On May 7, 2015, with a final vote of 98-1, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill that would establish congressional review for any nuclear deal with Iran as part of the P5+1 negotiations with Iran. We reported on the P5+1 Iran nuclear agreement framework in our April 2nd blog post. This legislation, if passed, would establish a 30-day period in which Congress could by resolution either approve or reject any final nuclear deal reached with…
On 8 March 2015, US President Barack Obama issued a new Executive Order (“Order”) authorizing the imposition of sanctions targeting Venezuela in response to the Venezuelan Government’s erosion of human rights guarantees; persecution of political opponents; curtailment of press freedoms; use of violence and human rights violations and abuses in response to antigovernment protests; arbitrary arrest and detention of antigovernment protestors; and the exacerbating presence of significant public corruption in the country. According to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the Order “will be used to protect the US financial system from the illicit financial flows from public corruption in Venezuela” (statement of Secretary Lew on the Order). The Order was issued pursuant to various legal authorities, including the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014 (described in our posts of 16 December and 19 December 2014). The White House has published a Fact Sheet about the Order.
Today, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued final rules amending the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (“CACR”) and the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”), respectively, to implement key policy changes to the US embargo of Cuba (the “Amendments”). The policy changes were originally announced by President Obama on December 17, 2014 (we reported on the President’s December 17th announcement in a…
Today, President Obama announced that the US Government plans to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba and to relax certain aspects of the US embargo of Cuba. More detailed information was made available through the issuance of a White House fact sheet, the “White House FACT SHEET: Charting a New Course on Cuba.” Importantly, none of the announced changes to the embargo are self-executing. As the White House fact sheet makes clear, the changes will only…