Shapiro served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East until January—charged with, among other things, considering scenarios in which tensions between Israel and Iran escalated into all-out war and preparing U.

Supporters of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons gathered in New York in March 2025 to discuss nuclear disarmament and encourage all nations to join the treaty. Jon Letman In 2024, for the fifth year in a row,

Hezbollah, which went on to fight repeated wars with the main U.S. regional ally Israel, has said other groups were responsible. Iran had complaints too. Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and started using chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and border villages from 1982 but Washington lent diplomatic backing in the war to Baghdad.

Nuclear-armed states spent more than $100 billion on their atomic arsenals last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said Friday, lamenting the lack of democratic oversight of such spending.