News about Virginia Tech anti-Israel protests have me thinking today about a true hero -- Liviu Librescu -- to whom many VT grads owe their lives. Here's a short thread about a name you should know. 1/8 wapo.st/4aVjBK7

The US Senate approves legislation banning the import of enriched uranium from Russia, sending the bill to Biden to sign bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via Bloomberg Politics

Beijing hosting talks between Hamas and PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party

The real question is not whether Iran will choose to build a nuclear bomb, but whether we’d know about it in time to stop them. Unfortunately we can have little confidence that we would, given how far its nuclear program has progressed.

While American youth chant for Palestine and express support for the regime in Iran, Iranian youth, with a 'lived experience' that stands in sharp contrast to those of their US counterparts, tear down street signs bearing the names 'Islamic Republic' and 'Palestine.'

Just back from the Gulf, where there is evident concern about what those governments see as the erosion of the principle of sovereign immunity in the United States as a result of this action, however thoroughly justified wsj.com/articles/repo-…

Crunch time to get the US-Saudi-Israel megadeal completed timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry…

Congratulations to my friend and colleague Bilal Wahab, PhD - we will miss him, but he will do a great job in this prestigious new role.

Bill Burns on State Department v CIA cultures: 'I had a bad habit the first few months [at CIA] about thinking out loud. And then I would discover at the end of that working day, there were a 14-page action plan that had been drawn up. For all I knew, aircraft were taking off'

.⁦Vedant Patel⁩ won’t confirm whether the U.S. is indirectly talking to Iran about a new nuclear deal.

Amazing that a chip bricked in 46-yr-old Voyager I, preventing it from sending data, and NASA figured out how to split up and reallocate its functions to other hardware, sending code 15 billion miles away (45 hours round trip!)--and Voyager's back online. blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/0…

#Iran 's SNSC Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian is visiting #Russia this week at the invitation of Nikolai Patrushev. He'll meet with counterparts from Russia, Brazil, South Africa, China, India, and Iraq during this visit.

There is much to be said about Congressional dysfunction. Yet in just a week, the House passed FISA reauth; sanctions on Iran; aid to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific; and legislation on TikTok & the seizure of frozen Russian assets. That’s functional, if not always pretty.

What protestors in the West fail to grasp is that Hamas terrorizes both Israelis and Palestinians. What happened on 10/7 was an outrage; what is happening in Gaza is a tragedy; both are attributable to Hamas. 1/2

This is the first confirmed attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since Feb. 4

Yes, though this is pretty solid support across the board. Reports of the death of internationalism turn out to be premature.