US tests nuclear-capable missile as Iran urges disarmament

The US Air Force tested a nuclear-capable Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) hours before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said no nation should possess nuclear weapons.

On Thursday, President Rouhani told a United Nations General Assembly meeting on nuclear disarmament that “no nation should possess nuclear weapons.”

“As long as nuclear weapons exist, the risk of their use, threat of use and proliferation persist. The only absolute guarantee is their total elimination,” he said.

Meanwhile, just hours before Rouhani’s speech at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, the US Air Force launched an unarmed ICBM from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the state of California.

The test launch was the second in less than a week. Another nuclear capable ICBM was also launched on September 21, just hours after the conclusion of the International Day of Peace.

“This test launch — the second in less than a week — is a visible demonstration of the nation’s safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent,” Col. Scott Fox, 20th Air Force vice commander, said after the second nuclear-capable missile was launched on Thursday.

The US is the only country in the world that has used atomic bombs in war. US atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.

Secret documents also revealed last week that the US nearly detonated an atomic bomb on its own soil.

On January 23, 1961, the US Air Force accidentally dropped two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs over Goldsboro, North Carolina. However, one low-voltage switch, which failed to flip, prevented millions of Americans from being killed.

Had one of the bombs, which was designed to be used in warfare, exploded, it would have been 260 times stronger than the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima.

Last year in September, it was reported that the US government was planning to undertake the costliest modernization of its nuclear arsenal in history.