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HE most dangerous message North Korea sent Tuesday with its third nuclear weapon test is: nukes are for sale.

Testing a uranium-based bomb would announce to the world — including potential buyers — that North Korea is now operating a new, undiscovered production line for weapons-usable material.

North Korea’s latest provocation should also remind us of the limits of Western policies, led by the United States, that focus on “isolating” the hermit kingdom.

cut off a hot line with the United States military in South Korea, calling the truce that stopped the Korean War in 1953

North Korea’s latest threats came as the United Nations Security Council was about to consider a new sanctions resolution

experts largely as propagandistic bluster.

s anyone who reads the news knows, Donald Trump will decide by May 12 whether to “withdraw from” or “pull out of” or “abandon” or “scrap” or “jettison” (the synonyms keep coming) the nuclear deal with Iran. Why May 12? Because last October, Trump declared that Iran isn’t complying with the agreement. Under a law passed by Congress, that “decertification” means Trump can reimpose the sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear activities that were waived as part of the deal. Trump hasn’t reimposed those sanctions yet. But he’s demanded that Iran make vast new concessions. And he’s threatened that if Iran does not do so by May 12, “American nuclear sanctions would automatically resume.”

The Trump administration has likely been violating these clauses. The Washington Post reported that at a NATO summit last May, “Trump tried to persuade European partners to stop making trade and business deals with Iran.” Then, in July, Trump’s director of legislative affairs boasted that at a G20 summit in Germany, Trump had “underscored the need for nations … to stop doing business with nations that sponsor terrorism, especially Iran.” Both of these lobbying efforts appear to violate America’s pledge to “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran.”

The Trump administration still issues licenses for routine personal divestment transactions: for instance, people who want to sell off their property or close their bank accounts in Iran. But as far as Ferrari can tell, the Trump administration has issued few, if any, licenses for commercial transactions. That’s hard to verify: There is no public database of OFAC licenses, and the Treasury Department didn’t respond to my request for comment. But in recent months, two close observers of the Iran deal have echoed Ferrari’s observation. As the pro–nuclear deal National Iranian American Council’s Reza Marashi reported earlier this year, “To hear senior Western diplomats tell it, the Trump administration has not approved a single Iran-related OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) license since taking office.” If true, this too likely violates the Iran deal.

The new US administration has not yet decided what to do about the 2015 Iran nuclear deal

They are looking “not only at that issue but also at many other issues. So it is very early for them to give their assessment,

Trump said while campaigning for the presidency that he wanted to “dismantle” the July 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers including the United States.

Ahead of a new round of Iran nuclear talks, the country's supreme leader voiced support on Wednesday for the negotiations, but he insisted there are limits to concessions that Iran will make in exchange for an easing of sanctions choking its economy.

But his mention of Iran's "nuclear rights" was widely interpreted as a reference to uranium enrichment.

Iran would get some sanctions relief under such a first-step deal, without any easing of the most harsh measures — those crippling its ability to sell oil, its main revenue maker.

North Korea building its BIGGEST EVER submarine to put enemies in nuke firing line

The U.S. Navy is conducting joint drills with South Korea navy in a show of sea and air power designed to warn off North Korea from any military action. Including the deployment of USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier.

As South Korea’s national-security adviser told it on Thursday, Donald Trump will meet with Kim Jong Un this spring for one purpose only: to achieve the “permanent denuclearization” of North Korea. But according to one of the U.S. officials who came closest to striking that kind of deal, the president better lower his expectations. By a lot.

“I don’t think [the North Koreans are] going to want to negotiate giving up all their nuclear weapons,” he added. “But even if they did … I have no idea how we could verify it.”

The years since have brought a series of nuclear agreements that at times froze the North Korean nuclear program, but over the long term failed to prevent the North from becoming a nuclear-weapons state. The achilles heel of many of these accords was the Kim government’s refusal to disclose all its nuclear activities and permit outside monitors to verify that those activities had ceased.

President Donald Trump will ask North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to dismantle the country's nuclear arsenal without conceding significant ground on economic sanctions, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

A North Korea source told CNN that Kim has finally decided to open up a new chapter for his nation. Kim has committed himself to the path of denuclearization and will now focus solely on economic growth and improving the national economy, the source said.

North Korea said Friday that it is willing to stop nuclear as well as intermediate- and long-range ballistic rocket tests and would close a nuclear test site, but the country has not said it is willing to get rid of its nuclear arsenal.

this former vice president comes off more as Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper in “Rebecca.” Both guided young, inexperienced protégés to the brink with unflappable certitude, self-assurance and an unsettling monotone. They were so persistent and persuasive that it was almost a shock when it turned out that each had an idée fixe that could burn down the house, or, in Mr. Cheney’s case, whole countries.

Mr. Cheney privately misled his friend, telling Mr. Armey that the top-secret evidence was actually worse than he had said publicly and that Iraq was close to developing a suitcase nuke that could be used by Qaeda terrorists. Mr. Armey changed his position and voted for war.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton's plans for conflict-ravaged Syria would "lead to World War III."

Trump said defeating the Islamic State militant group is a higher priority than persuading Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down — a long-held U.S. strategy

"You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton. You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk,

Also at the congress, which got underway Friday, Kim said North Korea would not use its nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty was violated,

aid the plan is a “big deal” because Kim is taking public responsibility for economic development, something his father never did.

“The announcement of a five-year economic plan slightly proves the hypothesis that Kim Jong Un is ruling like his grandfather — he even appropriated a Kim Il Sung policy direction here — with more formal lines of contro

The U.S. has a chance now to conquer an old, compulsive claim to stand-tall world leadership that makes no fit with history, sound judgment, or (at this point) the facts in the morning’s papers, such as one can decipher them. T

Take this one and we will remove from our worldly relations an element of intrusive irrationality that has claimed millions of lives during our "American century" and proven time and again to be dangerous

There are, after all, like-minded nations showing an increased willingness to charge into places the U.S. would rather avoid.

Getting Iraq wrong wasn’t just an unfortunate miscalculation, it happened because their theories of world politics were dubious and their understanding of how the world works was goofy. When your strategic software is riddled with bugs, you should expect a lot of error messages.When your strategic software is riddled with bugs, you should expect a lot of error messages.

For starters, neoconservatives think balance-of-power politics doesn’t really work in international affairs and that states are strongly inclined to “bandwagon” instead. In other words, they think weaker states are easy to bully and never stand up to powerful adversaries. Their faulty logic follows that other states will do whatever Washington dictates provided we demonstrate how strong and tough we are.

What happened, alas, was that the various states we were threatening didn’t jump on our bandwagon. Instead, they balanced and then took steps to make sure we faced significant and growing resistance. In particular, Syria and Iran (the next two states on the neocons’ target list), cooperated even further with each other and helped aid the anti-American insurgency in Iraq itself.

Of course, there's a lot of controversy over the percentage of noncombatants killed in the drone strikes. One study, not very convincingly, puts civilian casualties at slightly above 3 percent. Another says 10 percent, another a full one-third, Brookings far more. Do these different numbers yield different moral conclusions? Are the drone strikes defensible at 4 percent murdered innocents but indefensible at 33 percent? There's no algorithm that synchs up the degree of target importance, the certainty of intelligence that's based on, and potential civilian casualties from the attack. It's a question that's impossible to answer with precision. Which suggests that when murdering civilians is involved, you don't do it at all.

so-called "just war" principles have not been given much weight by the Obama Justice Department, which has glossed over or ignored them in giving its sanction to stepped-up drone warfare. The two key "just war" principles are "distinction" and "proportionality." Distinction means that an act of war is illegitimate if it does not at least attempt to make a distinction between military and noncombatant civilian casualties. Nukes obviously don't, can't

The "foes" in Afghanistan do not wear uniforms. I'm not saying all Taliban look alike, but the pious believers don't look very different from the "provincial commanders." Some have called the whole drone program "targeted assassination" that violates even U.S. prohibitions, especially when carried out by the CIA, which was supposed to be prohibited from carrying out assassinations.

differences on Iran policy correspond to answers to this one question: Whether the world of 2015 is fundamentally similar to, or different from, the world of 1938.

the idea of recurring historic episodes has a powerful effect on decision-making in the here and now. Disagreements over policy often come down to the search for the right historic pattern to apply.

the idea that Europe on the eve of the Holocaust is the most useful guide to the world in 2015 runs through arguments about Iran policy. And if that is the correct model to apply, the right "picture in our heads" as Walter Lippmann put it in Public Opinion, then these conclusions naturally follow:

President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.

Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.

Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.

Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm.

It’s not just that Trump retweets to his six million followers a quote attributed to Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refuses to condemn David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed support for him. It’s not just that violence is woven into Trump’s language as indelibly as the snarl woven into his features — the talk of shooting somebody or punching a protester in the face, the insulting of the disabled, the macho mockery of women, the anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican tirades. It’s not just that he could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes.

Trump is telling people something is rotten in the state of America. The message resonates because the rot is there.

For a second day, North Korea appeared to be flexing its military muscles in the wake of a United Nations vote meant to cripple the nation's nuclear program.

"nuclear warheads need to be ready for use at any time," the North Korean state news agency KCNA reported Friday.

The news agency also confirmed the test-fire of a new multiple launch rocket system

Why do a significant number of Americans have so many guns?

I think a lot of Americans have guns because they’re fearful—and for damn good reason. They fear a coming chaos, and know that when it happens it will be coming to a nation that no longer coheres. They think it’s all collapsing—our society, our culture, the baseline competence of our leadership class. They see the cultural infrastructure giving way—illegitimacy, abused children, neglect, racial tensions, kids on opioids staring at screens—and, unlike their cultural superiors, they understand the implications.

Nuts with nukes, terrorists bent on a mission. The grid will go down. One of our foes will hit us, suddenly and hard. In the end it could be hand to hand, door to door. I said some of this six years ago to a famously liberal journalist, who blinked in surprise. If that’s true, he said, they won’t have a chance! But they are Americans, I said. They won’t go down without a fight.