Senate Panel Ditches East Coast Missile Defense Idea

On the radar: Setting up missile defense scrum in Congress; After Iran’s election; Tennessee’s $10 billion nuclear disaster; the Bomb of yesteryear; Hadley, Lieberman and Steinberg on Iran; and Kim Jong-il’s sushi chef.

June 14, 2013 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Alyssa Demus

SASC says no to East Coast site - The Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft defense bill does not include extra spending for an East Coast missile defense site, a proposal that Republicans have used to make political hay in recent budget cycles.

--Conference scuffle shaping up: The House defense authorization bill would authorize $140 million for an East Coast site and rush deployment. The House Appropriations Committee included $70 million for the site. The Senate defense authorization bill includes no funding for the site, but would authorize funds to set up “advanced sensors” that Pentagon officials have said would be more effective. The White House threatened to veto the defense bill if it includes funds for an East Coast project. John Bennett at Defense News has the details.http://bit.ly/12ttKsn

Proponents - While the serving director of the Missile Defense Agency says there is no military requirement for an East Coast site, a previous director - Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, now with Booz Allen Hamilton - thinks accelerating spending on the program would be “prudent.” Full post in Global Security Newswire. http://bit.ly/12LcCzH

Next steps - While the election in Iran is neither free nor fair, it is “important because it gives Iran and the US a fresh diplomatic opportunity to avoid a dangerous confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program.” The US needs to use the opportunity to increase its diplomatic efforts after the election and test the receptiveness of the future president to broad negotiations that go beyond the nuclear issue, writes The New York Times editorial board. Full article here. http://ow.ly/m2jCB

Programming note - Early Warning will be on hiatus next week as the editors participate in a board meeting. We will resume our daily coverage next Monday, June 24th.

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Iran election roundup -

--”Latest on the Race: Final Polls - and Shifts” from The Iran Primer. http://bit.ly/17M3snM

--”No Matter Who Wins, Iran's Supreme Leader Controls Foreign Policy” by Geneive Abdo for the Saban Center. http://bit.ly/1632zmy

--Sample of campaign posters from the presidential candidates. From The Iran Primer. http://bit.ly/198h4rf

UPF ballooning to $10 billion - "In my opinion, to have spent half a billion dollars on design and THEN discover the building is too small is not possible without gross theft of Government funds; designers beyond kindergarten wouldn't make a mistake that large," said former Department of Energy official David Wilfert about the struggling Uranium Processing Facility program in Tennessee.

--"I don't know what's going on with UPF...but I don't have a warm, fuzzy feeling that it's headed in the right direction...I'm just trying to get our congressional and senatorial representatives to recognize that this is a potential disaster and that $10 billion is easily going to occur," said Wilfert. Frank Munger of the Knoxville News Sentinel has the story. http://bit.ly/18GukXp

Cutting a Cold War relic - As Congress considers its defense bills, it will have to decide whether to fund a $10 billion dollar Cold War relic - the B61 nuclear bomb - or “programs that support our troops and combat modern 21st century threats,” writes Ohio State Representative and former Air Force officer Connie Pillich.

--US military leadership agrees that the “military utility [of the B61] is practically nil.” Yet, American taxpayers are set to pick up the $10 billion tab for the B61 at a time when “many defense programs - that are critical to national security - are facing severe budget cuts,” writes Rep. Pillich in The Hill. http://ow.ly/m2fgn

Tweet - @NewsHour: Do sanctions force rogue states to abandon their nuclear weapons programs? They haven't stopped Iran yet. to.pbs.org/19vkA1r

Dual tracking, merging to single tracking - The time is approaching when diplomacy with Iran could lose its value, argue Stephen Hadley, Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg in The Washington Post. They urge the U.S. to “sharpen the choice faced by Iran’s leaders.”

--Authors’ recommendations: The P5+1 should put forward a “bold, comprehensive settlement offer” to Iran that, if rejected by Iran, could be followed by further UN Security Council sanctions on Iran; the U.S. should hasten the end of the Assad regime in Syria; and the U.S. should bolster the credibility of the military option through exercises planning for war with Iran.

--The authors also argue the administration should begin consultations about military action with Congress “where, we believe, a strong bipartisan majority is ready to give the president the authority to take necessary action.” http://wapo.st/11ARLI4

View from Congress - The House of Representatives voted to include in its defense authorization bill an amendment, lead by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), that clarifies nothing in the bill “shall be construed as authorizing the use of force against Iran.” Floor amendment #146. http://1.usa.gov/14AWiPU

Tweet - @iaeaorg: The latest edition of IAEA Bulletin takes an in-depth look at the topic of nuclear security. http://bit.ly/1530h4L

Events:

--"Medical Isotope Production Without Nuclear Reactors or Uranium Enrichment,” Derek Updegraff; Mark Jansson; and David Nusbaum. June 13, 12:00-1:30 pm @ American Association for the Advancement of Science. Details here. http://www.aaas.org/cstsp/events/

--"Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Science and Technology 2013 Conference." Keynote speakers: Hans Blix, Siegfried Hecker and Ellen Tauscher. June 17-21. Vienna. Webcast here. http://ow.ly/m2eFT

--”The Implications of the NPT Regime for Nonproliferation.” Speech by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman. June 18, 9:00 am @ Elliott School of International Affairs. RSVP and details here. http://owl.li/lH9Ks

Dessert:

Tweet - @usnews: We finally get to see the Dennis Rodman/North Korea episode of Vice. Does it stack up to all the hype? bit.ly/150KxPC

Kim’s sushi chef - North Korea remains one of the world’s most secretive regimes. The little the outside world does know about the country and its less-than-conventional leadership, is decoded from satellite photos and learned from “stories of defectors” like Kenji Fujimoto - the late Kim Jong-il’s ex-sushi chef.

--Fujimoto, who was initially hired to teach his sushi-making skills to young chefs in Pyongyang, found himself in the dear leader’s inner circle as his “personal chef, court jester, and sidekick...He had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared.” Kim’s confidant discusses the intrigue, bacchanalia and murder surrounding life with the Hermit King in an interview with GQ’s Adam Johnson. Full story here. http://ow.ly/m2nT5