U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday night that he has instructed the Department of War to immediately begin testing U.S. nuclear weapons, a dramatic reversal of a decades-long self-imposed moratorium on explosive nuclear tests.

The directive was issued in a post on his Truth Social platform, where the President claimed the action was necessary “Because of other countries’ testing programs,” and that the U.S. would test “on an equal basis.”

“That process will begin immediately,” the President stated.

The announcement comes on the eve of a scheduled high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, raising geopolitical tensions in an already fraught region.

The United States has not conducted an explosive nuclear test since 1992, adhering to a unilatera

See Full Page