A liberal national security group will run a new ad about the consequences of a potential war with Iran on CNN before and after Monday’s foreign policy debate.

The ad from the Truman National Security Project questions the cost of a war with Iran and the lack of an exit strategy.

“There’s a lotta guys on TV talking about a war with Iran, and nobody can tell me how this ends,” a veteran says as pictures of former Vice President Dick Cheney and John Bolton, who served as Ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration, flash in the background.

Your morning global affairs speed-read

The Obama campaign suffered a blow Thursday when new polling showed Republican Mitt Romney closing the gap on foreign policy, which had been a key point of strength for the president. The two candidates will face off on the topic Monday during their third and final debate.

Much of the president's ground on the topic has been lost over the past month, following the attack in Libya, and administration officials have been working hard to undo the damage. They've pushed back especially hard on Republican accusations that the president deliberately misled voters about the circumstances of the attack and laid out their most detailed explanation yet for the changing intelligence assessment in interviews with The Wall Street Journal.

As for Obama, he made it clear Thursday that he won't shy away from playing his trump card during Monday's debate. 

“Monday’s debate is a little bit different because the topic is foreign policy,” Obama said at last night at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner. “Spoiler alert: We got bin Laden.”

The U.N. elected four U.S. allies — Australia, Luxembourg, South Korea and Rwanda — to stints on the powerful council.

Obama holds a slim 47 percent to 43 percent edge in a Pew survey taken after the attacks in Libya.

The White House on Thursday took a step forward in formally recognizing the contributions of Filipino-Americans to the American war effort in the Pacific during World War II, which could pay huge dividends politically and internationally. 

U.S. trade officials announced Thursday that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has rejected China's appeal in a case over duties imposed on high-tech steel exports. 

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the WTO's Appellate Body ruled that Beijing had acted inconsistently with its trade obligations by illegally imposing duties on anti-dumping and countervailing duties on grain oriented flat-rolled electrical steel (GOES).

"The Obama administration will not stand by and allow China to break international trade rules," Kirk said.  

A group of bipartisan female senators expressed their outrage to Pakistan's prime minister on Thursday over the recent Taliban attack of a 14-year-old girl. 

“As the women of the United States Senate, we are writing to express our outrage over the barbaric attack on fourteen-year old Malala Yousafzai and two other girls in a senseless act of violence,” the senators, led by Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), wrote in a letter to Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on Thursday.

Ahmed Abu Khattala, head of the Islamic Libyan militia Ansar al-Sharia, admitted on Thursday to being present during the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that international collaboration will be vital as melting sea ice opens up new shipping and oil-and-gas drilling opportunities in the Arctic.

“Some of our energy diplomacy is focused on remote areas like the Arctic, a frontier of unexplored oil-and-gas deposits and a potential environmental catastrophe,” Clinton said during a wide-ranging speech on energy diplomacy at Georgetown University.

“The melting ice caps are opening new drilling opportunities as well as new maritime routes, so it is critical that we now act to set rules of the road to avoid conflict over those resources and protect the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem,” she said.