By Editorial Staff
Could the fear of losing the war against Iran push the United States towards the use of nuclear weapons? In a 10 October 2026 interview published by The Singju Post, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to the U.S. Secretary of State, raises serious concerns about the possibility of nuclear escalation, citing remarks by influential figures, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about destroying Iran, and reports that Trump may have given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu permission to use a nuclear weapon.
Yet Wilkerson acknowledges that he cannot establish whether the alleged authorization is part of a propaganda campaign or actual war planning. This analysis examines his warnings, the uncertainty surrounding the allegation, and the potentially devastating consequences of allowing nuclear confrontation and the fear of defeat to override humanity’s interest in peace.
Warnings of an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran and uncertainty around the claim
The Singju Post published a 10 October 2026 transcription entitled “Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Did Trump Approve an Israeli Nuclear Strike on Iran? (Transcript)”. In this interview, Glenn Diesen asks Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to the US Secretary of State, about reports that Donald Trump has approved an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran. Diesen is a Norwegian political scientist and professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway who specializes in geopolitics and international relations. This author and commentator is known for his work on international relations, geopolitics, and relations between Russia and the West.
Responding to this expert who has also conducted interviews and discussions about international security, NATO, and conflicts involving major powers; Colonel Wilkerson explains “Well, the information about the US using nuclear weapons comes from none other than Elbridge Colby in the United States, a very influential figure under Hegseth in the Pentagon. And overseas, if you want some real proof of it, it comes from Jonathan Pollard, that treasonous spy who we released and sent back to Israel to live out his life in comfort. Both of them had suggested that nuclear weapons ought to be used. And Pollard even went further and said they ought to be used first, not second or third. They ought to be used first.
And Trump has given more than enough hints with his remarks at the Union General— UN General Assembly, for example. How do you destroy a civilization like Iran without contemplating the use of nuclear weapons? I mean, I don’t see how you do it. And yet he has made forceful statements about destroying Iran on more than one occasion. Egregiously so at the UN. But how do you do it without using nuclear weapons?”
He continues, indicating that these worst weapons — which his country possesses in an enormous arsenal and he describes as the “best” — can be employed at any time. “And after all, next to Russia, and very, very close to that next, we have the most on the face of the earth. And I would argue still, as a military professional having had something to do with some of them, we have the best. We have ones that will work every time virtually, and we have the ones that will hit with a circular error of probability so close that your eyebrows will be scorched as the rocket passes by. So we’ve got the capacity, and there are people asking why, if we have the capacity and have spent billions of dollars on it, we don’t use it.”
“And Donald Trump’s just the sort of person to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to do it.’ I wish I couldn’t say that. I wish I was absolutely afraid to say something like that, but not with this guy. This guy has corroborated, proven, substantiated with me that he is utterly insane.”
Yet still, he doesn’t confirm that the U.S. President, Donald Trump, has already authorized Israel to conduct nuclear strikes on Iran. “Let me answer that by saying that I think there’s at least a 50-50 chance that what I’ve heard is true. Whether it’s part of a propaganda campaign, what I suspect, or it’s part of actual war planning. I can’t tell, but I suspect it’s the propaganda. And that is that it’s been leaked, and leaked purposefully, to the Iranians that Trump has given Bibi permission to use a nuclear weapon against them.
What that does, I think, is create— and one of the points of evidence I would say illustrates this is we know with some confidence, I’d say 90% confidence, that Iran has issued a set of orders that have gone out to what we would call the militia, roughly 2 million, the Iranian National Army, another rough 2 million, and the IRGC. And these orders are what we call CBR orders, that is chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, in other words. There are orders that say prepare for this kind of attack. So that kind of corroborates this information that they have gotten this propaganda, maybe that the permission has been given.”
He further says “On top of that, I don’t think they need even that to go into that kind of stance with their military because that’s what they would expect worst case from Bibi Netanyahu given his embroilment in this campaign. This election that could go anywhere, the turmoil it’s causing in Israel and such. So on that basis, they’ve got to be ready, I think, to preempt if they’re going to stop something like that from happening, if they believe it’s really a possibility.”
The fear of losing the war and use of nuclear weap
The fear of losing the war could intensify pressure on the United States to consider extreme military options, potentially including the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, in effort to decisively enfeeble it. It is implied by the following remarks by this military professional. “There’s some pretty sophisticated Chinese air defense weapons in Iran now, and Chinese to run them. The signals don’t change the reality of the United States is losing this war. Iran is not losing. I won’t say it’s winning, but it’s not losing, and not losing is a win, as Haaretz pointed out on 1 March, one day after Trump started this atrocious war. from what I can tell, talking to Republicans whom I still talk to, all 3 of them, Trump is in deep trouble.
Now he doesn’t— he said he doesn’t care. He’s elected. He said he doesn’t care. ‘I don’t care, I’m elected, I got 2 more years.’ We’re destroying our election system while we try to fight the 2 parties out. This has nothing to do with America, nothing to do with America’s interests, and everything to do with, as Washington said would happen, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party’s interests. They don’t care about America. So, all to say the United States is in domestic peril, and overseas it’s in foreign peril, period.”
Portside features a 18 September 2026 article originally published by The Nation. Its author, Robert L. Borosage, argues that Trump—who is encountering mounting pressure to escape a war he considers unwinnable— could be tempted to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. In the article— “The Peril of Trump’s Final Act: Would He Use a Tactical Nuclear Weapon in Iran?”—, Borosage explains that if Trump feels trapped in a war he cannot win and needs a dramatic action to escape without admitting defeat, he could employ nuclear weapons.
“Donald Trump is trapped: his war of choice against Iran is lost, an abject strategic catastrophe. Now Trump has to choose: sustain another forever war until Iran breaks, a strategy his own generals oppose, or produce a grand finale to get out without admitting defeat. And there is the rub.Reality has shattered Trump’s conceits. Instead of a few days, the war has lasted six months and counting.
Instead of regime change and popular uprising, the Iranian regime stands with new hardened leadership. Instead of another display of US military prowess, the US military has been driven out of major bases across the region, stockpiles of vital offensive and defensive missiles have been depleted, and the US Navy has been overstretched and exhausted. And Iran keeps ratcheting up the pressure. It controls the Strait of Hormuz, and its Houthi allies have just seized control of the alternative route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and blown up Saudi Arabia’s key east-west pipeline,” he says.
In response, according to Borosage, Trump grows ever more delusional. “The failing Nation of Iran,” he claims, “wants to make a deal, quickly and badly.” “He suggests that Iran is waiting until after our midterm elections to sue for peace, at which point the price of gasoline will ‘drop like a rock.’ Then he muses that we might just stay in Iran: ‘We’ll ultimately get out, unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela.’ He turned to Oman as a mediator on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and then threatened that if it ‘gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.’
He dismisses the war as ‘small potatoes,’ claims full control of the Strait, suggests that the ‘Countries of the World…should and will reimburse the United States of America when this SCAM Confligration [sic] is over,’ and jokes that he might rename the Strait ‘Trump Strait,” saying, “I should get something out of it.’”
Borosage affirms “The real straits of Trump are dire: he is trapped in a war that has already been lost, a reality that he will never allow himself to admit. Under Republican control, the House has voted repeatedly to end the war. With Democrats likely to take the majority in the midterms, Trump faces the prospect minimally of investigative hearings that will bare the true extent of the losses, costs, and internal military opposition to his folly. He has to find a way to declare victory and get out, and soon.
Many experts report that the United States and Israel are gearing up to launch another full-scale operation, probably just after the US midterms. The Trump administration has just approved a $2.8 billion Israeli arms package that includes 40,000 bombs, half of which are 2,000-pound bombs. Even so, skeptics question how much a new bombing wave could achieve, given the depletion of US weapons stocks, naval power, and base support, without the use of nuclear weapons. And that caveat makes the situation truly alarming.”
He continues “At the same time, Hegseth’s Pentagon has been moving to integrate tactical nuclear weapons into conventional war strategy. The aim, as Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby put it in the chilling language of the megadeath intellectuals, is to provide ‘credible, rational nuclear options that a President of the United States adopting the simple principle of being a normal human being with common sense would actually implement.’
The United States, the only country ever to drop a nuclear weapon, has repeatedly refused to adopt a ‘no first use’ policy. The president has sole authority to order the use of a tactical nuclear weapon. Neither Congress nor the public would be given prior notice. Would Trump use a tactical nuclear weapon on relatively isolated Pickaxe Mountain in Iran as his exit line?”
As highlighted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, using a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear nation represents a violation of international customary law. Borosage says “But Trump, as his noxious deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, infamously asserted, dismisses international law and treaties as ‘international niceties,’ arguing that ‘the real world…is governed by strength, by force…by power.’ Trump boasts that the only limit on his international power is ‘one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.’”
“Long-standing US policy, reaffirmed in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, states that the United States ‘will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.’ This promise extends to over 190 countries, including Iran.”
Life In Humanity’s position
As Colonel Wilkerson’s remarks suggest, the conflict raises concerns not only about the military outcome but also about the consequences of decisions driven by political interests, the fear of defeat and the pursuit of strategic dominance.
Meanwhile, to date, Life In Humanity has found neither report nor credible source confirming that Trump has authorized Israel to carry out a nuclear strike against Iran. Yet again, we can’t dismiss the claim either because we don’t possess evidence to do so.
The use of nuclear weapons could certainly beget far-reaching consequences, extending beyond the immediate parties to the conflict and potentially affecting humanity as a whole. Borosage says “Dropping a nuclear weapon on Iran would not only be criminal; it would be incredibly dumb. Iran would respond by unleashing an assault on oil and desalination and energy platforms across the Emirates and an unprecedented assault on Israel.
It would also set off a race for nuclear weapons, as countries across the globe would understand that the reason Iran was targeted and not North Korea is that the latter has nuclear weapons and the former does not. Trump made that clear when he bizarrely told the zealots gathered at the Republican Midterm Convention that if Iran had nuclear weapons, ‘I’d be calling the supreme leader, and I’d be saying, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? Is there anything we can do for you?’ as opposed to bombing the crap out of him.’ As one commentator noted, the video of that could serve as a nuclear proliferation promo ad.”
He adds “Use of a tactical nuclear weapon would set a precedent for Russia or China to invoke if they chose to use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine or Taiwan or other adversaries. It would put the nuclear arms race, already gaining dangerous momentum, into hyperdrive. And it would indelibly brand the US as a dangerous, pariah nation, feared but despised across the globe.
For these and other reasons, it is hard to imagine any president making that decision. But Trump, trapped, desperate, angry, delusional, intent on punishing his enemies and displaying his prowess, could well be tempted. And the anticipated Democratic election victories this fall will corner him—and that will make him even more dangerous, as we saw with the sacking of the Capitol after his 2020 loss in the presidential race.”
Thus, the parties involved—particularly the United States—should take time to reassess the situation. They will find that continued confrontation is not truly serving humanity’s interests.
As it lies within Life In Humanity’s mission to inspire humanity to overcome challenges and thrive together, leaders’ priority should be to —preserve human life, prevent a nuclear catastrophe and pursue a path towards peace. Ultimately, the capacity of powerful nations to deploy devastating weapons should not overshadow their responsibility to use their power in ways that protect humanity and enable people across the world to thrive together.
Borosage echoes the point in these words. “These harrowing prospects should intensify efforts to bring the war to an end, and to warn clearly against escalation. The war is already opposed by a growing majority of Americans. Congress will be out of session until the midterms, but citizens can make certain that candidates are pressed on this issue as they campaign. Editorialists should weigh in against escalation. China’s President Xi, slated to meet with Trump in September, could put ending the war high on the agenda.
US Arab allies in the region have an existential stake in avoiding a final cataclysm in this misbegotten war and should both demand restraint from the US and intensify negotiations with Iran and its Houthi allies. Recently, progress toward a settlement on Iranian ‘administration’ of the Strait of Hormuz was interrupted by the Houthi offensive in Yemen and attacks on Saudi Arabia. European leaders could play a role, publicly warning Israel’s Netanyahu not to sabotage negotiations. The pressure on Trump to escalate, to unleash another round of bombing in order to declare victory and get out, is rising. Without a concerted movement toward a settlement, the unimaginable is becoming more conceivable.”