But the presences that dominated the room were those of four American citizens stranded thousands of miles away, held prisoner by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee convened the morning hearing to gather stories from family members of the four Americans currently imprisoned in Iran: former Washington Post Tehran Bureau Chief Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Sergeant (E-5) Amir Hekmati (who served from 2001-2005), Christian Rev. Saeed Abedini and U.S. government contractor Robert Levinson.

The hearing was held ahead before the committee voted to approve H. Res. 233, a bill that condemns Iran’s refusal to release these detainees and demands transparency about “any other United States Citizens that have disappeared within its borders.”

The prisoners’ relatives testified that the window for their release may close once U.S.-Iran nuclear talks end and Iran no longer needs them as leverage.

“I think if the [nuclear] talks fail and there is no deal, that we could lose the engagement and the constructive talks that we’re having right now,” Daniel Levinson, son of Robert Levinson, said. “Those could cease, and then we’re back to square one.”

Even if the U.S. succeeds in striking a deal, he said, any “sense of urgency” to bring back his father and the other witnesses’ loved ones could disintegrate as soon as it is inked.

The timeline hasn’t caused the detainees’ families to lose hope.

Levinson said his family is encouraged by the Rouhani administration’s attempts at engaging with the United States — albeit not concerning his father’s status.

“We believe that, if the Iranian government had the will and motivation to locate my father and send him home, they most certainly could,” his prepared testimony reads, calling Iran’s engagement with the U.S. “ by far our best opportunity to bring my father home safely.”

Despite the fact that his case was historic in its severity — including a now-annulled death sentence — Amir Hekmati’s sister, Sarah, draws inspiration from the unprecedented communication occurring between the U.S. and Iran today.

“It is … the first time in decades that the United States and Iran are having conversations with each other instead of conversations with third parties,” she wrote in her prepared testimony. “Now is the time that this issue could and should be resolved.”

Naghmeh Abedini, whose husband was imprisoned for participating in a Bible study and whose release is allegedly contingent on his conversion to Islam, said she and her family are relying on their Christian faith to get them through.

“I know that God is with us in this journey, but I also know that God can use men and women to bring about freedom and justice,” her prepared testimony reads.

Jason Rezaian’s brother, Ali, said he appreciated the help from Washington Post staff and the Obama administration on his brother’s behalf, but still expressed concerns about his brother’s health and the conditions of his imprisonment. He noted that their mother was absent from the hearing because she is in Tehran trying to monitor Jason’s espionage trial, which began last week.

“Let me be very clear: The charges against Jason are false,” he said. “With the help of this committee, and others from around the world, I believe Uncle Jason and [Rezaian’s 7-year-old son] Paxton can still see an A’s game in Oakland together this summer.”

The only problem? You have to do it from your desk.

So, what do you do?

Here are some tools for capturing the context behind this hot-button issue. This guide isn’t intended to be exhaustive, but it should give you enough fuel to hit the ground running in your Iran coverage.

UNDERSTANDING THE GOVERNMENT:

• Constitution of Iran via the Islamic Public of Iran Mission to the UN in New York
• Islamic Public of Iran Mission to the UN in New York official website“Guide: How Iran is ruled” via BBC News
• “A Guide to the Legal System of the Islamic Republic of Iran” via the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University School of Law

ECONOMY & DATA:

• UNdata for the Islamic Republican of Iran (via the United Nations Statistics Division)
• Iran Data Portal (via Princeton University)
• Central Bank of the Islamic Public of Iran (Note: This is an Iranian government-run website, so interpret accordingly.)
• CIA World Factbook’s entry for Iran
• Monitoring and Verification in Iran (via the International Atomic Energy Agency)
• The Washington Post’s Iran country guide
• Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
• Iran country file (via the Nuclear Threat Initiative)

PRESS:

• “Iranian Press & Media” via the Islamic Public of Iran Mission to the UN in New York
  • (Note: Not all websites are available in English, but the available languages are noted on a case-by-case basis within the list)
• New York Times’ Iran news index
• Reuters’ Iran news index
• The Guardian’s Iran news index

SOCIAL MEDIA

• Top Twitter influencers from Iran (via Twtrland)

MISCELLANEOUS WEBSITES, REPORTS AND RESOURCES:

• ISIS NuclearIran (Institute for Science and International Security’s informational site on the Iranian nuclear program)
• Congressional Research Service reports:
  • Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses (April 2015
  • Iran Sanctions (March 2015)
• State Department fact sheets:
  • Overview of Temporary Suspension of Certain U.S. Sanctions Pursuant to the Initial Understanding Between the P5+1 and Iran (January 2014)
  • Guidance Relating to the Provision of Certain Temporary Sanctions Relief in Order to Implement the Joint Plan of Action Reached on November 24, 2013, Between the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic of Iran (January 2014)
• “Timeline of Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran” (via the Arms Control Association)
• Iran Watch (via the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control)

RECENT CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS OF INTEREST:

Senate Armed Services Committee:

• United States Middle East Policy

In order to raise awareness about barriers to veteran education and initiatives being undertaken to improve it, National Louis University and Student Veterans of America joined forces to host March 26’s “Improving Veteran Education Symposium” at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington.

There, the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative spoke with two expert panelists (who also happen to be veterans themselves) to get the inside scoop on how the media can do a better job of covering veteran education.

Advice from Megan Everett, Northwestern University alum, Program Officer of the Veterans Program at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and United States Navy veteran:

• Put higher education institutions who are dropping the ball when it comes to serving veterans on blast in order to pressure them to step their games up.
  • Indicators to watch:
    • Does the school have staff members explicitly dedicated to serving veterans?
      • “We have certifying officials that work to certify the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and do some financial aid work, but there’s no person who has ‘veteran’ in their title,” Everett said of Northwestern University, where she is currently working to improve the state of veterans’ resources on campus.
    • Do veterans have dedicated physical spaces on campus?
    • Does the school have a functional veteran service group?
    • Other data points and factors to keep an eye on
      • Veteran student recruiting
      • Veteran student retention
      • Utilization of veteran student skill sets

Advice from David Goldich, Senior Consultant at Gallup and United States Marine Corps veteran:

• Don’t assume that very veteran’s experience is identical or make instant extrapolations about the entire military community based on a single person’s story.
  • “Realize that it’s not a monolith; it’s a mosaic, when you’re talking about veterans or the military,” he explained during the post-panel Q&A. He advised reporters to recognize how differences in areas such as military branch, employment status, gender, levels of physical ability and more impact individual experience.
• “Connect the dots” and move from merely looking at veteran graduation rates to an analysis of “what works for who [sic] and why.”
  • “No one’s talking to each other,” he explained. “Everyone’s measuring their little own slice of the block—pie. They’ve got blinders.”
• Questions to ask:
  • Does education lead to an improved quality of life
  • Does education lead to better employment?
  • What identifiable indicators led people to pursue higher education after their military service?
  • Find “thematic connections” between different stages of a veteran student’s life to better understand the stories behind different veteran outcomes.

Terrorism, cyberattacks, epidemics and tumult in the Mideast and Africa threaten U.S. security, he says, and the Defense Department needs to be ready. To him that means reforms are needed in acquisition of goods and services, personnel and organization. Especially important is buying technology to keep pace with the changing environment.

“Nobody can foresee what’s going to happen over the next 16 months,” he said recently. “What we do know is the velocity of change is accelerating and that the unexpected will spring out on us.  The question is how well do we, or how well can we, respond.”

“Today you see countries like Russia and China trying to outflank us using technology, whether it’s deploying carrier-killing missiles or building radar that can detect stealth.”.

Thornberry, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. edge in technology is decreasing, citing “the general pace of change” and “our broken budget process and acquisition process” as factors contributing to what he calls “an eroding American technological superiority.”

“The only defense is to adapt quicker than they do,” he said. “I don’t want to see America outflanked.”

Thornberry has proposed acquisition reform legislation, co-sponsoring with Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a bill called the Agile Acquisition to Retain Technological Edge Act, H.R. 1597.

According to a House Armed Services Committee press release, the bill’s introduction was timed so that the public’s feedback could be obtained before the legislative ball starts rolling on the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.  This way, Thornberry explained at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on March 23, the bill could function as “a discussion draft for the first tranche of legislative proposals to fix our acquisitions system.” During his CSIS talk, Thornberry noted that the full committee markup of the newest iteration of the NDAA is slated to begin on April 29.

Here is an introductory guide to this legislation.

Full Text of H.R. 1597:

(Source: House Armed Services Committee)

Draft Report on H.R. 1597:

(Source: House Armed Services Committee)

A Quick Outline of What Reforms Thornberry Has Proposed

(Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies talk on March 23, 2015)

1. People
   • Take away some barriers that make it hard for “top military talent” to have a role in acquisition process
   • Make Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund permanent
   • Enact mandatory commercial-market training to close industry-government gap
   • Enact mandatory ethics training for industry-government interactions
2. Acquisitions Strategy
   • Every program needs to start with a written and “upfront” acquisitions strategy that is updated
   • Consolidates multiple reporting requirements
   • Choose types of contracts used on an acquisition-by-acquisition basis
   • Evaluate whether a multi-year plan is suitable on an acquisition-by-acquisition basis
   • Include risk mitigation strategies for acquisition plan
   • Consider incentives
   • Possibility of allowing shared savings on service contracts mentioned
3. Chain of Command
   • Simplify chain of command for acquisitions decisions
   • Move from legal certification to a decision and decrease number of lawyers involved in process
   • Raise dollar thresholds on authorities to enable ease of getting things done
   • Keep testing/research community in R&D and out of decision-making
4. Regulations & Paperwork
   • Pare down reporting requirements
   • Keep a single decision-maker accountable within the acquisitions process

Watch Thornberry’s full CSIS address here:

Expert Feedback

CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group Director Andrew Hunter praised Thornberry for capturing “both sides of the coin,” in the sense that the plan married good intentions with an awareness of the facts that other potentially positive plans of action are out there and a “silver-bullet quick fix to the system” doesn’t exist.  He said Thornberry’s “areas of focus and the way he’s thinking about the problem” were very optimistic, despite the fact that the language of the legislation was pending at the time of the interview.

Hunter said he interpreted Thornberry’s chain-of-command simplification goal to mean that every person in the acquisitions process would not have veto power versus experts being nixed from the process.

“At the end of the day, what you want is you want experts who come to you and say ‘no kidding, this is how we see it; this is, this is our vision of ground truth,’” he said, going on to explain that there needs to be an individual separate from the experts to distill various experts’ input and perspectives into a final, authoritative decision.

Hunter said he thinks Thornberry is on the right track, but that “acquisition workforce is critical” and that he wants program managers “to have good judgment” and a basic comprehension of the acquisitions-sector discipline. He also said he’d like to see defense acquisition reforms mirror changes occurring in technology and industry.

“The world of today and the world certainly of tomorrow is not the world of the 50s and 60s, and, so, we definitely want to make sure that we are adapting and adaptable to those changes,” Hunter said.

 5 Questions Reporters Could Ask About the Bill:

1. What is the timeline for the rollout of the reform if the bill is ratified?
2. During his CSIS address, Thornberry discussed the minimization of pre-acquisition “paperwork” in order to streamline the defense acquisitions process.  
   1. What types of documents, in particular, are set to be minimized?
   2. Will there an alternative source or process by which journalists covering acquisitions could theoretically obtain that quantitative and/or qualitative data if the research is being done but reports are not issued for the sake of reducing this bulk?
3. In the same CSIS address, Thornberry said that the decrease in pre-acquisition reporting was intended to reduce “second-guessing” on the part of program managers within the acquisitions process.  
   1. How do Thornberry and Smith define the line between responsible research and second-guessing?  
   2. What is a real-world example of a line of research that would be nixed vs. one that would be preserved for the sake of checks and balances remaining in the process?
4. Will there be any shift in the hiring process for program managers within the acquisitions process in response to the increased level of responsibility and authority that the proposed legislation would afford them?
5. How would the streamlined chain of command proposed by the legislation impact employment rates in the defense sector?