Which Nations Could Strike Washington State With A Nuclear Weapon

For those of you who might think that we (the United States) are on the brink of global-thermonuclear war due to the perceived inevitability of tensions between Israel and Iran reaching critical mass to militarily involve the United States, you might want to check your facts about the list of nations which currently possess the requisite weaponry to make such a scenario actually occur.

Currently, there are only five countries in the world that are fully known to have functioning and deployable nuclear weapons, including China; France; Russia; and the United Kingdom (U.K.), as well as the U.S. itself.

Obviously, France and the U.K. are allies of the United States and highly unlikely to launch an offense against it. It could also certainly be said that while China and Russia haven't always been (and aren't currently) on friendliest of terms with the U.S., both are not exactly in the position to strike it with weapons of mass destruction at the present time.

Israel has never openly admitted to possessing nukes, but is widely renowned for having them, while India and Pakistan are essentially in the same silo, and are also not in an adversarial stance against the United States.

North Korea also claims to have developed nuclear offensive capabilities within the past 15 years, and while experts say they might very well possess an arsenal of limited potency, it's generally accepted that it hasn't yet fully arrived as a member of the world's Nuclear Club just yet.

In addition, there are also five nations that have nuclear weapons on their soil through sharing agreements with the U.S., including Belgium, Germany; Italy; the Netherlands; and Turkey, while Belarus also reportedly possesses nuclear arms because of a similar sharing by Russia.

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So, that's it. Out of 195 recognized states in the world, that's how short the global table actually is for countries who have the ability to launch a nuclear attack. Nine. And that's only if you believe the avouchments of Kim Jong Un about North Korea having nukes.

You could also count the six nations who possess nuclear weapons through handshakes with another country I suppose, but remember that deploying them would require the authorization of the nation which has proper ownership over them (and that amounts to only the U.S. and Russia).

That said, Iran is not known to possess nuclear weapons, albeit they have reportedly been working to achieve this capability - hence the current schism which has led to a thawing of many long-forgotten Cold War-style fears by folks around the world, especially in the U.S.

While it's true that a U.S. or U.S.-assisted military action against Iran could potentially destabilize the Middle East region even further, and lead to the possible involvement of another nuclear power to take up an opposing posture, such as China or Russia, American citizens can at least take some solace to bed with them each night in knowing that Iran does not hold the armament cards required to even make an ante in the game of nuclear warfare on a global, or even local scale. Simply put, they cannot start a nuclear war with the U.S. or anyone else in the world because they don't command the weapons needed to do so, nor can they launch a nuke that would hit any part of the U.S. or its territorial soils around the globe.

Admittedly, there is a very remote possibility that Iran is sitting on a handful of nuclear weapons that it managed to somehow craft beyond the detection of Israel and its allies' watchful eyes, or somehow obtained on the atomic black market from a nation which formerly possessed such arms, like Kazakhstan or Ukraine. But those scenarios are more like the stuff of Hollywood scripts or a Tom Clancy novel and are extremely remote in any real-world context.

And so, while we all (or most of us anyway) pray for peace to prevail on an Earth that will someday have not a single nuclear weapon, at least Washingtonians can rest assured that a direct conflict between the U.S. and Iran could not create a nuclear-premised Armageddon. But even the possibility of this - no matter how improbable, is already conjuring one of our biggest enemies within this life we live, no matter what nationality or guard we identity with. Fear. And it is this single foe that we all must conquer each day to truly be at peace, regardless of what ills might be troubling the world around us.