A new report from the IAEA, the latest in a series of monthly reports on Iran’s progress under the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), confirms that Iran has continued to comply with its obligations under the agreement. In addition, Iran has completed six initial practical measures agreed to with the IAEA in November 2013, along with seven additional measures agreed to in February 2014.
Amendments To Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in the House
Below is a summary of amendments on nuclear weapons, missile defense, and related issues submitted for consideration by the House to the FY 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), or H.R. 4435. The bill was debated this week on the House floor and passed this morning by a vote of 325-98.
You can read our early reaction to the full bill here.
Over on the Senate side, the Senate Armed Services Committee has completed its (closed) markup of its version of the NDAA. A summary of the bill could be available later today or tomorrow.
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The numbers to the left of the permitted amendments are the numbers for floor votes. The second number is the original Rules Committee number.
Rejected 192-229 – Floor amendment #1: Blumenauer (OR) #308 – NNSA Nuclear Weapons Spending – Authorizes the Secretary of the Air Force to procure not more than 10 radar upgrades for the Air National Guard F-15C/D aircraft, which is offset by cuts to levels authorized beyond the President’s Budget Request, spread across 9 accounts.
Rejected 194-227 – Floor amendment #3: Sanchez, Loretta (CA) #157 – Nonproliferation Funding – Gives the Pentagon authority to transfer funds to nuclear nonproliferation, not only to weapons activities and naval reactors. Currently, the bill language limits fund transfers to only weapons activities and naval reactors.
Approved 222-196 – Floor amendment #6: Daines (MT), Cramer, Kevin (ND), Lamborn (CO), Lummis (WY) #76 – ICBM silos – – Strikes subsection (c) of Section 1634 of the bill which terminates in 2021 the requirement that 450 ICBM silos remain in at least warm status.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #14 – Kildee (MN) #243 – NNSA Nuclear Weapons Spending – Allocates $10 million dollars to develop additional financial literacy training programs for incoming and transitioning service members, which would be funded by offsetting the $15.1 billion dollar shipbuilding account and a $902.2 nuclear weapons refurbishment account. Along w/Kildee floor amendment #161 (see below), the amendments reduced funding for the W76 and B61 LEPs by $7.5 million each.
Approved 233-191 – Floor amendment #17 – Lamborn (CO) #61 – New START Treaty – Blocks the use of funds for implementing the New START treaty until certification that the Russian Federation is respecting Ukrainian sovereignty and is no longer violating the INF or CFE treaties.
Approved 224-199 – Floor amendment #24 – Blumenauer (OR) #221 – CBO Nuclear Costs Study – Requires Congressional Budget Office to update, on an annual basis, their report on the projected costs of U.S. nuclear forces.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #28 – Hastings (WA) #126 – Defense Environmental Cleanup – Restores $20 million of the proposed cut to defense environmental cleanup by reducing funding for NNSA weapons activities by $20 million.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #84 – Fortenberry (NE) #317 – Nuclear Nonproliferation – Would require a report as to how the Department of Defense will manage its mission related to nuclear forces, deterrence, nonproliferation and terrorism.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #128 – Gibson (NY) and Garamendi (CA) #38 – AUMF for Syria or Iran – States that nothing in the FY15 NDAA shall be construed as authorizing the use of force against Syria or Iran. (Note: Johnson (GA) submitted an identical amendment #255.)
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #129 – Gosar (AZ) #24 – Iran – Declares that “it is the policy of the United States to fully support Israel’s lawful exercise of self-defense, including actions to halt regional aggression.”
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #131 – Roskam (IL) and Walorski (IN) #5 – Iran – Expresses the Sense of Congress calling on the United States to immediately arm Israel with bunker-buster bombs and refueling tankers “to remove any existential threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program.”
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #145 – Turner (OH) #16 – US Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe – Limits availability of FY 2015 funds for removal or consolidation of dual-capable aircraft from Europe.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #147 – Polis (CO) and Nadler (NY) #278 – Missile Defense – – Updates a Sense of Congress in the HASC bill to say that the Secretary of Defense should not procure additional capability enhancement II exoatmospheric kill vehicles for deployment until after the date on which a successful operationally realistic flight intercept flight test of the kill vehicle has occurred.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #148 – Brooks (AL), Rogers (AL), and Turner (OH) #165 – INF Treaty – Requires a Plan to Counter Certain Ground-launched Ballistic Missiles and Cruise Missiles and for other purposes.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #149 – Foster (IL) #252 – Missile Defense – Requires the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) to study the testing program of the ground based midcourse missile defense (GMD) system. IDA would be required to produce a report on the effectiveness of the testing program and recommendations for how it can be improved.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #155 – Larsen (WA) #191 – Nuclear Verification and Monitoring – Requires the creation of an interagency plan for verification and monitoring relating to the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons and fissile material.
Approved by voice vote – Floor amendment #161 – Kildee (MN) #244 – NNSA Nuclear Weapons Spending – Allocates $10 million dollars to develop additional financial literacy training programs for incoming and transitioning service members, which would be funded by offsetting the $15.1 billion dollar shipbuilding account and a $902.2 nuclear weapons refurbishment account. Along w/Kildee floor amendment #14 (see above), the amendments reduced funding for the W76 and B61 LEPs by $7.5 million each.
GOP REFUSE TO ALLOW TO BE DEBATED: Quigley (IL) and Garamendi (CA) #147 – Directs GAO to conduct an analysis of the justification and rationale for maintaining the nuclear triad, and to identify any excess that may result in cost savings.
GOP REFUSE TO ALLOW TO BE DEBATED: Sanchez (CA) and Larsen (WA) #158 – Nuclear Weapons Deployed in Europe – Requires a certification that the cost of sustaining and forward-deploying nuclear weapons in Europe will be shared by NATO members, and not just paid by the United States.
GOP REFUSE TO ALLOW TO BE DEBATED: Doggett (TX) #238 – Iran – Sense of Congress to say that a comprehensive agreement with Iran relating to Iran’s nuclear program should substantially increase the security of the people of the USand include significant and verifiable constraints sufficient to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The amendment also expresses the Sense of Congress that existing sanctions related to Iran’s other proscribed activities will continue to be strictly enforced until Iran ceases such activities.
CSIS PONI Debate on U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe
On Monday evening I was honored to participate in a debate hosted by the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on “The Role of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Responding to the Crisis in Crimea.”
The debate addressed the following proposition: “Resolved: In response to the Crimea crisis, the United States should reassess the strategic rationale for not placing NATO’s tactical nuclear weapons into Central and Eastern European states.”
Needless to say I don’t need to tell you where I came down. My sparring partner was Peter Doran of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), who took the affirmative view.
Earlier in the day on Monday NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters that he did not foresee any NATO request to move tactical nuclear weapons to central and eastern Europe.
You can watch the full debate at the CSIS PONI website here or in the video embedded below. You can read the full text of my opening statement here.
Negotiators begin to hash out a final deal with Iran
The US and its allies are meeting with Iran this week to begin to sketch out the terms of a final deal. The five-day meeting in Vienna, Austria will be the longest since November, and could begin to shed light on potential solutions to some of the most contentious issues still left to decide.
Since the implementation of the interim deal in January, Iran has halted the most sensitive aspects of its nuclear program, reduced its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium, and shown willingness to compromise on issues such as plutonium output at Iran’s heavy water reactor Arak. These steps combined with positive statements from the European Union’s Catherine Ashton and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has some hopeful that a deal might just around the corner. But with many more issues left to resolve, onlookers should restrain their “irrational exuberance” and not be surprised to see a six month extension of the talks come July.
Andrew Szarejko has a rundown of proposals for a final deal here. Some of the most complicated issues include Iran’s ongoing research and development, both on nuclear centrifuges and ballistic missile technology and the duration and timeline of both sanctions relief and ongoing restrictions on Iran.
But if and when a deal is struck, there will be heavy lifting ahead back home.
The Obama administration will be faced with the task of convincing Congress to roll back sanctions, and hardliners in Iran will oppose almost any deal that is seen as a compromise with the United States.
But there are some signs that Congress, at least, is beginning to come around to the idea of a deal. Make no mistake, even the best deal will be a tough sell on Capitol Hill, and some will continue to oppose anything short of Iran’s complete capitulation. (If you need a refresher on why that’s a stupid idea, Colin Kahl does a great job of explaining it here.) But while just a year ago, nearly any vote coming down hard on Iran would have enjoyed substantial majority support in both houses of Congress, a recent vote in the House Armed Services Committee showed a split in U.S. hardliners’ ranks.
The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) offered by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) expresses a nonbinding “sense of Congress” that sanctions should not be lifted unless the deal includes the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program and an end to the country’s state sponsorship of terrorism. But such ideas, which once sounded attractive to a less-informed Congress, are now largely understood to be a poison pill.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking Democrat on the committee, spoke out strongly against the amendment.
“This is a very bad idea,” said Smith. “It completely ties the hands of our negotiators … by setting out very specific criteria that have to be met before a deal can be achieved, going well beyond the nuclear question.”
Such talk would have been political suicide just a year ago, but Democrats have largely coalesced around the President’s position, and they’ve brought some Republicans along with them.
Though the amendment ultimately passed by voice vote, the panel was clearly split.
With a rising chorus of champions and divisions on Capitol Hill, Congressional sanctions relief, once considered impossible, may now be the best course for enforcement of an eventual deal – as opposed to depending on the Obama administration’s limited (and temporary) ability to waive sanctions.
When all you have is a Hammer: Strategic Nuclear Forces and the Ukraine Crisis
Spring intern Andrew Szarejko and I have a new piece on the Center homepage on the Ukraine crisis and the role of strategic forces. Here’s how we begin:
Like a bad penny that always seems to find its way back into your pocket, critics of the Obama administration are using a crisis abroad to recite their favorite talking points about the importance of nuclear weapons and missile defense to U.S. security.
Further Russian aggression toward Ukraine could be avoided, they suggest, if only President Obama would revive a Bush-era missile defense plan for Europe or at least accelerate the current plan, the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). If only Obama would consider deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe and provide additional billions (on top of the hundreds of billions already planned) to accelerate the modernization of the American nuclear arsenal, Putin would never show his bare chest again and return Crimea to Ukraine.
Some of these and other proposals can be found in the recent legislation sponsored by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) titled “The Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014”. The legislation calls for accelerating implementation of the EPAA, halting nuclear weapons reductions under New START and any further reductions until Russia is in compliance with its arms control obligations and is no longer threatening Ukraine, and prohibiting overflights of U.S. territory by Russian aircraft under the Open Skies Treaty using new digital surveillance devices.
These actions may satisfy a political desire to poke Russia in the eye and make the Obama administration look weak, but they are wrong-headed and don’t respond to the threat. U.S. nuclear weapons and missile defenses are largely irrelevant to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. While augmenting nuclear and missile defense capabilities and ditching existing arms control mechanisms will not dissuade Russia from engaging in more mischief in Ukraine, they could amount to pouring gasoline on an already large fire.
You can read the whole thing here.
