GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan criticized former Defense Secretary Robert Gates during the vice presidential debate this evening for warning about the consequences of attacking Iran over its nuclear program.

Gates — a Republican who served as Pentagon chief in both the Bush and Obama administrations — last week reiterated his warning that attacking Iran could be “catastrophic” and “make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.”

When ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Vice President Biden and Ryan about Gates’ assertion, Ryan said it “undermines” American credibility:

RADDATZ: What about Bob Gates’ statement. Let me read that again. “Could prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”

BIDEN: He is right. It could prove catastrophic if we didn’t do it precision –

RYAN: What it does is it undermines our credibility by backing up the point when we make it that all options are on the table. That’s the point. The Ayatollahs see these kinds of statements and they think, “I’m going to get a nuclear weapon.” When we see the kind of equivacation that took place because this administration wanted a pre-condition policy so when the Green Revolution started up they were silent for 9 days. When they see us putting desperate — when they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement.

Watch the clip:

Ryan was repeating a Romney campaign talking point that warning about the consequences of war with Iran only encourages the Iranian regime to move forward with an alleged nuclear weapons program (the Romney team doesn’t like discussing those consequences). Yet many experts and current and former U.S. and Israeli officials have echoed Gates’ warnings that attacking Iran would give leaders there incentive to weaponize and it could spark a regional war.

Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign has updated its website to include a new so-called “red line” on Iran’s nuclear program. Previously, the site’s Iran section claimed that a President Romney would not tolerate Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon. The updated version of the site hinges on Iran’s nuclear weapons capability:

Below is a screenshot from a Google cached version of Romney’s site from September 29, 2012:

The shift is significant because it represents a much lower threshold for potential military action. Rather than disallowing the actual possession of, or run up to, a nuclear weapon, Romney’s position instead rules out Iran developing the ability to produce a bomb, which arguably, Iran is currently able to do. President Obama has said that it is his administration’s policy to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, leaving no option off the table in doing so.

Romney has shifted back and forth on the “capability” issue. His campaign advisers first floated the preventing a nuclear weapons capable Iran policy back in July. But Romney walked that back last month, saying his policy is the same as Obama’s, only to reverse it back to where his advisers laid it out in July. Now it appears that the Romney camp is officially settling on “capability” as the website change suggests. Moreover, the Romney camp, like the Senate just last month, doesn’t define “capability,” which is troublesome as various lawmakers in favor of this language have offered a wide array of meanings resulting in corresponding wide array of “red-lines” to initiate military strikes.

A recent Institute for Science and International Security report has determined that Iran has shortened the time it would take for it to achieve the ability to process uranium up to the ninety percent enrichment level that would make it weapons-grade. However, the same report notes that such a move would be detected by both the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) and the United States. One of the few possible reasons given by ISIS that Iran would move towards weapons-grade uranium enrichment would be a preemptive strike against its nuclear program.

Romney’s shift also comes at a time when Israel is pulling back its threats of military action against Iran’s program, having concluded that the IAEA’s assessment that Iran has slowed progress towards a nuclear weapon is correct. (HT: Foreign Policy)

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is reeling after the United States abruptly cut funding to the organization last year. The cuts came following a vote by UNESCO’s Member States to allow Palestine to join the organization as a full member. In response, the United States, which provides about 22 percent of the UNESCO budget, cancelled its allocation to the U.N. body.

The result of these cuts has been that the organization has been “crippled”, in the words of Director-General Irina Bokova. The U.S. assessment generally equals about $60 million, which is then allocated both to specific projects and general funding for the organization. As of March, the U.S. had withheld about $78 million, the total of its current dues and amounts previously owed. It’s also unlikely that the United States will pay its dues for 2012, normally handed over at the end of the year. The net outcome of the newly drawn pursestrings is a $150 million deficit in UNESCO’s budget across 2012 and 2013.

Ending UNESCO funding was not the decision of the Obama administration, but rather the implementation of a 1994 law that prohibits the United States from providing money to international organizations that accords Palestine the same rights as Member States. The administration has included funds for UNESCO in its Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request [PDF] hoping Congress will amend the law and released a memo on the U.S. interests UNESCO membership bolsters:

UNESCO actively promotes democratic values around the world, reinforcing U.S. efforts, particularly in politically sensitive environments and conflict zones where it can be difficult for the U.S. to operate. UNESCO programs are serving to sustain the democratic spirit of the Arab Spring, promote peace and nation-building in south Sudan, support democratic reforms in Iraq and Afghanistan, and encourage Holocaust Education in the Middle East and Africa U.S. contributions to UNESCO leverage funding from other donors for programs that promote media freedom, democratic institution-building, peace and stability, and disaster response and prevention. UNESCO’s operating costs in the field, including its security costs, are much lower than those of U.S. contractors, particularly in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan and the Middle East.

It remains unlikely that Congress will move to alter or repeal the law in the near future.

While UNESCO has managed to raise around $89 million dollars towards its Emergency Fund, including large donations from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, these were one-time contributions, and can’t fill the permanent budget hole the United States’ withdrawal has created. Moreover, some of the larger donations, such as $20 million from Norway, are specifically donated with projects in mind.

Among those projects directly funded by the U.S. that now are lacking financial support are UNESCO’s Education for Holocaust Remembrance program and a project which researches tsunamis. Also hampered by the cuts would be a program to increase literacy among the Afghan National Police.

The placement of Pamela Geller’s anti-Muslim “savages” ads in the District of Columbia have spurred a wide range of religious groups to counter the ads’ message. A coalition of 157 religious groups from across the DC Metro-area signed onto a letter to the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority, pressing them to take stronger steps to work against hate speech.

In the letter, the coalition requested that WMATA pursue greater outreach to communities before publishing possibly inflammatory advertisements in and on the area’s public transit, add disclaimers to such ads that they do not represent WMATA’s views, and allow free ad space to counter hate speech. The coalition also sought to preempt accusations that their desire was to limit the First Amendment:

With respect to your response in this matter, it is not our desire that WMATA disallow advertisements that contain any political speech as this would curtail the use of an important forum where ideas are frequently exchanged. We respect the protections afforded to political speech, and do not wish that our position be misinterpreted as advocating for the curtailment of such speech. This being said, we do believe there are measures WMATA can take to mitigate the effect hate speech has on the community and encourage you to take the above listed steps in crafting a principled and effective response.

Several of the coalition members are also working to counter the ads purchased by Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative more directly. Sojourners, a DC-based social justice group, is running a campaign known as “Love Your Muslim Neighbors” that will now be coming to DC. The associated ads will run at the U Street and Georgia Avenue/Petworth Metrorail stations, two of the four AFDI ad locations.

In a press release, Timothy King, Chief Communications Officer of Sojourners said, “We have a Christian obligation to counteract this hatred wherever it is, but these ads have come right to our doorstep. Sojourners has been in this neighborhood since the mid-70’s, so it’s especially important for us to be a witness in this community, and this city.”

Likewise, the United Methodist Women, which is currently running counter-advertisements to the New York City version of Geller’s ads, will be bringing their campaign to the DC Metro. The DC-version of the advertisements will be sponsored by a group of organizations in tandem and run at the Takoma Park and Glenmont Metrorail stations, as well as a third location closer to downtown DC. Between the two campaigns, counter-ads will be running at all of AFDI’s locations.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank caught an interesting tidbit from yesterday’s House hearing on the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya last month. The GOP — having spent months railing against the Obama administration for allegedly leaking classified information — yesterday revealed classified information. “When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big,” Milbank reports today, “and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.”

Accompanying the State Department officials’ testimony was an areal photo of the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, which one of the officials said was “entirely unclassified.” That is until Rep. Jason Chaffez (R-UT) interrupted testimony to point out that the photo contained secret information. Milbank explains:

In their questioning and in the public testimony they invited, the lawmakers managed to disclose, without ever mentioning Langley directly, that there was a seven-member “rapid response force” in the compound [in Benghazi] the State Department was calling an annex. One of the State Department security officials was forced to acknowledge that “not necessarily all of the security people” at the Benghazi compounds “fell under my direct operational control.”

And whose control might they have fallen under? Well, presumably it’s the “other government agency” or “other government entity” the lawmakers and witnesses referred to; Issa informed the public that this agency was not the FBI.

“Other government agency,” or “OGA,” is a common euphemism in Washington for the CIA. This “other government agency,” the lawmakers’ questioning further revealed, was in possession of a video of the attack but wasn’t releasing it because it was undergoing “an investigative process.”

Milbank noted that the New York Times had previously reported that CIA operatives had been evacuated as a result of the attack, but the paper “withheld locations and details of the facilities at the administration’s request.”

Minutes after Chaffetz’s outburst, committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) ordered the photo be taken down. “Too bad he didn’t think of that before putting the CIA on C-SPAN,” Milbank said.