UN Secretary-General Warns World Is in Most Dangerous Nuclear Era

JAKARTA - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday warned that the world is entering the most dangerous nuclear period in decades.

The call comes after the United States and Israel launched new strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year, in a conflict that has reignited global concerns about the risks of military action involving countries with advanced nuclear capabilities.

"Eighty-one years ago, Hiroshima was reduced to ashes. Tens of thousands of people were killed. And our world was faced directly with the terrible power of nuclear war," Secretary-General Guterres said in a video message to commemorate the atomic bomb event in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

"Have we learned the lessons from the events that took place in the midst of the flames here 81 years ago? Will humanity choose a peaceful future? Or will we continue to live under the shadow of nuclear annihilation?" he said.

The US dropped the world's first atomic bomb during the war on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945.

The second atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki three days later and killed another 74,000 people, leading Japan to surrender and end World War II.

Secretary-General Guterres said that decades after the bombing of Hiroshima, the worsening geopolitical competition and the renewed reliance on nuclear deterrence have brought humanity closer to disaster.

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear arms control treaties, diplomatic engagement, and the gradual reduction of nuclear stockpiles had eased concerns about another nuclear confrontation.

Guterres said the trend was now reversing.

He noted that global military spending jumped to US$2.9 trillion in 2025, and stated that "the threat of nuclear weapons is again being used for power and coercion".

The UN Secretary-General urged governments of various countries, "especially nuclear-weapon states", to change the current situation and abandon "the zero-sum logic that considers nuclear weapons as the highest guarantee of security, when in fact it is the opposite".

The call comes after months of concern about nuclear risks associated with a conflict with Iran.

Last month, the United Nations warned the Security Council, its nuclear watchdog, that it had lost the ability to fully monitor or access facilities related to Iran's nuclear program, following a barrage of attacks from the US and Israel.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in June stated that Iran remains the only state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that is not a nuclear weapons owner, producing uranium with a purity level of 60 percent.

The report warns the loss of continuity of information on declared nuclear material - which has been ongoing for a year - is a "problem that raises proliferation concerns" and requires immediate action.