Iran slams Trump’s call to resume US nuclear tests as “regressive” and “irresponsible”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has condemned US President Donald Trump’s call for the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing, describing the move as “regressive” and “irresponsible.”

“Having rebranded its ‘Department of Defense’ as the ‘Department of War,’ a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons,” Araghchi wrote on X late Thursday. “The same bully has been demonising Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in blatant violation of international law.”

Trump made the surprise announcement on Truth Social before meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea during the APEC summit. He said he had instructed the Pentagon to immediately resume nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” with Russia and China, whose arsenals, he said, would match the US in “five years.”

Ankit Panda, a nuclear security expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s move likely responds to Moscow and Beijing’s recent military shows rather than tensions with Tehran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently announced tests of the Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo, following earlier trials of the Burevestnik cruise missile. China, meanwhile, flaunted its nuclear-capable Dongfeng-5 ICBM during a September military parade.

Despite these displays, neither Russia nor China has conducted an actual nuclear explosion in decades. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 prohibits such tests, though the US, China, and Iran have signed but not ratified it. Russia withdrew its ratification in 2023. The US last tested a nuclear weapon in 1992.

Findlay added that the US already tests its missiles regularly, just “without making a big deal of it, like North Korea and Russia.”

Trump has repeatedly called for the “total dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program and insists Tehran must never acquire a nuclear weapon. In June, the US and Israel struck Iranian military and nuclear sites, aiming to slow its progress.

Tehran maintains its program is entirely civilian. “Iran has never done any nuclear tests. They’ve constantly been saying they are not intending to make a nuclear bomb,” Panda said. “The only thing that Iran has which might be taken seriously is some highly enriched uranium. That’s it.”

tags: Iran, United States, Trump, nuclear testing, Abbas Araghchi, APEC, Xi Jinping, Russia, China, arms race, non-proliferation, Al Jazeera