Africa and The Middle East

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) this week said the Obama administration "is interested in moving forward" with a bill he introduced last week that would create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The bill would allow non-sensitive exports from the zones to enter the U.S. duty-free. "They haven't endorsed every detail of the bill, but they certainly support the idea of moving forward with this," he told reporters yesterday (March 10). The Obama administration has "pretty much embraced...

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) withdrew his amendment today that would have required the secretary of the Senate to compile a list of all foreign firms investing in Iran's energy sector. The Iran Sanctions Act requires sanctions on foreign companies doing more than $20 million of business in Iran's energy sector, but the provision has never been applied extraterritorially. The EU has strongly opposed the extraterritorial application of the provision since the 1990s. The U.S. does not officially determine which firms...