Russian President Vladimir Putin is in over-drive to recover Moscow’s overriding influence in the Arab world, which it lost to the United States in 1973. To roll the march of history back 39 years, Putin is enlisting China and Iran.  The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly issue out last Friday focuses on Russia’s comeback and Barack Obama’s prospects of pushing it back, given his reliance on the sympathy of the Muslim Brotherhood and the backing of an unpopular Turkey and a systematically disempowered Israel.
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Moscow has stepped into the vacuum created by US President Barack Obama’s decision to stay out of Middle East troubles while campaigning for a second term. After blocking the way to direct Western and Arab military intervention in Syria through the Mediterranean, Russia sent its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – to secure Iran against a potential US/Israeli attack via its northern and eastern neighbors, debkafile reports. Armenia is to host a Russian radar station.

Russia has threatened to freeze the "reset" ties with the United States, which recently produced valuable cooperation and friendly understandings between the two powers in vital global arenas. debkafile's Moscow sources report the areas most affected are likely to be the Israel-Palestinian dispute, Moscow's effort to broker an end to the Libyan war and the Russian supply route for US forces fighting in Afghanistan.
Moscow's ire was sparked by a US travel ban on officials implicated in the Magnitsky affair.

Israel's security suffered a major setback on the eve of its homeland security exercise (starting Sunday, May 23) from three Obama administration concessions for buying Moscow's backing for UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. it deletes the embargo on such sophisticated weaponry as the Russian S-300 systems sought by Tehran for shooting down any US or Israel warplanes attacking its nuclear sites.
Israel has yet to protest this blow to Washington or Moscow.

White House and Kremlin efforts to paper over their mounting discord wore thin under the strain of Iran's nuclear machinations. As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals in its coming issue out next Friday, the debut of a nascent anti-American "third world" in Tehran showed Moscow's fingers secretly pushing the buttons.

Washington is reacting by deploying a large naval-air-marine armada in the Middle East and turning back to Israel. Track these epic trends with our specialists. 

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