Iran
West “vaccinated” Iran against sanctions: Khamenei
Marcus George, Reuters – July 11, 2012
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday dismissed harsher sanctions imposed on Iran this month over its disputed nuclear activity, saying the country was “100 times stronger” than before.
Afghanistan
Afghan Exit Will Cost U.S. Billions
Tom Vanden Brook, USAToday – July 11, 2012
Moving the mountain of U.S. military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year’s withdrawal from Iraq, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official said Tuesday. The pace of withdrawal is picking up: About 20,000 U.S. servicemembers and their gear will be coming home by October. There are about 88,000 American troops there now. All U.S. combat forces are to leave by 2014.
Defense Spending
The cuts no one believes will come
Scott Wong and Stephanie Gaskell, Associated Press – July 10, 2012
Amid all the chatter on Capitol Hill about looming defense cuts, there’s one thing no one’s saying out loud: The cuts will probably never happen.
Non-Proliferation Treaty
Washington P5 Conference on Implementing the NPT
Rose Gottemoeller, Huffington Post – July 9, 2012
On June 27-29, the State Department welcomed the other members of the P5 — China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom — to discuss the implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Senior policy and defense officials and technical staff from these four countries and the United States continued the dialogue that the permanent members of the UN Security Council — the P5 — are having to advance their nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament commitments under the 2010 NPT Review Conference’s Action Plan.
