More in ‘Russia’

Turkey and Iran are moving ahead on the nuclear swap deal they cut in the spring, even as the United States and other Western powers seek to convince Iran, which they have since sanctioned at the U.N. Security Council, to take their deal.
To back up briefly: Recall that last October, the Western powers, led ...

• Following the Americans, the European Union instituted tougher-than-ever economic and energy sanctions against Iran. [LAT]
• West Bank settlers yesterday protested the demolition of a single home. [NYT]
• Russia, in many ways one of Iran’s prime patrons, has seen its relations with the Islamic Republic deteriorate significantly since it voted for sanctions at the ...

• As “punishment” for the new sanctions, Iranian President Ahmadinejad put onerous new conditions on further nuclear talks. [LAT]
• Turkey has banned IDF flights in its airspace and will not invite Israel to its military exercises. [NYT]
• Elena Kagan vowed to be a “modest” and “deferential” justice during the first day of her Supreme Court ...

• Russian President Medvedev sharply criticized the new U.S. and EU sanctions, saying he prefers when all countries act together, as with the just-passed U.N. ones. [Ynet]
• The Obama administration praised Israel’s easing of the Gaza land blockade. [Haaretz]
• I linked yesterday, but the big news of the day remains the thousands of Israeli ultra-Orthodox ...

• The Gaza-bound “Freedom Flotilla,” carrying over 800 activists, will soon be halted by the Israeli military’s blockade. But what will the PR fallout be? [WSJ]
• Former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) is being strongly considered as America’s next ambassador to Israel. He would constitute a “high-impact political appointee.” [Laura Rozen]
• F.W. de Klerk, the final ...

Here’s the basic summary of what has been happening, with a hat-tip to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius: At the beginning of the week, Turkey and Brazil cut a deal with Iran involving a swap of unenriched uranium in exchange for 20 percent enriched uranium. The deal, in fact, is quite similar to one offered ...

• The story of an 11-year-old Israeli boy whose leg was blown off in the Golan has Israel considering clearing many of its hundreds of thousands of land mines. [NYT]
• Russian and Syrian leaders hinted at nuclear cooperation, alarming the United States and Israel. [Haaretz]
• Israeli business is about to experience a shake-up: Because the ...

• President Medvedev made the first-ever visit of a Russian head of state to Damascus, where he and President Assad discussed denuclearizing the Mideast (hint, hint). [Ynet]
• But the International Atomic Energy Agency does not plan to tie Iran’s nuclear weapons program to Israel’s. [Haaretz]
• One economist warns that Israel’s bottom-heavy welfare system—where large numbers ...

• A blogger reports from Russia, where she just checked out the new film Pop, a government sponsored “bush-league morality play” featuring “blatant and antediluvian anti-Semitism.” [True/Slant]
• In other “pop” news, Gershon Kingsley, 87-year-old composer of the electronic classic “Popcorn,” tells of escaping Germany before the Holocaust and his abiding love for his home country: ...

• Prime Minister Netanyahu mourned Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and others aboard the plane that crashed in western Russia over the weekend. He called the late Polish president “a great friend of Israel.” [Haaretz/Forward]
• Accused leaker Anat Kamm said she would waive journalistic immunity, and urged Uri Blau—the Haaretz reporter who wrote the ...