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Representatives from 189 countries are meeting in New York right now for a month-long conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. On Monday the Obama Administration revealed the size of the American nuclear arsenal – a state secret since the time of the Manhattan project during World War II. We now know that the US has 5,113 active and inactive warheads, not counting the the warheads slated to be decommissioned. This is about 6 times fewer than the number of warheads during the 1967 Cuban Missile crisis. The disclosure has prompted calls for Russia to reveal the size of its arsenal. In the lead-up to the conference Iran came under fire from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, prompting President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to give a searing speech on Monday, the opening day of the conference where he took specific aim at the US. Ahmedinejad said, “Those who committed the first atomic bombardment are considered to be among the most hated individuals in human history… Regrettably, the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons but it also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries, including Iran.” Meanwhile, Israel’s nuclear arsenal was also a major point of contention brought up by the 114 member group called the Non-Aligned Movement. Israel has chosen not to be a party to the NPT. This past weekend, in the lead-up to the NPT review, a conference to abolish nuclear weapons took place at the Riverside Church in New York, featuring UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, and my guest Joseph Gerson among others.

GUEST: Joseph Gerson, director of programs for the American Friends Service Committee in New England and author of “Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.”

For more information, visit www.afsc.org, www.peaceandjustice.org, and www.reachingcriticalwill.org.