October 2025
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

China displayed its rapidly modernizing military power at a parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, including unveiling its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear triad for the first time.

The military parade in Beijing Sept. 3 was meant to “mark the hard-won victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War,” according to the state Xinhua News Agency. It aimed to pledge “the country’s commitment to peaceful development in a world still fraught with turbulence and uncertainties,” the news outlet reported.

At the parade, China revealed one new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-61. This new missile was grouped with other nuclear systems—such as the Dongfeng-31-BJ ICBM; the sea-launched ballistic missile, Julang-3; and the air-launched ballistic missile, Jinglei-1—suggesting that the DF-61 is also nuclear, according to a Sept. 4 analysis by Hans Kristensen, Eliana Johns, Matt Korda, and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle of the Federation of American Scientists.

“Although only one of the nuclear weapons presented at the parade was entirely new (the DF-61 ICBM), that and the many other systems displayed in this and previous parades—combined with the construction of three large missile silo fields and so far more than a tripling of the nuclear warhead stockpile—vividly illustrate the significant modernization and buildup of nuclear forces that China has undertaken over the past couple of decades,” the federation team wrote.

Despite the public display of the DF-61 missile, it remains unclear how different it is from the existing Dongfeng-41 ICBM, according to the federation team report and Etienne Marcuz, associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, who commented Sept. 3 on X.

“Based on new information from the parade footage, it seems China now has nine different versions of land-based ICBMs: DF-5A, DF-5B, DF-5C, DF-27 (not yet displayed in public), DF-31A, DF-31AG, DF-31BJ, DF-41, and DF-61,” according to the FAS team.

The researchers said that the displayed buildup of nuclear forces “appears to contradict China’s obligations under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and risks stimulating nuclear buildups in the United States and India—developments that would not be in China’s interest.”

Along with the land component, the Julang-3 and Jinglei-1 were displayed, marking the first-time that China has collectively showcased its full nuclear triad.

It also marked the first time that China displayed a nuclear weapons system for delivery by aircraft, the Jinglei-1, which was described by the official parade commentator as an “air-based long-range missile,” according to the FAS report. “This is likely the air-launched ballistic missile (designated CH-AS-X-13 by the [U.S. Department of Defense]) that the Chinese air force has been working on for several years to integrate on the H-6N intermediate-range bomber. The first bomber base to be equipped for the nuclear mission is thought to be Neixiang air base in Henan province,” added the FAS report.

According to the Sept. 3 Xinhua report, “Representatives … from countries such as Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada” were invited to the event, which Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and more than 20 other foreign leaders attended.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force is responsible for overseeing the country’s conventional and nuclear land-based missiles. In 2023, the rocket force had several cases of corruption scandals that resulted in a large-scale purge. (See ACT, March 2023.) According to the Chinese-language Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, Chinese media revealed Sept. 11 that the purge was a result of a nine-year-long investigation.

The investigation found that “procurement brokers with expert identities and state-owned enterprises that engaged in bid rigging, and their qualifications have been terminated,” the newspaper reported.

October 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rejected dialogue with South Korea, but said he was open to talks with President Donald Trump if the United States drops its demand for denuclearization.

Kim told North Korea’s parliament in a Sept. 21 speech that the country will “never ever” give up its nuclear weapons but will discuss “genuine peaceful coexistence” with the United States, according to a transcript published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung suggested that Seoul would support talks aimed at freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program as an interim measure. Lee, speaking to BBC North Korea on Sept. 22, said South Korea cannot “give up on the long-term goal of [North Korean] denuclearization” but he acknowledged that a freeze would be a “feasible, realistic alternative” for now.

Lee first outlined a three-stage plan for denuclearization in August, beginning with a freeze. His administration provided more detail on its approach to North Korea in a Sept. 16 policy document. That document called for “institutionalizing peaceful coexistence” with North Korea.

Prior to releasing the new strategy, Lee met Trump in Washington at the White House. During their Aug. 26 press conference, Lee urged Trump to act as a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula. He said Trump is the “only person that can make progress” on resolving the North Korean nuclear weapons threat.

Trump expressed interest in holding another summit meeting with Kim “this year” and said he and Kim will “make relations better.”

It is unclear, however, if Trump would be willing to move away from denuclearization in order to engage Kim.

Trump met Kim three times during Trump’s first term. At the first meeting in Singapore in 2018, the two leaders signed a declaration committing the United States and North Korea to the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. (See ACT, July/August 2018.) But the dialogue between the two leaders eventually broke down before North Korea took any tangible steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. North Korea is believed to have as many as 50 nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration has said little about its North Korea policy for its second term but suggested that any negotiations should take place based on the 2018 declaration. It appears unlikely, however, that Kim will agree to meet Trump if the U.S. goal is denuclearization.

High-level officials, including Kim, continue to describe the country’s nuclear weapons status as “irreversible.” North Korea may feel more emboldened to reject denuclearization after Kim traveled to China in September for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

China previously expressed support for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but Xi did not mention denuclearization during his meetings with Kim. Russia already appears to have accepted North Korea’s nuclear status.

Strengthened ties with China and Russia also may reduce pressure on North Korea to improve ties with South Korea or the United States. During the Beijing trip, Kim appeared alongside Xi and Putin to view a military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

KCNA said that Kim discussed “long-term plans” for cooperation with Putin and noted the special “friendship and alliance” between North Korea and Russia.

In addition to strengthening ties with China and Russia, North Korea continues to develop its domestic nuclear deterrent. North Korea announced Sept. 9 that it conducted the final ground test of a solid-fuel rocket motor designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles. According to the state-run Rodong Sinmun, Kim attended the test. The media outlet said the successful test “heralds a significant change in expanding and strengthening [North Korea’s] nuclear strategic forces.”

North Korea has already tested ICBMs capable of reaching the continental United States, but those systems were liquid-fueled. Solid-fueled ICBMs can be fired more quickly.

North Korea is developing a new ICBM, the Hwasong-20. It is likely the rocket motor that was tested is intended for that system. Kim visited the factory where North Korea is producing the Hwasong-20 on Sept. 2, according to KCNA. Kim said the new system will bolster North Korea’s strategic missile forces.

North Korea also appears to be processing plutonium from spent reactor fuel, likely for additional nuclear warheads. In a Sept. 8 statement, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said the agency has observed indicators since January 2025 that are “consistent with reprocessing irradiated fuel” from the 5-megawatt electrical reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex.

He also said that the IAEA observed via satellite imagery construction of a facility at Yongbyon that has “dimensions and features” similar to North Korea’s enrichment plant at Kangson. North Korea is known to enrich uranium, likely for nuclear warheads, but the full scope of the program is unclear.

Lee outlined the steps South Korea is planning to take in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear weapons program. In the Sept. 16 policy document, he said South Korea must strengthen its military capabilities in response to North Korea’s advances. Lee called for “independent deterrence” capabilities and said that South Korea would achieve that by strengthening its three-axis system and taking steps to modernize the military, including by improving and integrating drones and unmanned systems into the military and strengthening defenses against cyber threats.

The three-axis system is comprised of a “kill chain,” or preemptive strikes against North Korean missiles; “Korean Air and Missile Defense,” which is multilayered; and the “Korean Massive Punishment and Retaliation” campaign, which involves counterstrikes on Pyongyang in response to any attack and by targeting North Korean leaders.

October 2025
By Michael T. Klare

In its drive to equip U.S. forces with increased numbers of unmanned weapons systems, the Department of Defense appears to be pursuing a “high-low” approach to procurement, seeking vast numbers of cheap, disposable drones along with fewer numbers of highly capable but more expensive unmanned combat vehicles.

The “low” end of this acquisition strategy was unveiled by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth July 10 in a memorandum to senior Pentagon officials on “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance.” As he indicated, the memo’s aim is to expedite the development, production, and deployment of low-cost drones in massive numbers.

“Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation,” Hegseth declared in the July 10 memorandum. Yet, “U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires.”

To overcome this deficit, he called on the military services to rapidly commence large-scale purchases of such devices from U.S. manufacturers, including from start-up companies with little previous experience working with the Pentagon. “We will bolster the nascent U.S. drone manufacturing base by approving hundreds of American products for purchase by our military,” 
he wrote.

To facilitate this process, Hegseth decreed in accompanying instructions that small drones, or unmanned aerial systems, be redefined as “consumable commodities” for procurement purposes, simplifying their acquisition by the military. “Small [unmanned aerial systems] resemble munitions more than high-end airplanes,” he stated. “They should be cheap, rapidly replaceable, and categorized as consumable.”

Apparently, on a separate track, the Pentagon and the military services are developing large, unmanned combat vehicles that are the very opposite of what might be termed “cheap, rapidly replaceable, and … consumable.” These include unmanned surface vessels the size of a small, manned corvette and pilotless jet fighters projected to cost tens of millions of dollars each.

In its budget request for fiscal year 2026, for example, the Defense Department sought $1.1 billion for procurement of the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel, a pilotless, missile-armed warship with a projected length of up to 200 feet. The Navy already has tested several prototypes of the medium unmanned surface vessel, but it may be several years before production of combat-ready vessels will begin. (See ACT, November 2020.)

The 2026 Pentagon budget request also included $789 million for research and development of the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft, an unmanned fighter jet intended to serve as a “loyal wingman” to piloted aircraft on high-risk missions. As envisioned by the Air Force, the collaborative combat aircrafts—each governed by AI-enabled flight controls—will be used to seek out enemy interceptors and air-defense systems and, when authorized by the pilot, engage them on their own.

In April 2024, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told members of a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee that the Air Force planned to acquire up to 2,000 of the unpiloted aircraft at an estimated cost of $25 million to $30 million each, a program that could cost as much as $60 billion. At that time, the service announced that it had chosen two nontraditional defense contractors, Anduril Industries and General Atomics, neither of which had previously received a major award of this size, to build prototype versions of the collaborative combat aircraft.

A contract award for production of combat-ready CCAs is not expected to be announced until sometime in 2026, but development of the two contending prototypes—General Atomics’s YFQ-42A and Anduril’s YFQ-44A—is proceeding apace. The prototype YFQ-42A underwent its first test flight on Aug. 27, and the YFQ-44A’s first flight is expected shortly, according to Inside Defense.

The Navy, too, has begun development of a collaborative combat aircraft-type “loyal wingman.” On Sept. 5, the service revealed that it had awarded contracts to four contractors—Anduril, Boeing, General Atomics, and Northrop Grumman—for “conceptual designs” for a carrier-based autonomous combat plane. Although expected to be similar in many respects to the Air Force’s collaborative combat design, the Navy variant will be designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers.

October 2025
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

The United States has decided to unilaterally reinterpret rules designed to control missile transfers so it can facilitate the sale of drones, the State Department announced Sept. 15.

In a statement, the department said that in order to “ensure predictable and reliable delivery of American products to foreign partners, and advance U.S. competitiveness abroad for unmanned systems [it] will now review requests to export [unmanned aerial systems] similar to how it reviews requests to export manned fighter aircraft.”

The new policy will make the United States “the premier drone provider instead of ceding that space to Turkey and China,” a U.S. official, speaking anonymously, told Reuters.

Under the policy, the Trump administration will reinterpret how the United States applies the guidelines set forth by the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, which is a voluntary export control regime involving 35 states that seeks to limit the proliferation of missiles and related technology that can carry weapons of mass destruction.

Under the MTCR, exports of Category I systems are subject to a “strong presumption to deny … transfers.” That category includes complete rocket systems and unmanned air vehicle systems that exceeds a range of 300 kilometers and a payload of 500 kilograms.

In a note to key congressional committees Sept. 3, the State Department noted that the change will enable it to “adjudicate foreign defense sales requests more efficiently, opening new markets for the U.S.”

It also asserted that U.S. export controls on missile technology “must keep pace with the speed and scope of technological developments, especially as the use of unmanned systems on the battlefield has become increasingly common for allies and adversaries alike.”

Reuters reported that this new interpretation of the MTCR “would unlock the sale of more than 100 MQ-9 drones to Saudi Arabia, which the kingdom requested in the spring of this year and could be part of a $142 billion arms deal announced in May.” By contrast, the United States “has not been selling or donating large drones to Kyiv for fear that advanced technologies could fall into enemy hands.”

President Donald Trump also revised the MTCR policy in 2020, during his first administration, to expedite sales of unmanned aerial vehicles. (See ACT, September 2020.) The new change “complements recent modifications to the national … MTCR-focused export policy under [the Biden administration’s] National Security Memorandum 28 and advances reforms made under the 2020 Revised UAS Export Policy,” a State Department factsheet said.

At the same time, the department emphasized the U.S. commitment to continue “to ensure its arms transfer review processes are implemented in a manner that does not contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their delivery systems,” and noted that the MTCR “remains an important component of U.S. national security policy.”

October 2025
By Xiaodon Liang

The Russian military in September led foreign partners in two sets of scaled-down exercises in Belarus and its own western regions, recalling larger drills that preceded the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Belarusian and Russian troops participated in joint drills Sept. 12-16 as part of Zapad 2025, the latest in a recurring series of quadrennial exercises.

Large-scale Russian military exercises rotate each year across four geographical regions.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed 100,000 service members were involved, a Lithuanian vice minister of national defense, Tomas Godliauskas, said Aug. 14 that only 30,000 Russian and Belarussian troops were believed to be participating, according to the ELTA news agency.

Some 8,000 troops were on exercises in Belarus, of which only 2,000 were Russian, a Lithuanian intelligence official later added on Lithuanian state television. In 2022, joint exercises masking preparations for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine involved nearly 30,000 Russian troops in Belarus. (See ACT, March 2022.)

Despite the limited scale of the exercises, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described Zapad 2025 as “very aggressive.” Poland held its own large-scale military exercise, named Iron Defender, in September, involving more than 30,000 troops and delegations from NATO allies, including U.S. Army personnel.

Six foreign countries sent military personnel to participate in Zapad 2025, while another 16 sent representatives to observe, the Kremlin said. An Indian contingent of 65 military personnel traveled to Russia for the exercises, TASS reported Sept. 10.

The U.S. military attaché to the embassy in Belarus–which is currently based in Lithuania–was present to observe exercises, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Reuters Sept. 16, a day after the Belarusian Ministry of Defense released a video of two U.S. officers shaking hands with local counterparts on social media.

A week earlier, John Coale, a deputy to U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, had met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to deliver a letter from Trump and to announce a deal whereby Belarus would release 52 political prisoners in exchange for the lifting of certain sanctions on its national airline, the Associated Press reported on Sept. 11.

Lukashenko confirmed Sept. 16 that his country’s forces had practiced the launch of tactical nuclear weapons with Russian counterparts as part of Zapad 2025. In a doctrinal shift in November, Russia for the first time explicitly included Belarus under its nuclear umbrella. (See ACT, December 2024.)

The Russian Ministry of Defense released a Sept. 15 video of exercises involving forces equipped with the nuclear-capable Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile system in the exclave of Kaliningrad.

Pavel Muraveiko, chief of staff of the Belarusian armed forces, said the two sides had completed exercises involving the “planning and the consideration of the application of non-strategic nuclear weapons,” and “evaluation and deployment of a mobile missile complex Oreshnik,” state media outlet BelTA reported Sept. 16.

The conventionally armed Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile was first revealed by Russian forces in a Nov. 21, 2024, strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. (See ACT, December 2024.)

From Aug. 31 to Sept. 6, Belarus also hosted a smaller set of military exercises under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Some 2,000 military personnel from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan participated, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Aug. 31.

 

October 2025

Satellite imagery has revealed construction in progress near the Israeli city of Dimona at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, a facility that is key to the Israeli nuclear weapons program, the Associated Press reported Sept. 3.

Three of the seven experts whom AP consulted on the images, taken by Planet Labs PBC, assessed that the construction was for a new heavy water reactor. All seven believed that the activity was linked to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

“It’s probably a reactor—that judgement is circumstantial but that’s the nature of these things,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies told the AP. “It’s very hard to imagine it is anything else.”

The satellite imagery depicts a new structure under construction on a site that previously was deeply excavated in work publicized by the International Panel on Fissile Materials in February 2021. (See ACT, April 2021.) The panel estimated that the excavation began around 2018 or 2019.

Israel denies the existence of a nuclear weapons program and is not a state-party to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Federation of American Scientists noted in 2007 that estimates for the Israeli nuclear stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads, although the lower end of the estimate is likely to be more accurate.

In June 2025, Israel conducted strikes on Iran’s Natanz, Isfahan, and Arak nuclear facilities in an attempt to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon. (See ACT, July/August 2025.)—LIPI SHETTY 

October 2025

Pakistan committed to extend its nuclear deterrent to Saudi Arabia as part of a defense pact the two states signed in September, officials said.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement during Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s visit to Riyadh Sept. 18. A joint statement released after the signing emphasized that the agreement is focused on strengthening joint deterrence against aggression and developing defense cooperation.

The joint statement does not specify if extended nuclear deterrence is included in the agreement, but comments from officials suggest it is part of the defense pact.

In a Sept. 18 interview with GeoTV, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capabilities “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia under the agreement.

The signing of the agreement followed the Israeli strike against Hamas officials in Qatar. Asif, however, said the agreement is not directed at a particular threat or state, but as an “umbrella agreement.” If there is aggression against either country, “it will be jointly defended, and the aggression will be met with a response,” he said.

Ali Shibani, a Saudi analyst that AFP described as having ties to the government, said that “nuclear [deterrence] is integral” to the deal and that Pakistan remembers that Saudi Arabia financed its nuclear program.

Pakistan first tested a nuclear device in 1998 and is now estimated to possess about 170 nuclear warheads. Pakistan’s agreement with Saudi Arabia is the first time that a state with nuclear weapons outside of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has made an extended nuclear deterrence commitment to another state.

Saudi Arabia, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT, is prohibited from developing its own nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia has threatened to develop its own nuclear weapons to match any move by Iran to weaponize, but Riyadh does not currently possess the nuclear infrastructure to produce fissile material for a bomb.—KELSEY DAVENPORT

October 2025

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed the presence of uranium originating from human activity in samples taken from Syria in 2024, a Sept. 1 report from Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.

The samples were taken from three locations functionally related to the site in Dair al Zour, where an undeclared nuclear reactor was located. Israel destroyed the facility in a 2007 airstrike. (See ACT, April 2018.)

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa had granted the IAEA unrestricted access to sites in Syria following a June meeting in Damascus. At the meeting, Grossi presented results of the 2024 sampling to Syrian officials.

“The analysis of samples taken at one of these three locations revealed a significant number of natural uranium particles of anthropogenic origin, some of which are consistent with the conversion of uranium ore concentrate to uranium oxide,” Grossi told the IAEA Board of Governors Sept. 8.

The IAEA plans to visit the site to conduct further analysis in the coming weeks.

“We are hopeful that the IAEA’s questions can be credibly answered and that Syria can make concrete progress towards resolving its noncompliance with its safeguards agreement, as the Board has been calling for since 2011,” the United States said in a Sept. 9 statement to the board.—LIPI SHETTY

October 2025

The Missile Defense Agency and the U.S. Army will proceed with plans to deploy an expanded $8 billion missile defense network at 16 sites on the U.S. territory of Guam, following completion and publication in July of an environmental impact statement.

The network, known as the Enhanced Integrated Air and Missile Defense system (EIAMD), will “enable MDA and the U.S. Army to meet their congressional mandate for a persistent 360-degree layered integrated air and missile defense capability on Guam to address the rapid evolution of missile threats from regional adversaries,” the agency said in a Sept. 8 announcement.

The system will incorporate a ground-based variant of the Navy’s Aegis missile defense system, including the Mark 41 launcher and the Standard Missile 3 and Standard Missile 6 interceptors. According to the environmental impact statement, the Pentagon is considering deploying six potential radar systems as part of the network, including the AN/TPY-6 S-band radar for tracking and intercepting ballistic missiles.

The environmental impact statement found that current plans will have a significant impact on housing availability and access to healthcare on the island territory. It estimates that 10 years of planned construction will require 400 workers, and that 2,300 permanent military and civilian personnel will be required to staff the network.

“I am not satisfied that the cumulative impacts that we have identified and provided to MDA during the [environmental impact statement] commenting period have been addressed,” Governor Lou Leon Guerrero of Guam said in a Sept. 10 statement.

“Let me be clear: there is no national security without human security—without hospitals that heal, schools that teach, utilities that sustain, cyber systems that defend, and homes and jobs that keep families safe,” she added at the Sept. 17 Guam Defense Forum.—LIPI SHETTY

October 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

The effectiveness and credibility of the international rules-based order depends on whether leading states hold rule-breakers accountable, be they friends or foes.

As a world leader and beneficiary of the international system, the United States should be at the forefront of efforts to enforce rules and laws to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, protect civilians in conflict, and block weapons transfers to states that engage in war crimes or genocide.

Since the heinous October 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas, the Israeli military has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 168,000 in its two-year bombing campaign in Gaza. Many thousands more are dying from starvation and disease. The campaign is disproportionate and illegal by many measures.

There is overwhelming evidence that U.S. weapons, and weapons from other states, have been used by the Netanyahu government in its war on Gaza in violation of humanitarian law and that Israel has blocked humanitarian assistance from the U.S. government, other nations, and nongovernmental aid groups.

In the name of defeating Hamas, the Israeli government—using U.S.-supplied weaponry and ammunition—has systematically bombed population centers, including schools, hospitals, water and sanitation infrastructure, and aid workers and has forcibly displaced of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Yet President Donald Trump, his predecessor Joe Biden, and the majority of Congress have failed to uphold U.S. and international law. They have refused to use their considerable leverage to withhold military aid from Israel to protect innocent lives, facilitate a ceasefire, and secure the release of surviving Israeli hostages.

As a result, the United States is complicit in one of the most horrific chapters in human history. Its reputation as a defender of the international rules-based system is in tatters.

In July, B’Tselem—the independent Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories—released a detailed report that finds that “for nearly two years, Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” In July, UN world hunger experts declared that the besieged civilian population in Gaza was at risk of famine.

A September report from Democratic U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, based on their regional fact-finding trip, concluded that: “The Netanyahu government has used a two-pronged strategy—the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and the use of food and humanitarian assistance—as a weapon of war. The goal is, in effect, to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population.”

The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act—and basic human decency—require withholding military aid when U.S. weapons are used by any government that engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights or that restricts the delivery of U. S. humanitarian assistance.

Despite the war’s devastating toll on civilians, the Trump administration has accelerated military aid to Israel and reversed earlier Biden restrictions on the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs, which have indiscriminate effects when dropped in populated areas.

In February, the Trump administration notified Congress of seven major arms sales to Israel amounting to over $11 billion of lethal weapons. Immediately afterward, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unilaterally broke the phased ceasefire that had been negotiated between Israel and Hamas before the last two phases could be negotiated. Since then, Israeli violence against civilians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank has escalated, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has only worsened.

Following another notice of arms transfers to Israel in July, some members of Congress put forward joint resolutions of disapproval that could have blocked the Trump administration’s proposed $675 million weapons transfer to Israel. Although more than 60 percent of the American people oppose further U.S. military aid to Israel, the measure won the support of just 24 senators, all Democrats.

In the face of U.S. inaction, Netanyahu defied international calls to end the war, ordered a new military offensive against Gaza City, and rejected Palestinian statehood.

Not only is it past time for Congress to enforce U.S. laws designed to protect civilians; the desperate situation also demands that other international actors step up to enforce the most basic international rules to protect civilians.

As a distinguished group of UN experts proposed Sept. 5, the General Assembly should adopt a “Uniting for Peace” resolution, demanding and enforcing a cessation of Israel’s bombardment and displacement of civilians in Gaza, the release of remaining Israeli hostages by Hamas, an immediate arms embargo on Israel and Hamas, and the unfettered delivery of humanitarian aid by UN and independent nongovernmental aid groups.

A robust Uniting for Peace initiative would pressure U.S. and Israeli leaders to act within the international rules and help enforce any plan to end the war, including the U.S.-Israeli brokered plan they demand that Hamas accept or else Israel’s assault will continue.

Such resolutions, which carry greater legal and political weight and can authorize a UN emergency force, have been used in rare cases when Security Council members fail to maintain international peace and security. If there has been any occasion for bolder action, it is now.