After threatening Iran with total destruction — “A civilization will die tonight,” said a post by US President Donald Trump on Truth Social, the social media site he owns — making use of profanities and curse words, Trump has declared a two-week ceasefire in the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The ceasefire announcement resulted from peace talks mediated by Pakistan in Islamabad, where further discussions are expected to take place, with US Vice-President JD Vance expected to lead his country’s delegation.

Trump’s threat to wipe out a civilisation — did he mean that he would nuke Iran, it is legitimate to ask — and to destroy bridges, power plants and desalination plants amounts to open plans to commit war crimes.

Trump comes across as being unhinged, and there is talk in Washington DC of the need to strip him of office, on grounds of incapacity — the US Constitution provides for such contingencies — and let the Vice-President assume the Presidency.

Pope Leo XIV, the UN Secretary General and the French foreign minister have criticised Trump’s comments. New Delhi, of course, continues to behave as if studied silence is the best foreign policy, never mind that India leads the BRICS grouping this year and is a self-avowed champion of the Global South.

It is strange leadership of the Global South for India to stay mute when the leader of the most powerful nation on earth threatens a fellow developing country with annihilation.

Truce Wobbles

The ceasefire threatens to unravel, thanks to continuing attacks by Israel on Lebanon, from where Iran’s ally Hezbollah, a Shia militia-plus-political outfit funded and armed by Iran, has fired rockets at Israel.

Israel has already occupied a portion of Southern Lebanon south of the Litani river, and has been bombing the Capital, Beirut. More than 250 people have been killed, and thousands injured.

Iran insists, with backing from Pakistan, that the ceasefire covers Lebanon as well and that it would consider the US and Israel to be in breach if Israel continues to attack Lebanon. Israel and the US maintain that Lebanon was not part of the deal.

Tense negotiations continue, amidst continuing hostilities, and the world watches to see if the Strait of Hormuz is open for navigation. Iran, reportedly, is allowing oil tankers to pass through the Strait, charging tankers one dollar per barrel of oil transported.

The larger classes of crude carriers have the capacity to carry anything from 3,45,000 barrels to one million barrels of oil. In the normal course, 20 million barrels of oil or thereabouts pass through the Strait of Hormuz every day. That many dollars a day is what Iran proposes to collect as toll for letting ships pass through the Strait. It would be a surprise if the US does not see this also as a violation of the ceasefire.

Memorial For A Rat

Meanwhile, Cambodia has honoured a dead rat with a memorial statue. Cambodia, of course, is part of the Southeast Asian region that Indian cultural influence had filled with Hindu customs and idols.

But this particular rat had nothing to do with the animal that served as elephant god Ganesha’s transport. The rat is Magawa, and he is celebrated for having detected and helped eliminate 100 landmines across Cambodia.

Cambodia is the world capital of amputees, whose limbs were blown up by landmines. The laying of mines started with Americans chasing the Vietcong into their Cambodian hideout, and ended with attempts to stop the murderous Khmer Rouge, routed from power, staging guerrilla forays from neighbouring Thaliand.

The US Air Force had dropped 2.7 million tonnes of bombs over Cambodia, without acknowledging the fact, over 14 months starting March 1969. Officially, US attacks were restricted to Vietnam.

Trump’s imperial attitude towards Iran harks back to another chapter of US history, in which the world’s mightiest military treated Southeast Asians like expendable lab mice, who could be sacrificed for the pursuit of noble geopolitical goals. Magawa stands as a metaphor for the worth White Supremacists see in lesser people, and for nature’s potential to redress human excess.

Kalpakkam Unlocks Nuclear Future

The second stage of what the father of India’s atomic energy mission, Homi J Bhabha, had envisaged as a three-stage programme finally got underway at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu.

Bhabha’s vision for indigenous atomic energy was based on the scarcity of uranium and the plentiful availability of Thorium in the monazite sands of coastal South India. Thorium, Uranium and Plutonium are all actinides, a group of heavy, radioactive chemicals.

With Canadian help, which dried up after the 1974 Pokhran nuclear test, India perfected the technology for pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs). When uranium undergoes fission inside a nuclear fission reactor, that is, splits up into lighter elements, some mass is converted into energy at the rate described by Einstein, E=mc2.

Assorted particles charge around at great speed, as the strong nuclear force that binds particles together inside an atom is overcome by the energy induced inside a uranium atom that absorbs a free neutron hitting it at high speed, allowing the electromagnetic repulsion between two positively charged protons to take over, and send particles flying apart at great speed, the kinetic energy creating the heat inside the reactor, which is used to boil water into steam and drive turbines.

Heavy water is formed by two atoms of heavy hydrogen, deuterium, combining with one atom of oxygen. Heavy water is used in PHWRs both as a coolant and as the medium that moderates the speed of the particles. The speed must be sufficient to sustain fission. Each fission must induce, on average, another fission — that is criticality.

If each fission, on average, produces less than one additional fission, the process would fizzle out, making for sub-criticality. Supercriticality is when each fission, on average, creates more than one fission, sending the reactor into uncontrollable overdrive.

Some uranium atoms that gain a neutron inside the reactor undergo what scientists call beta decay, meaning the neutron loses an electron, becoming a proton. When the number of protons inside Uranium goes up from 92 to 93, it becomes another element, Neptunium. Neptunium is unstable and swiftly absorbs another neutron, which loses its electron to become a proton, so that the atom’s atomic number now becomes 94, that is, it becomes Plutonium.

This plutonium is highly toxic and radioactive. It should be recovered from the fission reactor’s spent fuel to make it more amenable to easy disposal. What do you do with the Plutonium? Of course, it can be used for making bombs. Or it can be used, as its oxide, along with an oxide of Uranium, in the Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel for the second stage reactor.

The Plutonium and Uranium oxides produce energy, as in a normal reactor, but around the core, a blanket of natural or depleted uranium is kept. Neutrons from the core bombard the Uranium in the blanket and convert it into more plutonium. The second stage reactor, in other words, makes use of Plutonium from the spent fuel of the first stage to breed yet more plutonium. This is why this is called a breeder reactor.

When sufficient quantities of Plutonium have been bred in this fashion, the stage is set for the third stage. This blanket is made of Thorium, recovered from monazite. Thorium’s atomic number is 90. When it is bombarded with high-speed neutrons inside the reactor, it absorbs neutrons, which undergo beta decay and become protons. When it acquires two protons, the Thorium becomes highly fissile Uranium. This Uranium is now ready to be used as fuel in the Stage 1 PHWR.

Thus, the second stage fast breeder reactor sets the stage for self-reliance on reactor fuel, without having to import Uranium, although, thanks to the quasi-membership of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group that India has gained, thanks to the Indo-US nuclear deal, India can import Uranium. Import dependence, however, is a vulnerability, as missing natural gas and crude oil supplies from the war-struck Persian Gulf demonstrate.