A Valentine’s Day present from Harry Reid to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, announced on the Senate floor today that he will bring up Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd‘s Iran sanctions bill up for a vote during the "current work period." For those of you who don’t follow the Senate calendar, that’s a promise to move the bill before the Feb. 15th district ...
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, announced on the Senate floor today that he will bring up Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd's Iran sanctions bill up for a vote during the "current work period."
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, announced on the Senate floor today that he will bring up Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd‘s Iran sanctions bill up for a vote during the "current work period."
For those of you who don’t follow the Senate calendar, that’s a promise to move the bill before the Feb. 15th district work period begins, making the last possible introduction date Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. How sweet!
"At the end of last December, I made a commitment to bring S. 2799 — the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2009 — to the Senate floor early during this session of Congress," said Reid. "This critical legislation would impose new sanctions on Iran’s refined petroleum sector and tighten existing U.S. sanctions. The act will create new pressure on the Iranian regime and help stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon."
Reid thanked Dodd, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, D-MA, and "other senators" for putting together an agreement to move the bill forward. More on that later…
For a whole lot of background on this subject, read previous posts here, here, and here.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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