“The folly of imposing new sanctions now is fraught with irony. Years of steadily tightened multilateral sanctions have succeeded. They’ve brought the new, relatively moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to an accord that halts Iranian enrichment of weapons-grade uranium,” writes Council Board Member, Gerald Warburg for The Virginia Pilot.

On the docket last Thursday afternoon was a massive omnibus government-funding bill that included $572 billion for the Defense Department — the Council for a Livable World calculated the actual DoD allotment at nearly $610 billion.

Executive Director, John Isaacs, Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Kate Gould & National Iranian American Council’s Jamal Abdi join The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann to discuss first-step deal with Iran

“The final appropriation is an increase of $2.5 billion over the [fiscal] 2013, post-sequester enacted level, but a decrease of approximately $32 billion below the administration’s budget request of $552 billion,� Kingston Reif, Laicie Heeley and John Isaacs wrote for the Council for a Livable World.

“What Rubio is doing on these nominations and what other Republicans are doing on other nominations is slow-walking them,” John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World, told Global Security Newswire on Friday.