union.
The Hungarian conservative media landscape is in the process of being bankrupted, gutted, or co-opted by the new Hungarian government under Péter Magyar. However, there remain a few holdouts, including Daniel Deme, who serves as the editor-in-chief of the English-language Hungarian news outlet Hungary Today as well as the German-language Ungarn Heute. Deme describes a “dire situation” brought on by a climate of fear, radical purges, mass layoffs, and little to no aid from key allies, including the Trump administration.
What is the current state of the Hungarian media landscape? How does it compare to the situation under the Orbán government?
Under the Orbán government, there were claims from the left that there were no media freedoms here, that journalists were persecuted. None of that was true. I’d say there was already a 60-to-40 split in the media landscape toward the left’s benefit at that time. But a difficult situation arose from the fact that Hungarian conservative right-wing media wasn’t independent enough, and that was really the case. It was very much talking to its own bubble.
I don’t think it was controlled by the government or presenting a government-controlled narrative. I think it was voluntary. But I think the culture of Hungarian conservative journalists was such that they wanted to stick to the central narrative, which was very close to the government.
On the other hand, you had foreign-funded left-wing media outlets. There were a few exceptions that survived commercially, but in very many cases they were funded by the Open Society Foundations and by the Norwegian Oil Fund. There’s a Norwegian radical-leftist sort of fund that is feeding the Hungarian liberal and woke environment, NGOs, and media outlets.
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration has largely abandoned Hungarian conservatives after Viktor Orbán’s loss, warns @daniel_deme_HU in an interview with @RMXnews.
“So, I think the State Department of the Trump administration is shooting itself in the foot by leaving this… pic.twitter.com/vOAE8iajro
And of course they were funded by European funds as well—awards, grants. So after the elections, the money that came from government advertising—by the way, they advertised in the left-wing media very heavily as well—just stopped immediately. And from week one, there was a purge of Hungarian right-wing media outlets. It wasn’t just the money that was taken away; the institutional standing was as well.
For example, the largest media conglomerate, Mediaworks, immediately started firing hundreds and hundreds of staff. What we haven’t even seen during communism: it wasn’t just that they removed the former Orbán government’s media managers from these public media outlets—they actually destroyed them. They shut them down.
And it was just outright scary, as if a foreign occupying force had arrived and shot our TV towers to pieces. One day we turned on our TVs and there was a blank screen. There was a black screen with an inscription that the “public media shouldn’t lie, and we are sorry that we lied for years, and this is going to change.” And that was it. That was it for weeks and weeks on end.
At the same time, it also happened with Radio Kossuth, a national institution. That’s a radio station that we used to listen to even during communism. And suddenly they switched it off. They just put some classical music on 24/7, and old people have complained to me that they used to turn it on in the morning and switch it off in the evening when they went to bed. It used to be part of their lives, and then there’s nothing. And now the only public television is completely turned into a Tisza Party mouthpiece.
There are a handful of surviving right-wing publications that, frankly, have not learned their lesson, in my opinion, about how to analyze Hungarian public and political life, and are very much continuing in the same line as before.
There are new shoots, I would say. It’s very hard to tell which ones are going to survive and which ones are not. And this is the situation when you realize one staggering fact: if you find yourself a media manager or an editor-in-chief, you start looking for funds and trying to survive, and you realize that there are no foundations, no grants for national, conservative, patriotic media in the world—anywhere.
Meanwhile there are dozens and dozens of rich funds for liberal, woke media that is spewing propaganda from Brussels or from the Democrats’ set of opinion-makers. So it’s amazing. There were two Hungarian foundations that sponsored some of the patriotic and conservative media in the country. They have both been shut down now and are now controlled by the Péter Magyar government.
So the situation is dire.
On the one hand, the conservative media has completely disappeared. We do not have a single conservative political daily on the newsstands now. Not a single one. Magyar Nemzet, which used to be everywhere, is now nowhere to be found. It has gone into weekly print production. And on the other hand, when you go onto social media and LinkedIn, you see ubiquitous adverts for left-wing journalists at left-wing outlets everywhere. They’re expanding. It’s like a golden age for them.
That’s a pretty dramatic transition. How many people would you estimate have now been laid off in the Hungarian media landscape since Tisza, since Magyar, won?
I would definitely estimate it near 1,000 people. And you have to understand that the Hungarian media landscape is fairly small, and these are almost exclusively members of either the public broadcasters or conservative media—almost exclusively. People have been fired in a completely absurd manner, without any justification, without any wrongdoing on their side. Not even only people who had been biased toward the Fidesz government. Even when they fired the managers of the public media, MTI, they found replacements, a couple of media managers well known in the business, and they were appointed.
One of them was supposed to be the manager of the news department at the Hungarian News Agency, and someone pointed out on social media—I think on Facebook—that yes, he had worked for the left, and he had also worked for right-wing media like Hír TV. Péter Magyar left a single comment on Facebook under one of these comments saying, “I don’t think so.”
The next day, the guy was called into the office of his boss and fired on the spot. When they found out that he had worked briefly at one of the conservative news TV stations, he was fired on the spot and removed. That’s all it takes today: just a short comment on Facebook from our new neo-Stalinist leader, Péter Magyar.
You said there’s not a single foundation in the entire world that supports conservative media in Europe. Liberal institutions outside Hungary were pretty active supporting numerous liberal and left-wing institutions, media outlets, and so on with money—taxpayer money from Europe and corporate money from various corporations, foundations, and so on. Now, where are the Americans? Where is the State Department? Where are the foundations? What is your opinion on this particular issue?
Well, on the one hand, the State Department launched in July a grant for free, sort of conservative institutions in Europe—$5 million, I think, for the entirety of Europe. And I think they have received more than 1,000 applications. Whoever I spoke to, from Italy to Poland, everyone was applying. We applied as well. But it’s a ridiculous amount. $5 million is basically the price of a single bomb in Iraq. So this was just a drop in the ocean.
And I have managed to speak to members of the American State Department—I do not want to describe any more closely who they were—and I basically just asked what they thought about this. And they said, “You’re on your own. You have to fight this fight from your own resources. We have to respect the will of the people.”
And this is very gentlemanly, you know. This is a very noble position from the State Department. They do not want to interfere in other people’s countries. But I have to add very quickly that this is not the way the Democrats see it, or money groups and oligarchs connected to the Democrats. The left does not have these sorts of scruples toward Europe and is continuing to fund the Hungarian far-left media and NGO networks. There’s a glut of funds for them. So I think the State Department of the Trump administration is shooting itself in the foot by leaving this space empty, leaving the Hungarian conservative network to wither. In four years, when they come back, where they used to have allies—honest allies and friends—where they used to have an infrastructure of pro-American political and economic circles, they will have nothing. They will only find NGO networks and political networks that are 100% allied either with the Democrats or with networks funded from the other side of the world, from the East.
I’ve tried to explain this to American diplomats and opinion-makers: there’s been a huge void created after the elections. This void is going to be filled very, very quickly. And if you do not move fast enough, you will find that others will recognize the potential in this network—and so they did. And I do not want to mention the names of the countries, but they are not the United States’ geopolitical allies, let’s say that.
What do you think the motive is from the State Department there? Is it that there are still a lot of left-wing holdouts in the State Department who are directing policy, or do you think this is the conservative mindset of letting the free market work? If the conservative outlets can generate ad revenue and play in this kind of private market, then those are the outlets that deserve to survive. And if they can’t, then they deserve to die.
I think there could be some of this, but the State Department is very well known to be the bastion of the Democrats in the international field. It is still completely dominated by left-wing activist foreign policy. You just have to look at U.S. embassies and their appointments from local talent, or the communications of some of their ambassadors.
We don’t even have an ambassador in Hungary, which kind of shows that our status is not as important for Washington as it probably used to be, or as it should be. You have to remember that Viktor Orbán stood up for Donald Trump in the darkest years and months of the lawfare, when he was being photographed in police stations, when he was getting his mugshot taken by police. Viktor Orbán was the only foreign leader who stood up and paid enormous political capital, invested a lot of political capital, into defending Donald Trump personally and stood by the Republicans in these dark periods.
With Hungarian conservatives face growing persecution, where is Donald Trump?
"You have to remember that Viktor Orbán stood up for Donald Trump in the darkest years of and months of the lawfare when he was being photographed in police stations, when he was getting his… https://t.co/Wtlujt32u2pic.twitter.com/HmHbkdVx9H
And yes, there was a lot of support from the United States before the elections, from JD Vance and Marco Rubio, even from Donald Trump himself. Not the support that we needed. What we needed, first of all, was a good look into the far-left financial networks that are tilting the Hungarian political sphere toward the left, toward Brussels, and toward the Democrats. And the other thing was action on the giant tech firms like Facebook, Google, etc., who are openly censoring Hungarian and European media content, influencers, etc. And they’re doing it so blatantly that we expected the new White House to crack down on this undemocratic, biased behavior. And this didn’t happen.
Do you feel that now that Orbán is out of power, the US is actually betraying the Hungarian conservatives?
I don’t think they’re betraying us explicitly. I think there is a recognition of the seriousness of the situation, but I haven’t heard a single word from Republican circles expressing dismay or concern about what is happening in Hungary, and there’s plenty to be concerned about regarding what has happened in the last four months.
What we’ve seen in Hungary being done by the Tisza government is unprecedented in Europe, even in left-wing countries, even in partial democracies like Germany. There’s persecution of right-wing influencers, etc. I’m not going to go into details, but the U.S. State Department is completely silent about this, and I would say now is about time to open their mouths and take a hard look at what’s going on in Hungary.
Orbán invited JD Vance at a sort of inopportune time for his own election campaign. This had already been after the bombing of Iran, and there was a pretty big energy price increase right before Orbán went to the polls. Some people even said that this may have contributed to a larger loss for Orbán in the end. What is your opinion?
Whether the visits by JD Vance or Marco Rubio helped or not, I think they didn’t sway Hungary either way. They were very much welcomed by the Hungarian conservative networks, and I don’t think any of the Tisza Party’s potential voters changed their minds about voting for Fidesz because they understood how important the support of the American administration is. It is very, very important, but they had their minds made up already, and I don’t think these high-level visits changed anything in any way.
You have to separate Fidesz’s campaign performance from what really happened, the result of the elections. There was such an incredibly violent, intensive, and aggressive communication campaign from Tisza’s international and domestic supporters that throughout my 25 years in communications I have not seen anything like this.
We had the Ukrainians close our oil pipeline, Brussels withheld the European funds from the Orbán government, the Polish secret services were spreading fake news about Viktor Orbán, the British intelligence services were fairly active in Hungary, and on Facebook and Google the salvos of thousands of comments in our comments sections and everywhere else were coming from bot farms and paid influencers. And it was just amazing. I don’t think any society could have resisted this intensity of disinformation and demagoguery that we saw in the elections.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that Fidesz had a terrible election campaign, and it’s kind of universally understood even among conservatives that they really messed up their election campaign, and everyone is paying a very high price for this.
Since the election, I’ve seen polling that shows Fidesz tanking even much further than their election results, and Tisza seems to be more popular than ever. This is about four months in now. What realistic chances do you see of the conservatives coming back to power, and how will the Hungarian media landscape—without a real conservative voice, or not much of one going forward—even present the conservative or right-wing viewpoint?
I think some of those polls are right, and maybe not to the extent that they are showing, but Tisza’s popularity has actually grown since the elections and Fidesz has fallen back. That’s partly because Viktor Orbán was such an incredibly dominant personality in Fidesz, and his removal from the political scene is a huge hit for Hungarian conservatives.
And his replacement, János Bóka, is a young and very well-informed and competent person, but I don’t think he’s a full replacement for Viktor Orbán, and some are skeptical about his charisma, etc.
Fidesz’s performance since the elections can only be described as sketchy, and we are expecting Fidesz to do much more than they are doing. And there’s, of course, the other right-wing party, Mi Hazánk, Our Homeland. They are to the right of Fidesz, and very brave and vocal, and they are organizing demonstrations and are very active in parliament as well. They are getting into debates with Péter Magyar, but when it comes to voting, they almost always vote with Tisza.
They even voted for the so-called Asset Recovery Office, which is an absolute betrayal not just of their voters, but of conservative Hungary as well. That’s just a huge misstep. So they are not to be relied on. I think the only solution we can hope for is the emergence of a new conservative party, but we do not even see the sign of anything happening yet, and it seems Hungarian conservative circles are still in shell shock post-election.
Beijing may let its technology giants buy more Nvidia high-end chips, giving the US chip designer a fresh foothold in China and keeping Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) developers tied to its software after months of stalled trade. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has asked major domestic companies, including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, […]
Iran has warned the United Nations that US President Donald Trump’s threats to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic constitute a grave development, particularly because the remarks were made from the podium of the UN General Assembly.
Gholamhossein Darzi, Iran’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires to the UN in New York, raised the issue in a September 27 letter addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the President of the Security Council, Jérôme Bonnafont.
Darzi’s letter came in response to Trump’s September 22 address to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, during which the US president said he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if no agreement was reached with Tehran. The wording appears in the official UN transcript of Trump’s speech.
Iran says threats made at UN carry wider implications
Darzi said Trump’s remarks were neither isolated nor ambiguous, arguing that they form part of a continuing pattern of public threats against Iran by the president of a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
“These repulsive statements are not ambiguous remarks or isolated utterances. They are rather part of a sustained pattern of public threats against Iran by the head of a permanent member state of the Security Council,” Darzi wrote.
“This latest development is particularly grave and alarming because the United Nations General Assembly is not a venue for threats of annihilation,” he added.
The Iranian envoy stressed that the General Assembly serves as the UN’s principal universal forum and was established to promote international peace, cooperation, and relations among states.
In the letter, Darzi referred to several previous statements by Trump that he said demonstrated a broader pattern of threats against Iran.
He cited remarks on March 22 in which Trump threatened to “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants, followed by statements on March 30 threatening destruction of Iran’s energy facilities and other vital infrastructure, including desalination facilities.
Iran calls for UN response to threats
Darzi argued that the issue extends beyond political rhetoric, saying an explicit threat against a sovereign UN member state raises questions concerning the UN Charter, international peace and security, and the prohibition on the threat or use of force.
He further linked the latest remarks to ongoing US-Israeli aggression against its sovereignty and territorial integrity since February 28, as well as attacks that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.
“The issue before the Organization is therefore not merely one of political rhetoric,” Darzi wrote, arguing that failure by the international community to respond could normalize threats against entire nations and undermine the authority of the UN Charter.
The UN has itself emphasized the need for restraint and adherence to international law during the current high-level week. In his September 22 opening address, Secretary-General António Guterres said the principle that force cannot determine whose lives and rights matter was under “profound strain” and called on world leaders to use the week for de-escalation and dialogue.
Iran reiterates right to self-defense
Darzi said Iran would continue to defend itself against any further aggression and reserved its “full and unimpeachable right to self-defense.”
He also said Tehran reserves the right to pursue legal avenues to seek accountability from states and individuals it holds responsible for losses and damage inflicted on the Iranian people.
“Regardless of whether these threats are merely delusional fantasies, they will, as in the past, never materialize or be put into action in the face of the resolute resistance and determined defense of the Iranian people and armed forces,” Darzi wrote.
The Iranian envoy requested that his letter be circulated as an official document of the UN Security Council.
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