House Approves Key Anti-Nuclear Terrorism Legislation

June 29, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Leah Fae Cochran

No nuclear terrorism - Yesterday, the House passed legislation to implement the requirements of two 2005 international conventions designed to strengthen nuclear security and prevent nuclear terrorism - the International Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ISCANT) and the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM).

--The Senate has to pass the legislation before the President can deposit the articles of ratification. “One would hope that what's good enough for House Republicans ought to be good enough for their counterparts in the Senate,” writes Kingston Reif at Nukes of Hazard. http://bit.ly/LHM6yq

Exempt - The Obama Administration added China and Singapore to the list of countries exempt from the Iranian oil sanctions for the next six-months. Since the beginning of the year, both countries have reduced the amount of oil they buy from Iran.

--Iranian oil exports are down 40 percent and their currency has dropped significantly ahead of the technical talks scheduled to start next week in Istanbul. http://politi.co/LVxLL6

WH Sanctions Brief- “China has made clear that it is opposed to Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons, and it supports our dual-track approach of diplomacy and pressure as well…[China] indicated that there has been a structural change in China’s crude oil imports due to the downward pressure on the economy. These changes include a 25 percent year-on-year reduction between January and May of crude oil imports from Iran to China.”

--”It’s in their interest -- the Iranian interest -- to take concrete steps to address the international community’s concerns and to abide by their international obligations. They have an opportunity to do so through the P5-plus-1 negotiations. They have not yet done that. But we will continue to reiterate to the Iranian government that we need to see concrete actions by them to come in line with their obligations, or else we are going to continue to ratchet up these sanctions…” said Secretary Hillary Clinton. Find the full brief here: http://bit.ly/MFQGJ2

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Defense approps veto threat - The White House opposes the House version of the FY13 Defense Appropriations bill, issuing a veto threat for that version of the bill. Among many reasons behind the veto threat, OMB says it opposes the omission of $400 million for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS). Philip Ewing at DoD Buss has the story. http://bit.ly/NWR0q0

--Full OMB Statement of Administration Policy here. http://1.usa.gov/MFQtFP

The first nuke cartoons - “The American public reaction to the first atomic bombs was a mixture of exaltation and ambivalence,” writes Alex Wellerstein at Restricted Data. Those early reactions to the bomb were reflected in editorial cartoons from August 1945. Wellerstein harvested a small compilation of these cartoons - complete with moral ambivalence and bad metaphors. http://bit.ly/MEzp4B