Iran-Israel tension: Is the world's nuclear arsenal growing? THESE 9 countries together have 12,000 warheads

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has revealed in its new yearbook 2025 that nine countries worldwide possess as many as 12,241 nuclear weapons as of January 1, 2025.

The new report comes amid the ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme. US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said that "Iran can't have a nuclear weapon".

Amid the war and chaos in the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, the SIPRI Yearbook 2025 showed that “a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened”.

The report further named the "nine states (countries)" which have nuclear warheads, and also mentioned the number of warheads that they possess.

The SIPRI Yearbook 2025 stated, "At the start of 2025, nine states...together possessed approximately 12,241 nuclear weapons, of which 9,614 were considered to be potentially operationally available."

Here's what the report revealed.

Which countries have nuclear warheads?

As per the report, the nine nuclear-armed states are the US, Russia, the United Kingdom (UK), France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel.

How many nuclear warheads do these countries have?

Here's the list according to the SIPRI estimates:

US: 5,177 nuclear weapons

Russia: 5,459 nuclear weapons

China: 600 nuclear weapons

France: 290 nuclear weapons

UK: 225 nuclear weapons

India: 180 nuclear weapons

Pakistan: 170 nuclear weapons

Israel: 90 nuclear weapons

North Korea: 50 nuclear weapons

The report said that these countries "continued intensive nuclear modernisation programmes in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions".

The SIPRI report further revealed that of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,241 warheads in January 2025, about 9,614 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

An estimated 3,912 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and the rest were in central storage.

Around 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles.

"Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, but China may now keep some warheads on missiles during peacetime," the report said.

Key takeaways from SIPRI Yearbook 

The SIPRI analysis revealed that China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than any other country’s, by about 100 new warheads a year since 2023.

It also mentioned that India is believed to have once again slightly expanded its nuclear arsenal in 2024 and continued to develop new types of nuclear delivery systems.

The report added that "Russia and the USA together possess around 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons". It said it is likely that both Russian and US deployments of nuclear weapons will rise in the years despite their nuclear programmes facing challenges.

'Number of nuclear warheads continues to decline'

The SIPRI report claimed that overall, the number of nuclear warheads in the world continues to decline, due to the USA and Russia dismantling retired warheads.

However, it noted that “the number of warheads being dismantled annually appears to be decreasing, and it seems likely that the rate at which retired warheads are dismantled will soon be outpaced by the rate at which new warheads enter global stockpiles”.