Japan cancels US security talks over defense spending dispute

WASHINGTON: Japan has canceled a regular high-level meeting with its key ally the United States after the Trump administration demanded it spend more on defense, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had been expected to meet Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani in Washington on July 1 for the annual 2+2 security talks.
But Tokyo scrapped the meeting after the U.S. asked Japan to boost defense spending to 3.5% of gross domestic product, higher than an earlier request of 3%, the newspaper said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported on Saturday that President Donald Trump's government was demanding that its Asian allies, including Japan, spend 5% of GDP on defense.
A U.S. official who asked not to be identified told Reuters that Japan had 'postponed' the talks in a decision made several weeks ago. The official did not cite a reason. A non-government source familiar with the issue said he had also heard Japan had pulled out of the meeting but not the reason for it doing so.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said she had no comment on the FT report when asked about it at regular briefing. The Pentagon also had no immediate comment.
Japan's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The nation's foreign and defense ministries and the Prime Minister's Office did not answer phone calls seeking comment outside business hours on Saturday.
The FT said the higher spending demand was made in recent weeks by Elbridge Colby, the third-most senior Pentagon official, who has also recently upset another key U.S. ally in the Indo-Pacific by launching a review of a project to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.
In March, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said that other nations do not decide Japan's defense budget after Colby, in his nomination hearing to be under secretary of defense for policy, called for Tokyo to spend more to counter China.
Japan and other U.S. allies have been engaged in difficult trade talks with the United States over President Donald Trump's worldwide tariff offensive.
The FT said the decision to cancel the July 1 meeting was also related to Japan's July 20 upper house elections, expected to be a major test for Ishiba's minority coalition government.
Japan's move on the 2+2 comes ahead of a meeting of the U.S.-led NATO alliance in Europe next week, at which Trump is expected to press his demand that European allies boost their defense spending to 5% of GDP.

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International inspectors, particularly those from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), now face a profoundly altered landscape. Pre-strike, these nuclear facilities were under partial IAEA monitoring, even if Iran had steadily limited access since the collapse of the JCPOA. Post-strike, the destruction of key installations — tunnels, centrifuge halls, radioactive storage units — means that any baseline of comparison is now gone. Without intact facilities, it becomes nearly impossible to determine what was being produced, how much enriched material has been destroyed or dispersed and — most worryingly — what radioactive material might now be unaccounted for. In a worst-case scenario, uranium hexafluoride gas or plutonium residues may have been aerosolised or buried beneath tonnes of concrete rubble, exposing both the local population and international experts to long-term contamination. Unlike inspections in peaceful conditions, post-bombing forensics in nuclear environments is fraught with danger. Radiation levels can spike unpredictably due to damaged shielding or ruptured storage chambers. The same instruments used to detect radiation — Geiger counters, spectrometers — can malfunction in unstable debris zones. Protective suits only go so far; cumulative exposure is a near certainty. Legal and normative breach Secondly, this episode constitutes a profound rupture of international law and scientific protocol. Iran is still a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Striking its nuclear infrastructure, even with claims of preemptive self-defence, undermines the very principles of international safeguards. IAEA verification relies on cooperation, transparency and physical access. Once these are obliterated by force, the norm of peaceful nuclear oversight is severely weakened. Worse still, it may set a precedent: any state with suspicions — founded or not — could feel emboldened to take kinetic action rather than pursue diplomacy or technical verification. The United States, which has withdrawn from multiple arms control agreements over the last decade (the JCPOA in 2018, the INF Treaty in 2019), has now removed any fig leaf of credibility as a steward of non-proliferation norms. The bombings send a message that compliance is no longer a shield against aggression, and that suspicion, not verification, determines military action. Iran's scientific infrastructure in ruins The tragedy is compounded by the loss of Iran's highly trained nuclear workforce and academic infrastructure. These facilities were not merely military installations. They were also research hubs — employing physicists, engineers, technicians and students. 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Smoke rises following an Israeli attack in Tehran, Iran, June 18, 2025. — Reuters pic Environmental catastrophe in the making Environmental scientists warn that even in controlled nuclear facilities, minute leaks can have long-term consequences. In a post-strike environment, uncontrolled leakage is virtually guaranteed. Fordow and Natanz are located near populated regions. The contamination of aquifers, soil and air cannot be ruled out. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster — caused not by bombs but by human error — led to widespread contamination across Europe. In Iran, where containment has been violently breached, we may see similar risks, though on a localised scale. The use of high-yield bunker busters may also have destabilised underground water tables and soil compositions. Without access to geological surveys and radiation data — which Tehran is unlikely to release in the immediate aftermath — the true scale of the damage may remain unknown for years. Trump's post-strikes conference took few minutes to wrap up. Surrounded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, cum the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, and Vice President JD Vance. The four horsemen may have heralded in the apocalypse which they needed to hurry back into their Situation Room to assess the actual damage. Diplomatic isolation and scientific paralysis For now the larger consequence is that international scientific cooperation with Iran will now grind to a halt. Academic exchanges, technology-sharing arrangements and collaborative energy research will vanish. Any Iranian scientist seen working on nuclear technology — regardless of purpose — will now be treated as suspect. This will only deepen Iran's scientific isolation, pushing it closer to autarky or toward alliances with China and Russia. In effect, what the bombings have done is not prevent proliferation, but dismantle the very framework of international engagement that had made diplomacy possible in the first place. Asean and the moral dimension As Asean Chair, Malaysia has the responsibility to take a firm stance. Not against Iran — but against the erosion of peaceful scientific norms. The use of military force to dismantle nuclear infrastructure, especially in the absence of clear evidence of weaponisation, sets a dangerous precedent for the Global South. If the Middle East becomes a theatre where nuclear energy programmes are no longer protected by international law, then smaller states may reconsider peaceful nuclear energy programmes altogether — for fear that they may one day become targets of 'preemptive' destruction. Asean must rally its member states to call for independent, neutral inspections once conditions allow — not led by NATO countries but by a coalition of non-aligned experts from states like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa. Conclusion: A scientific disaster with no end in sight The tragedy of the bombed nuclear sites in Iran is not just about diplomacy or war — it is about a fundamental breach of how the world cooperates to avoid the horrors of nuclear conflict. What we are now witnessing is the collapse of decades of scientific verification, shredded by a few bombing runs and sealed by political arrogance. The IAEA will struggle to re-establish credibility. Iran will entrench itself in scientific secrecy. And the world will have moved one step closer to normalising the unacceptable: the bombing of science in the name of security. * Phar Kim Beng is Professor of Asean Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia and a former Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.