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The Rise of Islam
and the Red Seal of Revelation
The Red Seal of Revelation, Pope John Paul II’s “Red Internationale” and the Final Days of the Two Horned Ram of Daniel 8
A Compilation of Prophetic Studies on the
Golden and Red Globalist’s Final Battle for World Domination
By Robert Mock MD
robertmock@biblesearchers.com
www.BibleSearchers.com
April 2006
Topics
Is the Passover 2004 at the Conjunction of a Major Prophetic Event? – March 2004
Gleanings on Global News – America and the War on Terror – May-June 2004
Gleanings on Global News – America and the War on Terror – July 2004
Gleanings on Global News – America and the War on Terror - August 2004
Gleanings on Global News – Iran and the Red Internationale – July 2005
Gleanings on Global News – The Land and the Zionist State of Israel – November-December 2005
The End of Days – The War with Iran and the Coming of the Messiah – January 2006
Violence immediately erupted in the Days of Rage and two days later, the Jerusalem Post announced that the Oslo Accords were declared null and void, exactly seven years to the day, September 13, 1993, Tishri 5754 - September 28, 2000, Tishri 5761, when according to the calendar of the Lord, this ‘covenant of death’ was annulled.
Isaiah 28:14-15 - “Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, It will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.”
The Intifada, started on the Days of Rage, on September 28th, 2000 will be exactly three and a half years old on Passover, April 5, 2004. Is there a prophetic significance to this date? Let us look at all the profound events that will be tied together at this date.
According to Michael Rood and his team, the first sliver of the new moon gleaming over the horizon in Jerusalem occurred on March 22, 2004/Aviv 1 5764. The barley sheaves were also found ripened in Aviv on the side of the Mount of Zion and also ripened in Aviv in greater quantities at lower altitudes out the limits of the city of Jerusalem.
According to Nehemiah Gordon with Karaite Korner, their teams found barley ripened in Aviv in the Jordan Valley and in the northern Negev. Therefore the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Chag HaMatzot) will begin on sunset, Monday, April 5 and end on sunset on Monday, April 12, 2004. This is the month of Aviv (Abib) known as the Head of the Biblical New Year.
Tishri 1 5761, starting on September 28, 2000 was also a shemittah or Sabbatical year. According to Rabbinic traditions “the year that changes everything” would also herald a war cycle that would last until the next Sabbatical year in the Year 2007. Then according to the rabbis, the messiah will come. We feel that the Sabbatical Years were part of the fulfillment of the ministry and death of Jesus in the 1st century C.E.
This same year, the leading rabbi chose this year as the “Year of the Mikveh” and the “Year of Purification”. The mikveh is a baptistery in which they performed the rituals of purification. Taking our minds back to the biblical days, the mikveh was designed to hold 5,760 egg volumes of water, or the number of a full baptistery. Was the Jewish year 5760, when the mikveh baptistery became full? Was the Jewish Sabbatical year 5760, September 1999 to September 2000, the year in which the “Fullness of the Gentiles” was fulfilled? We need to remind ourselves of John the Baptist who was a ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ who said;
Matthew 3:2 - “Repent and be baptized, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
There in the Jordan, Jesus descended into a mikvoth ‘baptism’ and thereby began His ministry on Tishri 1, in the Sabbatical year of 26 CE. Three and a half years later, Jesus went through “The Passion of The Christ” and was crucified in the ‘midst of the week’ as He descended into hell and then was resurrected in triumph to a new life as the first-fruits of the dead.
Does the Apostle Paul suggest that the “blindness” of the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel and that the lost of identity of the Lost Tribes of Israel will end when the ‘fullness of the Gentiles is completed?
Romans 11:25 – “I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob (House of Judah and Israel); for this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins.’”
Did not the Apostle Paul state concerning the Israelites, “Has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of the Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.” (Romans 11:1-2 (parts) The Pharisee and Rabbi Paul the ‘blindness’ of Israel was the due to the goodness of God’s will.
Romans 11:8 – “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day.”
Is there a possibility that in the midst of the Sabbatical Year 2000 to 2007, at the setting of the sun on Passover (Pesach), Monday, April 5, 2004 (Aviv 1, 5764) that the restoration of the House of Israel will begin? Are we on the eve of the greatest revival of all ages, the revival of the identity of the House of Israel in the Moshiach (Messiah) of Yahshua?
Or, is there another prophetic event that will happen?
In
the Global News in January, 2004, we looked briefly at America’s War on Terror and quoted the following: “Is the United States the ‘White
Horse and Rider of the First Seal’ who
comes from the west (Zechariah 
6:3), claiming to carry the banner of
righteousness indignation under the mantle of the Jesus and the Christian
world? Is it any wonder that this same rider on the white horse may also
represent the Council of
Foreign Relations whose seal on the front of any portfolio and on the front
of its official publication, Foreign Affairs, is a white horse and rider?”
Zechariah 6:6 - New King James Version – The one with the black horses is going toward the north country, the white are going after them, and the dappled are going toward the south country.”
In the New International Version it says; - “The one with the black horses is going toward the North Country, the one with the white horses toward the west, and the one with the dappled horses toward the south.
In the New English Bible it says; - “The chariot with the black horses is going to the land of the north, that with the white to the far west, that with the dappled to the south, and that with the roan (red) to the land of the east.”
“Iranian intelligence officer implicates 9-11 as a ‘joint venture between Tehran and Al-Qaida – January 23, 2004
World Net Daily - As if the political turmoil was not enough, Hamid Reza Zakeri, an Iranian intelligence officer testifying at the trial of a 31 year old Moroccan student, Abdelghani Mzoud, claimed the Moroccan student had two meetings between senior Iranian and al-Qaida. The 9-11 strike on the New York City twin towers was actually ordered by the Iranian intelligence chief, Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, in May 2001 who wanted to strike at this country's "economic structure, their reputation and their internal peace and security,"
Did the United States in retaliation for 9-11, open the War against Terror and invade the wrong country? Was it actually Iran and the al-Qaida who committed the atrocities of 9-11?”
BibleSearchers Reflections – April 2004
From the preparation day of Passover, April 5, (14 Nissan) to the 56th year celebration of the Nation of Israel on April 20, 2004 (29 Nissan 5764), who won their independence on May 14, 1948, the tumultuous events in America and the Middle East give pause to BibleSearchers. What is the intent of the Divine One who is arranging all the nations in preparation for the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah)?
What is now being called the declaration of war by Iran against America, Iraq War II, all the best intentions of the Bush administration to prepare for the transition of government to the Iraqi people on June 30, 2004 appear to be swept away in a tide of violence that is ever escalating. Under the banner of Sheik Maqtada al-Sadr, who cloaks himself and his warriors with the mantle of the Mahdi, we must ask does he consider himself the future messiah after Mohammed, who would come to this earth at the end of the age? It is this same Sheik al-Sadr, who represents the Iranian cleric, Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri who in tern represents the Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Khakim. It is their intent to impose Islamic rule over the country of Iraq. We now can see the region quickly exploding in a “Holy War” of proportions not anticipated by military strategists of the United States.
By the end of April, the twin sieges at Falluja and Najaf have brought the worse crisis to the Bush administration since Sadaam Hussein was ousted from power. In the interim, President Bush endorsed Ariel Sharon’s Gaza-settlement plan with the words that “the entire world should thank Ariel Sharon”. This brought down universal condemnation from almost all the nations of this earth. The Arab world is now boiling in hatred to both the United States and Israel
The United States is quickly being engulfed in the same experience that Israel has faced for years. Whether force or appeasement, the results will be the same. The fate of George Bush Jr. and the United States seen as the ‘Great Satan’ and Israel seen as the ‘Little Satan’ will be intrinsically bound together in probably the worse diplomatic rift with the moderate Arab allies in decades. The rise of hatred towards Bush and Sharon is paralleled with the astronomical rise in admiration for Osama ben Laden.
If events were not unfolding rapidly enough, the al-Qaeda followers sent quick and forceful messages to their Islamic brethren, ‘separate you quickly from any ties and allegiances with the United States’. This was followed by a report on April 15 from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that they thwarted an al-Qaeda attempt to detonate a large chemical bomb at a Jordanian Military intelligence center, capturing tons of chemical for additional attacks of a possible ‘chemical toxic cloud’ over the U.S. Embassy or the Jordanian prime minister’s office.
On April 21, a car bomb destroyed a security force building in the Saudi Capital and six days later the former headquarters for the United Nation’s Disengagement Observer Force in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus was attacked which set off the worse violence seen in Syria in twenty years. This came in the midst of the delivery on April 16, of a psy-op tape by bin Laden that offered “a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries” and do not “interfere in their affairs.”
Many will observe and suggest a progressive decline into world chaos as ‘wars and rumors of wars’ continue to unfold at the end of times. It also suggests that the Lord of hosts is laying out a pathway to a One World Order for all the nations of the earth to follow.
Gleanings on Global News – America and the War on Terror
BibleSearchers Reflections – May-June 2004
Where are Iraq's WMD? New intelligence points west via Syria - May 22, 2004
World Tribune - The U.S. intelligence community has new information that could shed light on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction arsenal…Over the last few months, the intelligence community has received new evidence that a sizable amount of Iraqi WMD systems, components and platforms were transferred to Syria in the weeks leading up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003. The convoys were spotted by U.S. satellites in early 2003, but the contents of the WMD convoys from Iraq to Syria were not confirmed. Confirmation later came from Iraqi scientists and technicians questioned by a U.S. team that was searching for Saddam's conventional weapons. But all they knew was that the convoys were heading west to Syria.
But over the last few months, U.S. intelligence managed to track the Iraqi WMD convoy to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Through the use of satellites, electronic monitoring and human intelligence, the intelligence community has determined that much, if not all, of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria, with Iranian help, in the Bekaa Valley…The Syrians received word from Saddam Hussein in late 2002 that the Iraqi WMD would be arriving and Syrian army engineering units began digging huge trenches in the Bekaa Valley. Saddam paid more than $30 million in cash for Syria to build the pits, acquire the Iraqi WMD and conceal them.
At first, U.S. intelligence thought Iraqi WMD was stored in northern Syria. But in February 2003 a Syrian defector told U.S. intelligence that the WMD was buried in or around three Syrian Air Force installations. But intelligence sources said the Syrians kept dual-use nuclear components for themselves while transferring the more incriminating material to Lebanon. (read entire article)
Biblesearchers were alerted to the place where Saddam’s WMD were hidden back in January and February, 2004 in Biblesearcher Reflections. This story continues to unfold and is central to the soon to be fulfilled prophecy of ‘The Oracle of Zechariah’ in Zechariah 9.
Iraq riches whisked to Syria – January 20, 2004
Washingtontimes.com – The January, 2004 BibleSearchers Reflection’s gave the revelations of the senior Syrian journalist Nizar Najoef who reported the sites of where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were stored in Syria and Lebanon. Additional revelations were given later that Saddam Hussein stored part of his fortunes in Syria’s Central Bank which held $1.3 billion in a ‘presidency’ account and another $700 million was held in the Medina Bank of Lebanon. (read entire article)
Iran with its WMD and Shi'ite subterfuge is new Mideast bully - May 25, 2004
ABU DHABI (World Tribune) - Kuwait has exchanged Iraq for Iran as the leading military threat to the Persian Gulf region. Kuwaiti officials said the sheikdom's leadership has become alarmed over what they term the increasing aggressiveness of Iran's military programs and efforts to stir religious unrest among Gulf Cooperation Council states. The officials said Iran has emerged as the most powerful state in the Gulf region following the U.S.-led war that toppled the Saddam Hussein in Iraq…Officials said Iran does not face any regional threats that would justify the acceleration of such programs.
Several GCC states have tried to reconcile with Iran and its emerging regional status. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia signed military and security cooperation agreements with Iran in 2001 and 2002. The United Arab Emirates has agreed to increase diplomatic and trade links in an effort to reduce tension connected to the Iranian capture of three Persian Gulf islands claimed by Abu Dhabi.
But both analysts and officials agreed that this has not stopped Iran's ambitions to dominate the Gulf region. They said that Iran has also used the sizable Shi'ite communities in several GCC countries to stir unrest…
"Iran's nuclear activities threaten the Gulf and the world," Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the symposium. The biggest threat posed by Iran, officials said, is its ability to infiltrate Shi'ite communities in such countries as Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia…Shi'ites constitute more than 40 percent of Kuwait's population.
In April, a representative of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and a leading Shi'ite group held a series of meetings to discuss a united Shi'ite leadership loyal to Teheran, officials said. The Shi'ite group was identified as the National Islamic Alliance, dubbed by Kuwaiti media as "the Kuwaiti Hizbullah." (more)
Gleanings on Global News – America and the War on Terror
BibleSearchers Reflections – July 2004
Al-Qaeda threatens 'waterfalls of blood' in Europe – July 29, 2004
A statement purportedly by an al-Qaida-linked group has threatened to destroy European cities and "create waterfalls of blood" because the continent failed to respond to Osama bin Laden's truce offer. The statement dated Wednesday and posted on the Internet in the name of Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades condemns Europeans for not withdrawing their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan within three months, as bin Laden demanded April 15.
"Today, we have declared a bloody war against you. We will not stop our attacks until you have come to your senses," the statement said…The statement singled out Italy, to whom Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades addressed an earlier threat this week. The latest statement said Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi should "wait for us Berlusconi, you and your allies and supporters. Wait for our menace that we declared against you earlier, and are now declaring against all of Europe." "We will create waterfalls of blood that will drag you to their depths. You have condemned your people to that. The infidel Europe has done the same to its people by following America. We will destroy European cities, starting by you, Berlusconi," the statement said. "The cities will bleed until all of you, European leaders and people, come to your senses. Withdraw your deadly missions from Iraq."
In an audiotape on April 15, bin Laden said he was calling a truce for three months and urged European states to leave Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries within that period or risk a terror campaign. (Entire Article)
Al Qaeda Blows up Iraq’s Churches on Way to Vatican – August 2, 2004
DEBKAfile (DEBKA-Net-Weekly - Al Qaeda’s assault on Iraq’s Christian
churches – the first attack suffered by the Christian minority since the fall
of Saddam Hussein –
underlined the seriousness of the threat al Qaeda’s al Masri Brigades issued
against Italy that very morning, Sunday, August 1 in the London Arabic
publication, al Quds al-Araby. It also coincided with the heightened terror
alert declared in New York, Washington DC and New Jersey, prompted by very specific
intelligence that al Qaeda was plotting attacks on prime US financial
institutions and companies, including Wall Street.
The coordinated car bombing attacks in Baghdad and the northern town of Mosul, quickly condemned by the Vatican, precisely targeted five of the mainstream Christian minorities’ places of worship – Armenian, Catholic and Chaldean. At least 15 were killed and many more injured in explosions that rocked the two Iraqi cities. The threat to Italy is addressed to prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and gives him 15 days to withdraw his troops from Iraq or endure attack. Operational squads were already roaming through Rome and other cities primed for action, according to the published warning. Other reckonings behind the Iraqi church offensive were less discernible: Al Qaeda is furious over what it sees as the treachery of its Iraqi Baath, Sunni Muslim allies, who are engaged in secret negotiations first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly on July 23 as follows:
Since the first week of July, the Bush administration has been immersed in a secret, high-wire diplomatic exercise aimed at bringing down the level of Iraqi insurgent attacks on US troops, or perhaps halting the violence altogether, by coming to terms with the enemy. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report exclusively that the initiative is being carried forward by a prominent non-Iraq Arab figure as intermediary on behalf of the highest White House echelons. His identity is top secret for reasons of security. (Our editors have his name but promised to preserve his anonymity in return for this exclusive).
According to data gathered by our experts, from December 2002, three months before the US invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda began issuing a stream of fatwas designating its main operating theatres in Europe. Spain was on the list, but not the first.
1. Turkey was first. Islamic fundamentalists were constrained to recover the honor and glory of the Ottoman caliphates which were trampled by Christian forces in
1917 in the last days of World War I.
2. Spain followed. There, al Qaeda set Muslims the goal of recovering their lost kingdom in Andalusia.
3. Italy and its capital were third. Muslim fundamentalists view Rome as a world center of heresy because of the Vatican and the Pope.
4. Vienna came next because the advancing Muslim armies were defeated there in 1683 before they could engulf the heart of Europe.
Italy has been warned before and on Sunday, August 1 it was warned again, although it is not alone: the United States is constantly in al Qaeda’s sights.
Sadr's
militia defeated by US – June 6, 2004
Baghdad
(Agence
France-Presse) - THE US military said today it had defeated the outlawed militia of flamboyant Shi'ite cleric Moqtada
Sadr across central Iraq, and denied that there was any truce with the radical
preacher.
"The Moqtada militia is militarily defeated. We have killed scores of them
over the last few weeks, and that is in Najaf alone," Brigadier General
Mark Hertling, one of the top US commanders in charge of Najaf. "Over the
past several days, Moqtada's militia has lost much of their stomach for
fighting," he said, also declaring victory in the central cities of Kut,
Diwaniyah and Karbala, dogged by fighting over the past two months. "We
have also destroyed their weapons stores and their offensive capability,"
he said. "What remains of them, which is a very small force, will take
advantage of the governor's announcement to disperse if not disband. ...There
is no truce between the coalition forces and the militia ... We have not
conceded anything to Sadr. We have told him that when we encounter any armed
forces, we will destroy them. We have done just that," Hertling said...
Calm returned to Najaf late yesterday after Zorfi announced that Iraqi police would patrol in sensitive areas around the shrines, which include some of the world's holiest sites in Shi'ite Islam, the US military said. "That was a brilliant move on his part, because it was one of the things the militia was asking for... (and) made it possible for the militia to lay down their arms and leave town," said Hertling. "The governor has taken his city back under control, in an unbelievably historic and courageous act. He has re-established his police force, and we are helping them train and we are helping him to arm them. (More)
Rebel Cleric Signals End to Shiite Insurgency in Iraq - June 17, 2004
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr sent his fighters home on Wednesday in what may mark the end of a 10-week revolt against U.S.-led forces that once engulfed southern Iraq and Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines….”Each of the individuals of the Mehdi Army, the loyalists who made sacrifices...should return to their governorates to do their duty,'' the statement said.
That call came a day after President Bush said the United States would not oppose a political role for Sadr -- only weeks after branding him an anti-democratic thug. Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led administration in Iraq, suggested Sadr caved in to U.S. military pressure and moderate Shi'ite clerics who brokered a truce between his militia and American forces. “He is seeking to save face. Iraqi political leaders are working out agreements with him. He has expressed his support for the interim government, which was unheard of many weeks ago,'' ….
Apart from the huge casualty toll, Sadr was under pressure from moderate Shi'ite religious leaders opposed to his firebrand ways and appalled by fighting near holy shrines. As the truce calmed the streets of Najaf and Karbala, Sadr played a new card, declaring conditional support for Iraq's interim government and announcing plans to form a political party that could fight elections due to be held by January. “Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr enters into political matters. But this does not mean he will enter elections,'' Sadr's spokesman Qais al-Khazali told Reuters on Wednesday. “Our position is clear, Sadr's entry into politics will not be direct but we have ideas...There are no nominees or names suggested.'' (More)
Fallujah
adopts Taliban theocracy, In wake of U.S. pullout, clerics impose radical
regime – June 4, 2004
Geo-Strategy Direct - In the wake of the
U.S. Marines pullout, the Sunni city of Fallujah has become a Taliban-style
theocracy. In the city of 300,000, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, al
Qaida-inspired clerics are the ruling authorities, backed by the guns of Saddam
loyalists who have imposed their own version of Islamic law. The
comparison to Afghanistan under the Taliban is not coincidental.
Many of the clerics who have taken over Fallujah either studied in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or were urged to adopt the Taliban example. As a result, women must cover their hair and faces. If they don't, they are beaten in the streets. Naturally, beauty parlors have been shut down.
Men have been ordered to grow beards and barbers have been warned not to
shave customers. Indeed, the barbers have been given strict guidelines on what kinds
of haircuts are permissible. Those selling or imbibing alcohol are now
flirting with death. Already, several dealers have been flogged naked in
the streets of Fallujah in full view of passersby. A man found drunk in
Fallujah was also beaten to a pulp. People have been encouraged or ordered to
participate in the beatings.
The United States has deployed the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in Fallujah. But security officers have not intervened as Al-Qaida-inspired gunmen direct traffic, harass businessmen and look for victims on the streets. The Coalition Provisional Authority has a presence in Fallujah, but hasn't done anything either. Last month, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would not object to an Iraqi theocracy. (Article)
Shiite Cleric al-Sadr calls on follower to resist – occupation is not ended – July 2, 2004
Baghdad (MSNBC) - Rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr warned Friday that the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq had not ended with the recent handover of limited political powers to an interim government and called on his followers to continue resisting the large presence of foreign troops in the country.
"I want to draw your attention to the fact there was no transferring of authority," Jabir Khafaji, a top Sadr lieutenant, read from a letter during Friday prayers at a mosque in the southern city of Kufa where Sadr commonly preaches. "What has changed is the name only." Khafaji also demanded that the new Iraqi government defer to the Shiite religious leadership based in the neighboring holy city of Najaf. He asserted that the Mahdi Army, Sadr's black-clad militia recently decimated in two months of battle with U.S. forces, is "the army of Iraq."
"I ask the Iraqis to keep rejecting the occupation and call for independence," Khafaji said. Sadr's comments, echoed by another of his top aides here in Baghdad, appeared to be a step away from the conciliatory calls for unity he made last week after coordinated insurgent attacks killed more than 100 Iraqis. His words could present an early test for Iraq's unelected government now seeking to shore up its legitimacy following Monday's handover of limited political authority after 15 months of occupation.
Since intensive fighting between U.S. forces and Sadr's militia in several southern cities ended in a cease-fire last month, Sadr has announced plans to form a political party and participate in national elections scheduled for January. More recently, Sadr condemned the foreign influence within Iraq's diffuse insurgency, noting that most of the victims of urban bombings have been ordinary Iraqis. A move now by Sadr would strain Iraq's embryonic security forces and likely require intervention by some of the 138,000 U.S. soldiers who remain in the country as the chief guarantors of the interim government's stability. (Entire article)
Experts: Iran Ready to Take It to the Brink – June 29, 2004
Washington (Fox News) - With a dubious nuclear technology program, the capture of British sailors last week and reports of meddling in fledgling Iraqi affairs, Iran - a member of the now-notorious "axis of evil" - appears to be testing the waters to see how far it can push the West. Some foreign policy analysts say Washington may find it difficult to fight back... The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq squandered much of the U.S. authority in the Middle East and may have damaged America's ability to get help from Muslim states to fend off threats from Iran, he said. "We really destroyed our relationship with the Arab world, and we are now in a much weaker position with Iran," he said.
"Iran is drawing a line in the sand," said Alireza Jafarzadeh of Strategic Policy Consulting. Jafarzadeh, formerly linked to the Washington, D.C.- based National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has been called a terrorist organization by the State Department, has won much support on Capitol Hill for his work as a staunch watchdog of Iran’s nuclear weapons programs.
"Iran clearly wants all players in Iraq to know that the bigger and more populated and stronger neighbor is the big bully in the alley," he said...
Last week, experts warned the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia that a nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran would spell imminent disaster for the United States. "A nuclear-capable Iran, under their present leadership, could be an unparalleled earthquake, with shockwaves that could rock the foundations of U.S. vital interests in the region, at home and around the world," said Paul Leventhal, founder of the Nuclear Control Institute. Leventhal added that Iran's support of terrorist organizations could lead to the further proliferation of nuclear materials.
"In my opinion, the bulk of what we are seeing in terms of unrest in Iraq is being carried out both by Iranians, by those groups being supported by Iran’s money and by those organizations that are determined not to have Iraq be a stable nation," he said....
Most of those who spoke with FOXNews.com agreed that a pre-emptive strike like the one launched against Saddam Hussein, who had repeatedly ignored U.N. disarmament resolutions and subverted international inspectors, is not a viable option for Iran. Direct negotiations with the government or supporting internal opposition groups combined with a "carrot and stick" approach appear more feasible at this time...
"What would make [the mullahs] bolder and more persistent in pushing their objectives is to see indecisiveness and confusion in the international community," he said. "Tehran will only take you seriously when you are serious, when you show teeth." (Entire article)
Gleanings on Global News – America and the War on Terror
BibleSearchers Reflections – August 2004
The conflict between Theocracy and a Democracy
By all accounts, the second coming of the Messiah will herald an era of the return to a Theocracy under the rule by the ‘Son of Man’ identified in Revelation as Jesus son of Joseph (Yahshua ben Yosef). We posed the question last month, is the world becoming prepared to live under an international one world order eventually led by the Anti-Christ in order to prepare the citizens of the world to live under the one world theocracy by the God of Israel? If so, the forces of the adversary, Satan (haSatan), are raising a powerful theocratic substitute, the theocracy of Allah.
In the first week of August, two Muslims were arrested in Albany, N.Y. and charged with money laundering to purchase illegal weapons. Within the criminal complaint posted against the two, a mosque leader and the other a mosque founder, they were reputed to have said to the undercover agent, “although he may be breaking American laws, he was not breaking Allah’s laws.” To a good Muslim, the laws of Allah trump the laws of the United States. Allah is the highest and ultimate authority.
Yet this poses a different quandary to prophetic and apocalyptic minded Christians. Though the laws of the United States are reputed to be descendant from the Laws of God, established first by the legal codes of the Israelites, the land of American has experienced a retraction upon the principles of justice by the God of Israel. We have repudiated the acknowledgment that the laws of the United States were framed within the constitution that shadowed the ten commandments of Moses, the Decalogue. We no longer take an oath upon the Bible and as such no longer acknowledge the Word of God as the guardian of morality and justice. Over the past year, we also have seen the onslaught to remove any symbols of Divine Authority in our halls of justice. Do the laws of America today reflect our National Motto, “In God We Trust?” If someday in the future a national Sunday Worship Law is adopted, will Sabbath-keeping Christians and Jews also have to say, the laws of the God of Israel demand that I must violate the law of the United States?
The holiest shrine of the Shiite,
the Imam Ali Mosque, was the last stand of the rebel Islamic cleric, Moqtada
al-Sadr as over 1000 of the Sadrist militia were dwelling in its
interior rigged with explosives to destroy the mosque if any of the three
American battalions surround the mosque penetrate its exterior barriers.
Meanwhile the coalition
forces transferred the Iraqi military drive into the Imam Ali Mosque to the
Najef Kurdish Special Forces 36th commando battalion. If the
mosque is blown up it will be against the Kurdish Special Ops forces.
The Imam Ali Mosque is the holiest of the Shiite Mosques and the reputed burial of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad who became the fourth caliph after Mohammad’s death. It was first built in 977 CE by Azoud ad Dowleh and the present structure was rebuilt for the second time about 1500 CE. After the Gulf War in March 1991, Saddam Hussein ordered his Republican Guards to storm the building and massacred the members of the Shi’ite opposition living within its walls.
Many American media call the Islamic cleric Moqtada al-Sadr a fraud and not a cleric, failing to account that al-Sadr was the deputy cleric under the Iranian cleric, Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, the leading cleric spokesperson for the Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Khakim. This revolt is a deep seated revolution and the beginning prongs of a true declaration of war upon the United States by the Pasadran, the Governing council of Ayatollahs in Tehran to expel the United States from Iraq and impose Islamic rule and the Sharia Law over the Nation of Iraq.
Moktada al-Sadr rebuffed on August 18 a peace delegation sent by the national conference in Baghdad. They were sent to ask that al-Sadr give up control of the Imam Ali shrine and join the political process that was going on in the city of Baghdad. The leader of the delegation was Ayatollah Hussein Hadi al-Sadr, a senior member of the Moqtada family and distant cousin who flew in from London to meet with the rebelling cleric while the leading Shi’ite cleric in Iraq, Najef Ayatollah Ali Sistani was out of the country undergoing medical treatments.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr negotiate Najaf Peace Deal in Najaf– August 26, 2004
Najaf, Iraq (Fox News) - An
aide to Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani said
Thursday that a peace deal was reached with rebel leader Muqtada al-Sadr. The
deal ends three weeks of fighting in the holy city of Najaf. The Iraqi government accepted the
agreement brokered by Iraq's top Shiite cleric, according to State Minister
Qassim Dawoud early Friday. The Iraqi government will not try to arrest
al-Sadr, who was being sought for an alleged role in the slaying of a rival
cleric last year, Dawoud said…
The five-point plan called for Najaf and Kufa to be declared weapons-free cities, for all foreign forces to withdraw from Najaf, for police to be in charge of security, for the government to compensate those harmed by the fighting and for a census to be taken to prepare for elections expected in the country by January….The mosque attack in Kufa also wounded 63 on Thursday and came just hours before al-Sistani, 75, arrived in neighboring Najaf in an attempt to end the bloody fighting.
A 24-hour cease-fire, called for by Allawi, technically took effect in Najaf as al-Sistani held talks with firebrand cleric al-Sadr, whose militia had been holding U.S. and Iraqi forces at bay for weeks…The intervention by al-Sistani — the most widely respected cleric among Iraq's Shiite majority —had been the best hope so far to end the fighting between U.S.-Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army militia of the radical al-Sadr. Al-Sistani arrived in a 30-vehicle convoy that drove in from Basra, cheered by thousands of supporters in towns along the way. Urged by al-Sistani's aides to march for peace, thousands more came from their hometowns to Najaf and gathered on its outskirts, but witnesses said police barred them from entering the city. "The presence of his eminence al-Sistani will solve the crisis because he promised he would negotiate with the government and will persuade the Sadrist movement to reach ... a solution that will save (their) dignity," said Al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany before the deal was made. "I'm optimistic…"
Al-Sistani - who had been in London undergoing medical treatment - has refused to get involved in previous crises and has stayed above the fray, supporting neither al-Sadr nor the U.S. troops and the pro-U.S. government. He holds the loyalty of a far broader swath of Iraq's Shiite majority than al-Sadr. Al-Sadr's fiery anti-U.S. message has drawn many poorer, disillusioned Shiites but is seen by other Shiites as too radical…Al-Sistani's 30-vehicle convoy drove 220 miles from the southern city of Basra to Najaf, joined by at least a thousand cars from towns along the way, where supporters on the street cheered al-Sistani.
A close al-Sadr aide said the militants would listen to al-Sistani's peace plan. "We will listen to him and we hope to see the government listen to him as well," said Yusif al-Nasiri. "They should listen and obey what he is going to say." (Finish Entire Article)
Cleric Rebuffs Iraqi Mediators; Battle in Najaf Continues – August 18, 2004
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Najaf, Iraq (NY Times) - The rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr refused to meet here on Tuesday with a peace delegation that traveled from a national conference in Baghdad, and fighting between American forces and his Shiite militia intensified. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Sadr's refusal to meet the delegates will scuttle the chance for talks between him and the interim Iraqi government. Members of the mission said they were not upset that Mr. Sadr had turned them away, and both sides said lower-level discussions had been cordial….Mr. Sadr blamed the fighting for his unwillingness to meet the eight delegates, saying his safety could not be assured, said his spokesman, Ahmed al-Shaibani. While Mr. Sadr stayed away, his aides met the delegation for almost three hours, as Mr. Sadr's supporters periodically chanted "Yes, yes, Moktada!" and demonstrated inside the shrine, which is sacred to Shiite Muslims. (Read Entire Article)
Radical cleric calls for uprising in Iraq
–
August 6, 2004
Baghdad (International Herald Tribune) - The radical Shiite cleric Moktada
al-Sadr called Thursday for a national uprising against American and coalition
forces as a two-month truce between Sadr and the United States military
appeared to collapse. As night fell, heavy fighting appeared to be confined
mainly around Najaf, a Shiite holy city 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, south of Baghdad that is a stronghold for Sadr. In Baghdad, the capital, and Basra, the largest city
in southern Iraq, insurgents loyal to Sadr prepared for clashes with American
and British troops. But fighting was sporadic and Baghdad was mostly quiet
until 11:15 p.m., when three large explosions, probably from mortars, rocked
the city's center…
U.S. Troops, Al-Sadr Militants Clash in Najaf
Sadr's call is the most serious challenge yet to the interim Iraqi government, whose head, Ayad Allawi, has struggled to assert his authority since being named prime minister in June. Unlike moderate Shiite political leaders such as Allawi, Sadr fiercely opposes the continuing American presence here and has tried twice since October to revolt against it. Allawi is eager to show his independence from the United States and to prove that Iraqi security forces can stop the escalating violence here. But Thursday's clashes showed again that only American troops have the firepower to contain Sadr's guerrilla fighters, called the Mahdi Army, a well-armed militia that has fighters across the southern half of Iraq…
There are no reliable estimates of the exact size of the Mahdi Army, but Sadr can unquestionably bring thousands of armed men into the streets. (Read Entire article)
Islamic Group Warns of 'Bloodbaths' – August 16, 2004
Cairo, Egypt (Fox News) - An online statement purportedly from an Islamic militant group threatened the Netherlands and Italy with "bloodbaths" if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq. There was no way to verify the authenticity of the statement, which appeared late Sunday on a Web site known as a clearing house for militant-related material. The statement addressed all European countries that have sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but also specifically mentioned the Netherlands and Italy. "We advise you to withdraw the Dutch troops from Iraq, otherwise we will not be responsible for the retaliation which will not be through the Internet, but through our special means," warned the Jamaat al-Tawhid al-Islamiya group. "Wait for the hell which will turn your nights into bloodbaths."
The statement addressed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi by name and said: "You have defied the soldiers of Islam so wait for the Islamic quake."
Italy has about 3,000 troops in Iraq. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said Monday the Netherlands had no plans to withdraw its approximately 1,350 troops from Iraq… The online statement was signed by the Omar el-Mukhtar Brigade of the Jamaat al-Tawhid al-Islamiya, or Group of Islamic Monotheism. Omar el-Mukhtar was a Libyan nationalist who fought against the Italian occupation and was hanged in 1931.On July 29, the little-known group posted a statement on an Islamic Web site warning Arab countries against participating in a Saudi-proposed Muslim force for Iraq. It is unclear who the actual authors of threatening statements are. The numerous online claims and counterclaims make it difficult to determine the authenticity of Web threats or learn whether those who post them have any ability to carry them out.
Gleanings on Global News – Iran and the Red Internationale
BibleSearchers Reflections – July 2005
Tehran’s Riposte to Washington on Their Nuclear Dispute, Lebanon, Syria and Khuzestan – June 25, 2005
Debkafiles - A virtual nobody on Iran’s national scene, Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 49, was picked by Iran’s radical Islamic leaders and swung ahead of the presidential race to deal “the heaviest
psychological blow to Iran’s enemies.” Those words were uttered by the new
president in his first post-election statement Saturday, June 25. They attested
to the fact that Iran had chosen him as its tool for getting back at the Bush
administration for seeking to bring regime change and democracy to the Middle
East and Iran in particular.
Everyone but the radical wire-pullers in Tehran was surprised by the victory of a candidate whom most of the Iranian electorate had never heard of. He beat the familiar former president Hashemi Rafsanjani by a resounding 62%: 35%. But nothing had been left to chance. Ahmadinejad was thrust into the presidency by careful engineering, organization and the deployment of every single cog the powerful machine of the heavily centralized government could muster. The Revolutionary Guards in which the candidate once served as an officer was brought into play. With the help too of massive vote-rigging, the ruling clique could cynically claim to have achieved regime change through the ballot box - only it turned out to be more Islamic, more militant, and more Iranian than before.
DEBKAfile’s Iran experts note that this is the second victory Iran’s unelected spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has scored against Washington in a month.
In early June, the Bush administration quietly gave up hope of the European-Iranian diplomatic track – or even UN Security Council penalties - persuading Tehran to relinquish its nuclear weapons program. The European option was dropped after of Britain and Germany edged away from a showdown with Tehran over uranium enrichment. The notion of UN sanctions was set aside when it became obvious that China and Russia would veto a Security Council oil embargo against Iran.
(This tidal shift in Washington’s posture was first revealed by DEBKAfile on June 13:
Washington gives up on Iran’s nuclear bomb, therefore backs ElBaradei’s reappointment. article)
Having faced down the United States and Israel in this issue, the Islamic regime came to the conclusion that there was no power on earth left to interfere with its progress towards achieving a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration had meanwhile changed course and opted to strike the Iranians on their home front:
1. By backing an ethnic Arab uprising in Khuzestan, the province that produces 80% of Iran’s oil. This revolt is turning into an Arab guerrilla war against the Iranian rulers –sustained mainly by American, British, Iraq, Kurdish support and assistance from the Gulf emirates Abu Dhabi and Kuwait. However, the Khuzestan rebels are not strong enough yet to stand up to the Iranian army or seriously damage Iranian oil production.
(The Khuzestan uprising was first exposed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issues 203 of April 22 and 204 of May 6).
2. By sending US Special Forces and CIA instructors to train Iraqi Kurdish fighters for combat in north Iranian Kurdish provinces, in the hope sparking an uprising there too. (This move was also first aired in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 204).
3. By initiating active steps to change the regime in Syria. Tehran believes the Bush administration is bent on toppling Syrian president Bashar Assad and views the forced expulsion of Syrian troops from Lebanon under extreme US-French pressure as one of those steps. Iran’s rulers are not prepared to witness the downfall of Assad who is regarded as ally and backer of their protégée, the Lebanese Hizballah with political, diplomatic and logistic aid.
4. American action to hamper Iran’s air freight of arms to Lebanon has succeeded in gaining Ankara’s consent to close Turkish air space to those flights. Iranians see this step as another mark of American hostility, like -
5. American pressure for Hizballah to disarm and dismantle the more than 10,000 rockets pointing at Israel. Tehran needs those rockets to stay where they are as its second-strike military capability on the shores of the Mediterranean and a deterrent to Israeli attack. Attempts to remove this menacing array are viewed as a direct assault on Iran’s strategic interests.
6. The US demand for Hizballah units to pull back from southern Lebanon and distanced from the Israeli border. Tehran views Hizballah’s redeployment as the removal of its military threat against Israel and the severance of the group’s collaborative ties with Iran-funded Palestinian terrorist organizations operating out of Damascus and Beirut, like the Jihad Islami and Hamas.
With this mindset prevailing in Tehran, the Rafsanjani candidacy was bound to be rejected by the radical Islamic rulers as soon as he began voicing pragmatic willingness to talk terms on the nuclear issue with the United States, pledging greater freedom for national minorities and spreading words of encouragement to reform advocates including students.
Iran's President-Elect Calls for Moderation - 'Peaceful' Nuclear Rights Asserted – June 27, 2005
TEHRAN (Washington Post) -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former
militiaman and military commander who will be Iran's next president, moved to
calm global concerns about his hard-line politics Sunday, vowing at a news
conference to "avoid any extremism inside the government" and to
pursue "a policy of moderation."
In his first extended remarks since his stunning landslide victory in the presidential runoff election Friday, Ahmadinejad told Iranian and foreign journalists that his views had been distorted by rivals in the bitter race, and that foreign policy decisions under his administration would continue to be reached by consensus.
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"We are going to stand firm. We want this technology, and we are going to have it" -- Iran's President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (By Raheb Homavandi -- Reuters)
Ahmadinejad repeated the longstanding government line on Iran's nuclear program, saying that as a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty the country has the right to develop "peaceful nuclear technology." "We need this technology for energy and medical purposes," Ahmadinejad said. "We are going to stand firm. We want this technology, and we are going to have it."
But Ahmadinejad, a foreign policy novice, made clear that talks over the future of the nuclear program would remain in the hands of the current negotiating team.
"Your conception of a president who should be a jack of all trades is wrong," Ahmadinejad told a reporter who noted his lack of diplomatic experience. "The art of a presidency is good management." Britain, Germany and France have secured a promise from Iran that it would suspend a program to enrich uranium, a necessary step to produce nuclear power or nuclear weapons. The suspension was cast as a trust-building measure intended to reassure the rest of the world that the nuclear research Iran had kept secret for nearly two decades was not geared toward producing a bomb. Iran and the Europeans are still negotiating over the program.
The Bush administration, which, with Israel, has been most publicly skeptical of Iran's claims, has endorsed European efforts to negotiate a compromise that respects Iranian pride and entitlements while also verifying that Iran's program is peaceful. At a separate news conference, Hamid Reza Asefi, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry -- still led by Mohammad Khatami, the outgoing reformist president -- sounded a similar note of continuity. "Our detente policy will definitely continue, and I don't think our macro policies will change," said Asefi. "The nuclear talks are part of our macro policies, which we decide on by consensus. Changing the president will not change this."
Ahmadinejad, 49, is known for his
loyalty to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. Khamenei is said to have
hand-picked the civil engineer to be 
Tehran's mayor two years ago, after
conservatives unexpectedly prevailed in municipal elections. At the time,
Ahmadinejad had served as governor of a small province and as an officer in two
hard-line military groups, the Revolutionary Guard and the basij militia.
Ahmadinejad repeated the position he often articulated during the campaign that
Iran did not need to continue to pursue rapprochement with the United States. While other candidates said the restoration of diplomatic ties was key to Iran's economic development, Ahmadinejad echoed the rhetoric of the 1979 Islamic revolution,
advocating self-reliance and orienting Iran away from the Western economic
power. But while Ahmadinejad said that Iran had "no significant need for
the United States," he nonetheless appeared to soften his earlier
position. He denied telling an Iranian news agency that he would close Tehran's stock exchange on the grounds that securities trading amounted to gambling.
Instead, he urged foreign investment -- all but barred for many years after the
revolution -- and suggested changes that would coax small investors into the
exchange. Ahmadinejad emphasized, however, that revenue from oil exports should
be used to ease the lot of the poor. He sat before a banner reading "A
cabinet of 70 million," the campaign slogan that, by referencing Iran's total population, evoked both populism and the corruption often associated with the
selection of government ministers.
Ahmadinejad said that even after assuming office in August he would continue to live in the modest middle-class rowhouse that his campaign made a potent symbol of his honesty and humility. "He's a moderate man," said Rahim Khaki, a supporter who acted as an informal spokesman during the campaign. "He's in full coordination with the leader, and has the full support of the nation." Speaking to an American reporter as the news conference wound down, Khaki added: "He feels there are good potentials inside both Iran and the United States for a durable, stable relationship."
Iran's sham election- June 16, 2005
Washington Times - As Iranian voters get ready to go to the polls tomorrow in the first round of presidential elections, the avalanche of breathless media hype has already begun. We've been treated to plenty of pontificating over the supposed "liberals" (the enlightened ones who tell us what we want to hear about women's rights and political freedom). To win, these liberals will need to fend off the evil "conservatives" -- the most backward of the ayatollahs, men who won't even give interviews to the New York Times pretending to be for democracy, transparency and women's rights and opening up the economy.
In reality, all of this is a sham. Recent polls suggest that the Iranian people want democracy and loathe the clerical dictatorship run by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who will continue to control the country regardless of which of the candidates on the ballot wins the election. (There may be a runoff election between the top two vote-getters next week.) Iran's Constitution invests actual authority in Ayatollah Khamenei, and stipulates that "All laws and regulations" must "be based on Islamic principles." The authority to determine whether a statute adheres to such principles is granted to the Supreme Leader of the country (Ayatollah Khamenei) and the Guardian Council, an institution where the supreme leader chooses most of the members. In the current election, the council approved just six of the more than 1,000 candidates who sought to run for president. In short, tomorrow's election is designed to ensure that the world is gulled by the pretense of democracy while Ayatollah Khamenei and the clerics retain dictatorial control over the country.
One of the more bizarre things to watch will be the likely effort made by European Union diplomats to portray the favorite, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- an ally of Ayatollah Khamenei who served as president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and has been a mainstay of the regime since the 1979 Iranian Revolution -- as a moderate and reformist. It's simply nonsense.
On the facing page, Hossein
Abedini, an opponent of the clerical dictatorship in Iran, describes an attempt
by the regime to murder him in 1990, while Mr. Rafsanjani served as president
of Iran. Although Mr. Abedini and his organization, the National Council of
Resistance of Iran, are extremely controversial and have made many enemies
among rival Iranian dissident groups, the attempt on his life is just one of
many tied to Mr. Rafsanjani over the years. To take just one example, a German
court ruled that Mr. Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Khamenei, among other Iranian
officials, ordered the 1992 murders of Iranian Kurdish leaders at a Berlin restaurant. In December 2001, Mr. Rafsanjani hinted that it might not be such a bad
thing for Iran to target Israel with a nuclear weapon. The truth is that
whoever becomes Iran's next president will do the bidding of the Islamofascist
clerics who have ruled the country for 26 years.
Iran Steps Back to the Future – June 28, 2005
“As I was saying, isn’t democracy wonderful?’ joyfully exclaims a caricature resembling Condi Rice in yesterday’s Guardian. On the left of Martin’s Rowson’s version of the US secretary of state is an explosion labeled “Iraq”, while on the right stands Iran’s new leader holding a nuclear missile above his head. For me it succinctly sums up America’s failed policies in the region under the faux banner of spreading “freedom and democracy”.Not only is US policy not achieving the desired effect from Washington’s perspective, it appears to be producing a reverse backlash. If anyone harbors doubts about this, surely the Iranian election of a religious and political hard-liner is yet one more proof positive sign. Moreover, the fact that former Mayor of Tehran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s spectacular electoral triumph caught the US and Europe napping, on the surface, says much about the lack of political expertise among so-called Western Mideast specialist advisors.
Indeed, American and European leaders seem so bound up with regional minutiae that they appear to have forgotten the basic principle of “every action has a reaction”, which clearly applies to the state of play in today’s Iran. The accent here is on “appears”.
Prior to the arrival of the neocon/born again bandwagon on Pennsylvania Avenue, a research paper on the Brookings Institution website written by Suzanne Maloney and dated June 2000 is headlined: “Elections in Iran: A New Majlis and a Mandate for Reform”. Writes Maloney: “After a campaign marked by bitter factional rivalries and unprecedented public liberties, Iranians went to the polls on Feb. 18 to elect a new Parliament. They handed an overwhelming victory to the advocates of reform and a humbling setback to the stalwarts of the revolution.”
Five years on, Iranians appear to have completely swung the other way with the
stalwarts firmly in the driving seat, leaving wealthy modernizers, along with
middle-class intellectuals, reformists and democracy activists contemplating
packing their bags. What happened in the interim? Why has the public mood been
so radically altered? Forget election fraud. The guy won by a whopping eight
million votes.
Let’s go back to Sept. 14, 2001 when hundreds of young Iranians, clad in black as a sign of mourning, held a silent candle-lit gathering in Tehran to pay homage to the thousands of victims of the terror attacks in the United States. At the time, AFP quoted one of those demonstrators as saying: “We wanted to show our solidarity with the American people, which is in pain.” Just five months later, in his first “State of the Union” address, George W. Bush singled out Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, claiming these states “and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world”. An analysis on the BBC’s website “Iran and the Axis of Evil” dated Feb. 11, 2002 reads: “Iran’s inclusion in Washington’s ‘Axis of Evil’ has caused anger in Iran and consternation among several European governments.”
The BBC article predicts that the “Axis of Evil” concept “can only radicalize Tehran further, make the work of Iranian moderates and reformists far harder and, in the long-run destabilize the region.” All that has been achieved by reform and international engagement...”could be stopped and reversed by Tehran’s inclusion in the ‘Axis of Evil’”, it concludes. And that’s exactly what has happened folks! Now that this prediction has come true, should we conclude that the BBC is staffed with psychics? I don’t think so, this was merely common sense based on the “every action has a reaction” principle. But why did Washington get it so very wrong?
Let’s face it, if you go out into your garden and scream invective and threats at your neighbor while he’s mowing his lawn, you might want to consider the possibility of receiving an earful of expletives, a visit from a nice policeman or even a brick through your window.
Now given that Washington is choc-a-bloc with political talking heads, erstwhile institutions and think-tanks you might wonder why the US government didn’t similarly conclude that its Iranian strategy was doomed to fail — if, indeed, it wanted a free and democratic Iran that is. And this is the nub. Iranians could well have fallen right into a carefully laid trap. What if “call me Hashemi, I wanna be America’s buddy” Rafsanjani had come out on top in last week’s run-off poll? In a country where two-thirds of the population is under-30, the disco-type balls decorating the 70-year-old cleric’s campaign headquarters and the accompanying techno music should have lured the jeans-sporting youth to board his bandwagon.
But on this occasion, those hip accoutrements didn’t work with the majority of voters. While his bandana-wearing supporters were chanting “Disco Hashemi, freedom, democracy”, the majority of young Iranians were grooving to another tune, in an environment where Condi’s future as a poster girl looks bleak.
Instead, their budding hero was a simple man, who is committed to Iran’s nuclear ambitions for peaceful purposes, which is its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and who vows to uphold their nation’s dignity. In sync with the “behind-the-scenes” ruling mullas, Ahmadinejad, while proclaiming his eagerness to cooperate with friendly nations, has virtually told the United States and its client state Israel (or is the other way around?) to shove it. In response, the Tehran Stock Exchange has dived, oil prices have gone through the $60 ceiling and foreign investors are suffering a bad case of the jitters.
The Guardian has quoted a British Foreign Office official as unflatteringly labeling Ahmadinejad as “a head case”, while another has referred to him as “a throwback to the early 80s”. Britain, along with France and Germany, has been instrumental in seeking a peaceful conclusion to the Iranian nuclear contretemps.
But does the US want a peaceful conclusion? Does Israel? Neither has come forward to cooperate with European efforts and there have been indications that one or both of those countries would like to see Iranian nuclear facilities bombed to smithereens, in the same way as Iraq’s was in 1981. The main obstacle to those ambitions has been objections from the international community. Hardly were the votes counted before Israel’s foreign minister called for a stern and unified international policy toward Iran. Iranian voters may have unwittingly handed Israel ammunition to succeed in that aim. Alternatively, Ahmadinejad’s may be posturing vis-a-vis Washington and Tel Aviv. It’s too early to tell. One thing is certain. The world and its wife are holding Iran’s self-styled “street sweeper” firmly under the spotlight.
Ethnic Arab Intifada Targets Richest Iranian Oil Resource – June 14, 2005
DEBKAfile - On the march against the Tehran regime
since April, the ethnic Arab rebels of Iran’s southwest province of Khuzestan have for the first time struck an Iranian oil target. This attack, revealed here by DEBKAfile’s
Exclusive Iranian sources, took place Wednesday, June 8. The guerrillas struck
the new petrochemical installations of the Karoun Oil and Gas Production’s
drilling and well services, east of the provincial capital of Ahwaz.
Saturday night, June 11, President Mohammed Khatami flew in to the restive region which supplies 80% of Iran’s oil output to assess the damage. Four hours after he returned to Tehran, Arab guerrillas detonated four bombs in Ahwaz – one at least by a suicide bomber - against the Iranian planning ministry near the governor’s seat, the central post office, the housing ministry and the home of the Tehran-appointed director of the local television station. At least eight people were killed, up to 35 injured Later Sunday, June 12, a busy Tehran square was the scene of another bombing attack, the first the Iranian capital had experienced in a decade. One person was killed, according to the Iranian interior ministry.
The Khuzestan Arab guerrillas, calling their movement Nahda (Renaissance), hit the two Iranians cities five days before the June 17 presidential election. They brought to a climax bombing attacks for weeks against trains, banks and government buildings - and most recently nightly shooting attacks on the Ahwaz campaign offices of presidential candidates Hashemi Rafshanjani and former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsein Rezai. Nahda appears to represent a coalition of Khuzestan’s at least eight anti-government groups.
About two weeks ago, Iranian security arrested thousands of Arab community leaders in Khuzestan, releasing them later against bonds running into hundreds of thousands of dollars against their abstinence from anti-government activities. A second round of mass arrests took place Sunday. Khuzestani Internet links were also cut. The ethnic Arabs of Khuzestan, some 3% of Iran’s 67 million inhabitants, are now threatening to boycott next Thursday’s election. This organized protest by the 2 million Shiite Arab inhabitants of Iran’s most abundant oil center would be a severe blow for the Islamic regime.
Teheran has accused US and British intelligence of engineering Arab unrest in Khuzestan from across the border in Iraq. Iraq Kurds are also believed to be assisting the rebels. The Iranians countered two weeks ago by halting all Iranian pilgrimage to Iraqi Shiite shrines, virtually shutting their borders with Iraq. Iranian Arabs, mostly Shiites, had been making regular pilgrimages to Najef and Karbala in the last two years. Officials in Tehran accused US and Iraqi intelligence of recruiting these pilgrims and sending them back home trained for anti-government guerrilla action.
On April 22, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 203 lead article explored the Khuzestan Arab Spring offensive. On May 6, DNW 204 revealed that April 23, the Khuzestan Front’s No. 2 leader Said Taher Naamahad paid a secret visit to the White House.
Washington Gives Way on Iran’s Nuclear Bomb, Therefore Backs ElBaradei’s Reappointment – June 13, 2005
Washington and Tehran (DEBKAfile) - The Bush administration has given up on the battle against Iran’s nuclear armament. This is the meaning of Washington’s decision to back the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA’s board vote Monday, June 13, to reappoint Mohamed ElBaradei as agency director for a fifth term.
Israel thus
finds itself alone in the ring with the Iranian nuclear menace. Nothing now
remains to stop Tehran attaining its goal of a nuclear bomb or bombs by the end
of
2006 or early 2007 - except for the extreme eventuality of direct Israeli
military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The question is what brought about this drastic reversal in Washington? And why are Bush administration officials willing now to endorse ElBaradei after reviling him for four years (not forgetting the row over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction) as responsible more than any other international agent for letting Iran run off with a military nuclear capability?
One answer is that US president George W. Bush’s team now believes time is running out too fast for preventive action to take effect – and not only on Iran.
Towards the end of President George W. Bush’s first term in late 2004, the mood in Washington was upbeat; a second term was seen as the chance to bring the administration’s military and diplomatic objectives to fruition. This has been replaced today by a sense in administration circles that the tough projects, like the campaign against al Qaeda, the Iraq war, the chances of thwarting the forward march of North Korea and Iran towards a nuclear bomb, the creation of an independent Palestinian state and an Israel-Palestinian peace treaty, cannot be resolved by 2008. There is a willingness to leave solutions in abeyance for the next occupant of the Oval Office.
Top officials Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley are therefore busy consolidating the administration’s achievements to date and working on stopgap remedies that will hold up until after the next presidential election. Bush will then wind up his presidency on a high note and the public will expect his successor to solidify his gains. On Iran in particular, the Bush administration has concluded that turning back the clock on its nuclear bomb project is no longer realistic. Washington is therefore bending all its diplomatic and intelligence-related resources to the goal of delaying the actual production of the bomb as long as he is president. In adopting this posture, the Bush administration is not operating in a vacuum.
On the other side of the Atlantic, most of the European leaders on whom Bush relied are groping for solid ground. With the exception of French President Jacques Chirac, the European Union in early May threw in the sponge on the diplomatic strategy which Washington had adopted as the keystone of its effort to pre-empt Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. UK prime minister Tony Blair, who is hanging on by a thread after a disappointing general election in May - and not generally expected to last full term, is one of the few British politicians still staunchly standing by UK-US strategic collaboration on the Iranian issue. Blair is making a well-publicized tour of European capitals in the run-up to this week’s EU crisis summit on the anti-constitution groundswell and his assumption of the Union’s presidency for six months on July 1. But his foreign secretary Jack Straw, according to DEBKAfile’s Washington and Tehran sources, has been raring for some weeks now to inform the Iranians that Britain and Europe at large no longer oppose their nuclear designs. He is stopped only by Blair’s objections.
In Berlin, were it not for Gerhard Schroeder’s dire straits and impending snap election, his foreign minister Joschke Fischer would have long ago been on the same flight to Tehran as his British counterpart. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi is fast losing points, while Chirac was set back critically by his country’s refusal to ratify the EU constitution. All in all, the health of the European alliance suddenly looks pretty fragile. This renders pretty futile the strenuous efforts Bush and Rice invested in the past year to mend fences with European leaders. Paradoxically, aside from the British premier, the French president is the only substantial European leader willing and able to ally himself with Washington’s effort to vanquish Iran’s nuclear ambitions, defeat Syria and bring the New Lebanon exercise to a positive conclusion.
But Washington is under no illusion that this support is enough for a uniform international front capable of eliciting UN Security Council economic sanctions stringent enough to deter Iran from implementing its nuclear plans. Even if this front was feasible, the prospect of sanctions recedes in the face of potential concerted Russian and Chinese opposition. The deepening animosities prevailing in relations between the White House and the Kremlin and Moscow’s assistance in Iran’s nuclear projects, including the sale of nuclear fuel and technology, makes a Russian veto of any Security Council penalty against Tehran more than likely.
China too is strengthening its economic ties with the Islamic Republic and sees itself as a big buyer of Iranian oil. Beijing moreover entertains objections in principle to UN sanctions. The heads of the Islamic regime in Tehran sense a major victory in the offing for their plans for a nuclear weapon. They see another eighteen to twenty-four months’ grace to complete their project undisturbed. For Israel, Washington’s quiet retreat from its campaign against an Iranian bomb spells disaster, the collapse of yet another vital strategic asset intrinsic to the Sharon government’s defense posture.
Gleanings on Global News – The Land and the Zionist State of Israel
BibleSearchers Reflections - November-December 2005
Iran: 'Zionist Days Are
Numbered' – December 13, 2005
Lekarev - According to
an Islamic Republic News Agency report, the former Iranian President, Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, said in a meeting with senior Hamas member Khaled Mashal,
that the "Zionist entity's days are numbered", in yet more rhetoric
coming out of Iran promoting the destruction of Israel . The agency said that
in a report released by the Iranian Expediency Council, headed by Rafsanjani,
that the former leader pointed to the political standstill facing the ‘Zionist’
regime and its withdrawal from some of the territories as reasons for its
approaching demise. "The high spirit, resistance and hopefulness of the
Palestinian people for restoration of their violated rights are among the
factors leading to the current situation encountered by the Zionists," he
said.
Rafsanjani said Iran would continue with its fundamental policy of supporting the ‘oppressed’ Palestinian people, adding that resistance is the only option left for the Palestinians in order to restore their rights.
Iran's President: "Move All Israelis to Europe” – December 9, 2005
Lekarev - A couple of
weeks ago, he called for Israel 'to be wiped off the map.' Now Israeli Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be moved to Europe so the West can "make amends for the Holocaust" - a Holocaust which he
denies happened!!!
Speaking at an Islamic summit in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, he said "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail," the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is then: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?"
"If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe -- like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it," he added. UN Secretary General reportedly said he was 'stunned' by Ahmadinejad's remarks. Israel has soundly condemned the statements as outrageous and racist.
Notice his focus on Jerusalem. Does it remind you of Zechariah 12 - 14?
Iranian President Calls for Transfer: Israel to Europe - December 9, 2005
Israel National News - The
latest to join the list of Holocaust deniers is Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who said Thursday that Iran does not accept that "Hitler
killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces." Speaking
in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Ahmadinejad said, "Some European countries insist
on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces, and they
insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that,
they condemn that person and throw them in jail." "Although we don't accept this claim,"
Ahmadinejad said, "if we suppose it is true, our question for the
Europeans is: Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for
their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?"
The Iranian president then suggested that the
State of Israel be dismantled and rebuilt somewhere in Europe: "If the
Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe, like
in Germany, Austria or other countries, to the Zionists, and the Zionists can
establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe, and we will support
it." Israeli government spokesman
Raanan Gissin was quoted as saying in response, "Just to remind Mr.
Ahmadinejad, we've been here long before his ancestors were here. Therefore, we
have a birthright to be here in the land of our forefathers and to live
here."
Just two months ago, Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." The Nazis murdered some 6-7 million Jews during
the Holocaust years, mainly between 1939 and 1945. Holocaust denial, which the
Anti-Defamation League calls "one of the most notable anti-Semitic
propaganda movements to develop over the past two decades," is a violation
of laws governing racial defamation and hate crimes in some western European
countries and Canada. United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan also rejected the two aspects of Ahmadinejad's
remarks. A spokesman for Annan said he was "shocked" to hear that the
Iranian leader "reportedly cast doubt on the truth of the Holocaust and
suggested that the State of Israel should be moved from the Middle East to Europe." Annan quoted a UN General Assembly resolution of last month rejecting “any
denial of the Holocaust as an historical event,” and urged all countries “to
combat such denial, and to educate their populations about the well established
historical facts of the Holocaust, in which one third of the Jewish people were
murdered, along with countless members of other minorities.”
U.S.
spokesmen tied Ahmadinejad's remarks to the ongoing international concern over
Iranian nuclear dangers. State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said the
comments were "appalling and reprehensible," adding, "They
certainly don't inspire hope among any of us in the international community
that the government in Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of
the community." White House spokesman
Scott McClellan said, "It just further underscores our concerns about the
regime in Iran. And it's all the more reason why it's so important that the
regime does not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons." The LA Times reported today, "Israel and the United States have cited Iran's hostility toward the Jewish state as a reason that it
must be prevented from developing nuclear weapons." In fact, however, U.S. spokesmen frequently refer to Iranian threats against "its neighbors." More
to the point, however, is this week's news that Iran has increased the range of
its missiles to 1,250 miles, putting parts of Europe within reach as well.
Deadline for Strike Against Iran – December 1, 2005
Lekarev - Military
Intelligence Chief Aharon Zeevi Farkash said yesterday that after March, Israel must be prepared to use means other than diplomacy to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Farkash would not detail other options, but sources on the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which Farkash was addressing, said it was clear that Israel would have to consider taking military action against Iran.
"In my years here, seeing the data I have seen, I feel it is clear that Iran has passed the point of no return," said committee chairman Yuval Steinitz (Likud). "It is accurate to say that unless Iran encounters a major interference, it will have a functioning nuclear arsenal within one or two years."
US Intelligence Expert: Regime-Change the Answer in Iran - December 13, 2005
Arutz Sheva – Israel
National News - Former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor and intelligence
expert John Loftus says that Israel is unable to thwart Iran's nuclear projects
through military action – but that there is an alternative. "Israel only has a few option and striking back is not one of 'em," Loftus told
Israel National Radio's Tovia Singer. "The F-16-IL version that Israel possesses only has a combat radius of about 2,200 kilometers and you would need about 3,000
to hit the hard targets in Iran. Iran saw what [Israel] did to the Osarik
reactor in Iraq and have spread their nuclear development stuff all over the
country and a lot of the stuff is in the northeast corner of the country –
completely out of Israel's flight range. So, unless Iraq votes to allow Israel overflight rights to attack Iran – which isn't going to happen - then Israel simply doesn't have the fuel to fly around Saudi Arabia to come up the Straits of Hormuz and
attack Iran. There is simply not a military option available to Israel."
Loftus stressed, however, that there are other options
that are likely to succeed and are already being put into effect. "The
Bush administration is hoping that, ironically with [French Prime Minister
Jacques] Chirac's help, UN pressure will cause a regime-change in Syria. That the [UN's] Mehlis investigation [examining the Syrian government's connection
to the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri] is going to come down
hard and heavy. The US military is chomping at the bit to go across the border
and take out the terror bases in Syria that Assad claims are not there. Once Syria is gone, Iran is isolated, with US troops on both their borders, in Afghanistan and in Iraq." The
intelligence expert, who has contacts in the Pentagon, says that the strategy
is not for the US to actually invade Iran, but to affect a regime-change.
"One of the intelligence agencies, which shall remain nameless, asked me
to hold a conference of dissident groups in Iran. We are holding
that conference and getting ready for regime-change."
Singer asked Loftus why US fighter jets do not
bomb Iranian nuclear targets on their own from aircraft carriers in the region.
"That's a real good question that has been
carefully studied," Loftus answered. "There are over 360 separate
targets inside Iran that have been identified. Most of them are non-vulnerable
– many underneath residential neighborhoods and Islamic shrines. These are not
places we can bomb. The Iranians were paying attention when Iraq's reactor was bombed and have learned the lessons."
"So what is to be done to bring about a
regime-change?" singer asked. "The
aircraft carriers are there to defend the picket-line of ships that will place
a blockade on the Straits of Hormuz," Loftus said. "Ninety percent of
Iran's economy is based on oil exports – so a blockade of as little as three
weeks can cause their economy to collapse, the people to rise up and the
mullahs to be overthrown. The problem with this is that Iran knows that this is the most likely scenario and they have been preparing for three years to
thwart it. They [Iran] have developed vessels whose job is to sink as many oil
tankers as possible to block the Straits of Hormuz [to other countries that use
that route]. Once two, three or four vessels are sunk, you have cut off 40% of
the world's oil supply. So the US doesn't mind – we have a six-month stockpile
of oil - but the EU is much more fragile and susceptible to oil shocks. So we
might have to dump a large share of the US stockpile on the world market until
the regime falls." Asked whether he
really thinks the government will topple so easily, Loftus responded, "It
is hard to do polling in Iran – you have to do it by telephone and you
therefore only end up talking to the urban population. But we found that 83% of
the Iranian urban population hates the mullahs and don't want to grow up under
a dictatorship. Most of the country is young and wants music videos and TV and
not the mullahs." By Ezra HaLevi
Will Israel Strike Iran
? – December 11, 2005
Lekarev - The Sunday Times in London reports that Prime Minister Sharon is preparing for a possible strike on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran. Israeli officials have denied the story. Quoting unnamed military sources, the report states that Israeli intelligence warned its government that Iran was operating small enrichment facilities concealed in civilian locations. The Times says that Sharon has ordered the military to prepare for a possible strike by the end of March (just before the election?).
Just last week, Prime Minister Sharon said, "I think it's clear that we cannot allow a situation in which Iran becomes a nuclear power... This is an international problem, and not just ours." Two days ago, U.S. Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph said that Iran is closing in on nuclear weapon production and that even U.N. sanctions may not deter it. He said the Iranian government is "very aggressive, very determined to develop nuclear weapons." Iran claims it is seeking only civilian nuclear power, but "we know this is not the case," Joseph said.
Israel Threatens Iran – December 5, 2005
Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) -
The Iranian nuclear threat has been known for years, but only now
has it suddenly become a hot issue in Israel. PM Sharon: "We cannot allow
a situation in which Iran becomes a nuclear power." Speaking at a joint press conference with his new
political partner Shimon Peres on Sunday, Prime Minister Sharon said, "We
see Iran as a great threat. This is an international problem, and not just
ours. I think it's clear that we cannot allow a situation in which Iran becomes a nuclear power.
Israel is not the one leading
the process, but it is a partner with those countries that are concerned about
this dangerous development. We are working together with Europe and the U.S. It seems to me that the most correct expression was that of President Bush who said,
'I don't think that this topic can be left on the agenda without fundamental
treatment.'" International Atomic
Energy Agency Chairman Mohammed El Baradei told the British newspaper “The
Independent” that once Iran resumes the enrichment of uranium, it will be only
“a few months” away from manufacturing an atomic bomb. El Baradei estimates
that the Iranians will resume uranium enrichment at its reactor in Bantaz over
the next few days.
IDF
Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz said on Sunday that he does not believe that
diplomacy will solve the problem of the Iranian threat. Speaking with members
of 
the foreign press in Tel
Aviv, Halutz said he does not believe American and European pressure on Iran regarding ongoing nuclear enrichment efforts will bear fruit. The IDF commander pointed out that Iran has continued its nuclear program to date, despite international pressure. MK Dr. Yuval Shteinitz (Likud), Chairman of the
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that Israel must take seriously a warning by an Iranian official that Tehran is working towards
establishing 20 nuclear reactors. The
head of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin
Boroujerdi, has said that Iran has issued permits for the construction of
another 20 nuclear power plants. Two are slated to be built in March 2006.
Shteinitz added that Iran is seeking to become a global nuclear power, working
toward building tens of nuclear weapons in the coming years.
Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looks up as he holds Islamic holy book,
the Quran, as he attends a ceremony to commemorate those who died in a plane
crash on Tuesday, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2005. At least 115
people, most of them journalists, died when a military transport plane crashed
into a 10-story apartment building near Tehran Mehrabad airport Tuesday as the
pilot attempted an emergency landing after developing engine trouble.(AP
Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
Iran reacted with threats of its own. "Israel knows that if it takes a mistaken step, it will be met with a strong response from Iran," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran. "Israel's declarations are influenced from the internal crisis of the Zionists, and its threats indicate that it is an element that endangers the region." Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, a candidate for Chairman of the Likud Party, was asked this morning on Army Radio why this issue has suddenly come to the fore. Does it have something to do with the current election, he was asked? "You'll have to ask those who brought it up," he responded. "I have been dealing with this issue for a long time, trying to get it on the United Nations agenda. Up until about two months ago, it was thought that this was only Israel's problem - but now the world is realizing that Iran is also manufacturing missiles that can reach London, Rome, Paris, and Madrid." By Hillel Fendel
Israel Threatens Iran – December 5, 2005
Lekarev -
The Iranian nuclear
threat has been known for years, but with the recent evidence of Iran's closeness to nuclear capability, it has become a hot issue in Israel. PM Sharon said the
other day, "We cannot allow a situation in which Iran becomes a nuclear power." Speaking at a joint press conference with his new political
partner Shimon Peres on Sunday, Prime Minister Sharon said, "We see Iran as a great threat. This is an international problem, and not just ours. I think it's
clear that we cannot allow a situation in which Iran becomes a nuclear power. Israel is not the one leading the pr ocess, but it is a
partner with those countries that are concerned about this dangerous
development. We are working together with Europe and the U.S. It seems to me that the most correct expression was that of President Bush who said, 'I don't
think that this topic can be left on the agenda without fundamental
treatment.'"
International Atomic Energy Agency Chairman Mohammed El Baradei told the British newspaper “The Independent” that once Iran resumes the enrichment of uranium, it will be only “a few months” away from manufacturing an atomic bomb. El Baradei estimates that the Iranians will resume uranium enrichment at its reactor in Bantaz over the next few days. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz said on Sunday that he does not believe that diplomacy will solve the problem of the Iranian threat. Speaking with members of the foreign press in Tel Aviv, Halutz said he does not believe American and European pressure on Iran regarding ongoing nuclear enrichment efforts will bear fruit. The IDF commander pointed out that Iran has continued its nuclear program to date, despite international pressure. MK Dr. Yuval Shteinitz (Likud), Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that Israel must take seriously a warning by an Iranian official that Tehran is working towards establishing 20 nuclear reactors.
Iran Vows Response – December 5, 2005
Lekarev -
An Iranian foreign
ministry spokesman, Hamid Riza Asaffi, speaking with journalists in Teheran,
said that recent Israeli statements on Iran's nuclear project showed that the
Israeli government is frustrated from a failure to bring pressure from the
international community to on Iran.
"The Zionist authorities are well aware that if they make a foolish mistake against Iran, Iran's harsh response will be destructive and determined," said the spokesman. "Their approach comes from their anger over the fact that they can't realize their plans," he added.
Earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu told the Voice of Israel national radio network that "Israel must take every necessary step to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran must be prevented from developing this threat to the State of Israel. If, by the elections, the current government works to achieve this, I will give it my full support – and if it does not, I intend on establishing the next government, and then we'll act."
Israel To Join International Effort Against Iranian Nuclear Threat – December 2, 2005
Arutz
Sheva (Israel National News) - Israeli strategists believe that Iran’s nuclear potential is a real threat and have not ruled out the possibility of taking military
action. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed Israel’s intention to take part in a U.S.-led international effort to block further development of Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities.
"Israel and other countries cannot accept a situation where Iran has nuclear arms. The issue is clear
to us, and we are making all the necessary preparations to handle a situation
of this kind," the Prime Minister stated Thursday. "The danger does
not only affect Israel, but also Middle Eastern countries and many other
countries around the world. Therefore the recent efforts led by the US must include free countries that understand this grave danger," Sharon said.
While Sharon maintained that a U.S.-led coalition has the military capabilities to combat Iran, he added, "Before anyone decides on a military step, every effort would be made to
pressure Iran to halt this activity. It seems to me such efforts can be
fruitful." Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz also advocated the pursuit of
diplomacy with Iran in a Thursday interview with Israel Radio. IDF Intelligence
Chief Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash suggested Wednesday that Israel might be forced to
consider using military tactics to bring an end to the Iranian nuclear program.
"If by the end of March, 2006 the international community will have failed
to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program, diplomatic efforts will be pointless. Iran has the upper hand in negotiations with the international community,” explained
Farkash.
Following
Farkash's assessments, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman
Yuval Shteinitz asserted, "The comments by the head of Military 
Intelligence
convey a harsh, worrying and dark picture. Iran is going to become a nuclear
power in the region and the world is helpless." According to Shteinitz, Iran’s nuclear capabilities
are rapidly advancing. He cited Iran’s production of 45 tons of UF-6 gas used
in the centrifuge process for producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
"In my years here, seeing the data I have seen, I feel it is clear that Iran has passed the point of no return. It is accurate to say that unless Iran encounters a major interference, it will have a functioning nuclear arsenal within one or two
years," Shteinitz said.
Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) at Isfahan, Iran
According to
reports from IRNA, Iran's state news agency, Ahmadinejad maintains Iran’s right to continue to advance its nuclear program and believes that ultimately
pressure from the West will not impede Iranian nuclear development. "We
sent the message to Westerners that we would stand firm to the end, and that we
would never abandon our right, and when they realized [Iran] is firm in its
stands, they backed off," Ahmadinejad said. Intelligence Chief Farkash believes that the recent
escalation along Israel’s northern front was instigated by Iran in an effort to shift international focus away from its nuclear development. "The latest
flare-up in the north was a strategic plan by Hizbullah. They hoped we would
retaliate by firing rockets and hitting civilians. We have seen evidence of
them preparing for this type of attack along the border," Farkash said.
Sharon called for international
pressure to be applied to put an end to ongoing Syrian and Iranian support of
the Hizbullah. “In the wake of recent activity in the north I sent letters to
the leaders of central European nations and the U.S. It is imperative that
Hizbullah not deploy troops along the border. I demanded that pressure be
applied to disarm the Hizbaullah and bring an end to Syrian and Iranian
assistance to the Hizbullah,” Sharon stated. By Debbie Berman
IRAN: WE CAN SPY ON
ISRAEL
– November 17, 2005
Lekarev - They claimed the satellite would be purely scientific, but just one month after its launch - and only weeks after the Iranian president said Israel should be wiped off the map - the head of Iran’s space program now says the Iranian Sina-1 satellite is capable of spying on the Jewish state. The launch of the Russian-made Sina-1 satellite into orbit aboard a Russian rocket last month marked the beginning of Iran’s space program, and officials say a second satellite - this one Iranian-built - will be launched in about two months, heightening Israeli concerns.
The Sina-1’s stated purpose is to take pictures of Iran and monitor natural disasters in the earthquake- prone nation. Sina-1, with a three-year lifetime, has a resolution precision is about 50 meters (yards). But as it orbits the Earth some 14 times a day from an altitude around 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), with controllers able to point its cameras as they wish, Sina-1 gives Iran a limited space reconnaissance capability over the entire Middle East, including Israel.
Meanwhile, a report out of Vienna declares that Iran has begun processing a new batch of uranium despite Western pressure on it to halt sensitive atomic work, possibly harming attempts to defuse a standoff over its nuclear aims. Iran had notified the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late October that it intended to process a new batch of uranium at its Isfahan uranium conversion plant but did not start the work last week as originally planned. "Conversion has resumed," the diplomat, who is close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Reuters.
Iran´s New Satellite Capable of Spying on Israel – November 18, 2005
Arutz
Sheva (Israel National News) - Iran, just weeks after its president called for Israel's destruction, admits that its new Sina-1 satellite is capable of spying on Israel. The Islamic
country insisted the satellite was for scientific purposes, prior to its launch
aboard a Russian rocket last month. Officials said its purpose was to take
pictures of Iran and monitor regions prone to earthquakes. The head of the
country's space program, however, told the Associated Press that the satellite
is able to easily spy on the Jewish State from outer space. ''Sina-1 is a
research satellite,'' said Deputy Telecom Minister and head of Iran's space program Ahmad Talebzadeh. Asked directly if it could be used to spy on the
Jewish state, Talebzadeh said, ''Technically speaking, yes. It can monitor Israel - but we don't need to do it. You can buy satellite photos of Israeli streets from
the market.''
Israeli officials
acknowledge that Iran's satellite is a danger to the Jewish state. "We
know that they spy on us," Chairman of the Knesset Defense Committee
Ephraim Sneh (Labor) told AP. "What they are trying to do is look for
places where a mega-terror attack can take place." With Iran able to monitor everything from Israeli military deployment to locations of key strategic
targets, it is feared that such information could be provided, in real time, to
the handful of terror organizations under its sponsorship. Iran plans to launch an additional satellite, the Misbah, in two month's time. Sneh said the
launching of the satellite is part of Iran’s ambition to become a global
military power.
Meanwhile, Iran still claims that its nuclear program is peaceful, aimed at producing electricity. The
BBC reported Wednesday, though, that Iran has already enriched uranium to ten
times the concentration needed to produce electricity. Israel and the U.S. believe that Iran aims to produce nuclear weapons. It is unclear what steps will be taken to
prevent the Islamic country from becoming a nuclear power. By Ezra HaLevi
Iran Buying Time – November 25, 2005
Lekarev -
Iran's negotiations with the international community are an attempt to buy time as the Islamic
nation pushes ahead with a nuclear weapons program, a respected Israeli think
tank said in its annual report on the military balance in the Middle East. The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said Iran is "walking a thin
line" between continuing negotiations with international inspectors while
advancing its military program.
"The dynamic that has characterized negotiations thus far leaves little room for hope that Iran will terminate its program," the report said. "Should the program advance to the point that Iran achieves nuclear capability, this would represent the most significant long-term potential threat facing Israel and the strategic balance in the area."
Europeans
Rally Against Iran – November 3, 2005
Lekarev - As Iran continues to express displeasure over a planned pro-Israel rally scheduled to be held in Rome today, Italian politicians from the left and right have said they will attend the
event to protest remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he
called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." A wave of demonstrations
in support of Israel swept across Europe Wednesday evening, with protestors
gathering in front of Iranian embassies in a number of capitals.
Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said Wednesday the international community had to maintain a "firm line" against Tehran, and said he had instructed Toscano to tell the Iranians why "there has been so much indignation and concern" about Ahmadinejad's remarks in Italy. Fini has said he would attend Thursday's pro-Israel rally.
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Iranian military instructors have slipped into Lebanon with new missile to teach Hizballah how better to destroy Israeli tanks – November 28, 2005
Debkafiles - The clandestine arrival of scores of
Iranian Revolutionary Guards specialist instructors via Damascus is Tehran’s response to the shortcomings displayed by the Hizballah when it bombarded northern
Israel on Nov. 21 - DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal. Our
exclusive sources disclose they stole into the Hizballah’s Lebanese Beqaa Valley bases complete with two new weapons systems. 
One is the new Iranian Motemared (Rebel) anti-tank
missile, exposed for the first time in the Middle East. The IDF is not familiar
with this weapon, beyond that it is the Iranian version of the Russian K and
capable of piercing protective anti-explosive belts 1100-1200 mm thick. It is
an all-weather weapon, day-or-night and wire-guided. The missile does not work
well where there are tall trees, high electricity wires or water pipes, but is
at peak effectiveness in open country of hills and valleys such as South Lebanon.
The surprise the Iranians brought with them was a mockup of an Israel Merkava (Chariot) tank. No one knows where it was manufactured or from what materials. Intelligence watchers report it is an exact replica of the real thing. The Iranian instructors have set up base at three farms in the Yanta Vadir al Ashair region of the Beqaa valley, where they are instructing Hizballah operatives. They have obviously studied the Hizballah video shots from the bombardment, which depicted an unmanned Israeli tank taking heavy pounding from Sagger missiles without sustaining damage or bursting into flames. The Iranians decided that the Motemared was the answer for destroying an Israeli Chariot. They also seem to have drawn lessons from Iraq where Sunni guerrillas have found ways to disable heavy US M1 Abrams tanks. The day after its bombardment, Shiite terrorists withdrew troops from the border region. Israeli commanders thought at first it was a tactical retreat for regrouping. Later it turned out the operatives had gone to the Iranian training camps, to study the Chariot’s vulnerabilities and how to use the new missile against them. The way Iranian RG officers were able to cross into Lebanon from Syria, set up training bases and smuggle in weapons systems shows how little has changed in Lebanon since the Syrian army was ousted. Notwithstanding the UN probe into the Hariri murder, UN Security Council resolutions expelling foreign armies from the country and US-French efforts to help Lebanon recover its sovereignty, Syria and Iran can still make free of Lebanese territory. This episode also shows how closely Israel’s armed forces are watched by Iran and the speed at which its strategists are capable of drawing operational lessons.
UN Issues First Ever Censure of Hezbollah – November 24, 2005
Lekarev - The United
Nations Security Council issued an unprecedented condemnation of Hezbollah on
Wednesday night after an attack Monday that wounded 11 Israelis and caused
damage to property. Following pressure from Israel and the United States, the Council - which has never before reprimanded the Iranian- backed group -
expressed "deep concern" over Hezbollah's "acts of hatred."
It also urged the Lebanese government to impose order in southern Lebanon and prevent Hezbollah from operating there.
According to the UPI news agency, the statement, proposed by the U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said the clashes "were initiated by Hezbollah from the Lebanese side, and which quickly spread along the entire Blue Line." It also expressed regret at the casualties on both sides
The End of Days – War with Iran and the Coming of the Messiah
BibleSearchers Reflections – January 2006
The War with Iran (Persia) and the Coming of the Messiah
The nations of the world stand 
on the brink
of a nuclear holocaust with the rise of the belligerence of the Mahdi
(Islamic Messiah) inspired President of the Nation of Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Nation of Iran up to the date of 1935 was called
the Nation of Persia until it requested all countries that had
diplomatic relations with Persia to call it Iran, which is the name for Persia in the language of Parsi.
The Nuclear Reactor in Bushehr, Iran
This fifty year old leader of the Persian Shi’ite regimen believes that the apocalypse will not only happen in his lifetime but that the ordinary people in the land cannot only inspire but also hasten the arrival of the 12th Imam, known to the Islamic people as the Mahdi. Iran’s dominant sect called the “Twelver” claims that the Mahdi will be the “righteous” descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, Muhammad Ibn Hasan. In the 9th century at the age of 5, he went into “occusion.” He is expected to return in an era of war, pestilence, catastrophes and cosmic and terrestrial chaos. During this time there will be a confrontation of cataclysmic proportions between the spiritual forces of good and evil. The Mahdi will arrive during this mighty battle and herald a world era of universal peace.
According to President Ahmadinejad:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - “The ultimate promise of all Divine religions, will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being (the 12th Imam), who is heir to all prophets. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace. Oh mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one."
As a member of the messianic inspired Hojjatieh Society, he passionately expects that after 11 centuries, the 12th Imam will return as the Messiah of Islam hastened by “the creation of chaos on Earth.” Is it not a surprise that that Ahmadinejad has cleaned the upper echelons of Iran’s experienced diplomatic corps who do not share his messianic fervor that his mission is to introduce this globe to an apocalyptic conflagration?
The members of the American Intelligence Services today are worried and concerned that the nuclear button will soon be in the hands of one who is inspired to annihilate the Jewish people from every inch of land in the Middle East. Many of the people in the Nation of Israel are in a state of terror and the rabbis are counseling them, “Do not fear!”
Of interest that all fail safe plans to conquer and subdue the world come with fatal flaws. It should not pass unnoticed that the Land of Persia is one of the most earthquake prone places on this earth. The Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in which there is so much international controversy is sitting over an earthquake zone that has three times had catastrophic upheavals in recent history greater than 7.0: 1877, then 34 years later to 1911 then 51 years later to 1962. It is now 44 years since the last earthquake.
An interesting article in the New York Post on December 30, 2003 by reporter Amir Taheri titled, “Iran’s Political Quake” highlights Bushehr’s vulnerabilities.
Amir Taheri – “The (Bushehr) plant is on the same geological fault line that destroyed Bam. Each year, thousands of tremors of various degrees of intensity are recorded on that fault line. Bushehr itself has thrice been destroyed by earthquake in recent times (1877, 1911 and 1962). It is not hard to imagine what an earthquake that destroys a nuclear power plant could do to the entire Persian Gulf area.
The Germans who designed the Bushehr plant and the Russians who are building it assure everyone that it could withstand tremors of up to 7.2 on the Richter scale. That is almost one degree higher than the tremor that destroyed Bam. Also, the available historical data show that the region has not known tremors of more than 7 on the Richter scale. But there is no guarantee that a higher-intensity tremor will not strike in the future.
The Persian Gulf, through which passes almost half of the world's imported crude oil, is a shallow body of water that consists entirely of the continental shelf. (On average it does not go deeper than 90 meters). The destruction of a nuclear plant by earthquake in so shallow and narrow a waterway could create a disaster many times larger than that of Chernobyl. It would affect eight coastal countries directly, while dealing a severe blow to world trade by halting oil exports for months if not years.
Understand that the tremor that destroyed the ancient earthen city of Bam in 2003 was a 7.1 magnitude quake that killed 45,000 Iranians. The building code has only narrow perimeters of stability. In an era in which several nations on this earth have black-op weaponry such as HAARP and Scalar that can create earthquakes and tectonic plate fracturing, the future of Bushehr looks slim even without an aerial nuclear strike. On December 17, 1990, 70 kilometers east of Bushehr a 6.5 quake rattled the region. This quake followed another regional quake at Darab on November 6, 2005 also in the 6.5 magnitude scale
What is interesting is that the sages of Judaism have written of this day hundreds of years ago. Let us look at a few of these writings at posted on the website of Yiddishkeit under the article, “War with Iran? A Song of the Redemption!”
Yoma 10a in the Talmud - Rabbi
Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Yehuda in the name of Rabbi Ilai:
In the time to come, Rome will fall at the hands of
Persia.
Yalkut Shimoni (midrash, compiled circa 500 CE) – “Rabbi Yitzchak said:
The year that Melech HaMoshiach (King Messiah) will be revealed,
all the kings (leaders) of the nations will be struggling against each other.
The leader of Persia (Iran) will contest with an
Arab leader and the Arab leader will go to Aram (the Western Superpowers) to
get council from them.
The leader of Persia will respond and destroy the entire world. All the
nations of the world will be trembling and shaking and falling on their faces.
They will be seized by pains like labor pains. The Jewish people will
be trembling and quaking and saying: "Where can we go? Where can we go?"
And [Moshiach] will say to them: my children, do not fear! Everything I
did I did only for you! Why are you frightened? Don't be afraid--the days of
your redemption have arrived!
Rabbi Yonasan Eibshetz, ztvk"l, (1690-1764) in his Sefer (Book)
Yaaros Dvash – “At certain moment the time will come when Moshiach
should have already arrived but the redemption has not yet come. The
Moshiach will ask how it could be that the time for redemption has arrived
and he still undergoes sufferings? The response that he will receive is
that he must wait for nine months. Why? In
order to wait for the fall of Persia (Iran) at the hands of Edom (the Christian West), and then the final redemption will come.
On December 4, 2005, Rabbi Lazer Brody on Lazer Beams wrote on the days of and its affect on the Iranian and Israeli conflict. In a private interview with Rabbi CAE, a blueblood descendant of three of the greatest Chassidic dynasties in Judaism, he explained that the Disengagement from Gaza when the Jewish were expelled from their homes in Gush Katif, the Jewish Gaza, August, 2005. This was the beginning of the Geula or the days of redemption when the Messiah will be revealed. Could this tragic event actually be the beginning of the full redemption of all people, Jews and gentiles alike?
When we read the Zohar, one of the most revered books of mystical Judaism, it teaches that The Almighty, when He looked in His holy Torah, the world was created. The Torah in reality is the blueprint of The Creator God. According to Rebbe Nachman of Breslev, the Torah is all one needs to understand what’s happening in the world.
What does the Torah have to say about all this? Let’s open our Gemorra to Tractate Avoda Zara, page 2b, and examine the Tosephos commentary, called the “mashcha malchusaihu.”
Mashcha malchusaihu – Persia shall fall into the hands of Rome directly before the coming of Moshiach, for Rome shall rule the whole world for 9 months.”
Prefaced with the strong held belief that their covenant with the God of Israel has never been taken away by away, this places the Jewish people as the spiritual guardians not only of the Torah but as the guardians of the entire world. Yet, their future at the time of the end depends on an important fact: will the Jewish people return to Hashem, the God of Israel, and to His Torah, or not? According to the Jewish perspective and how they perceived their role as the guardians of the “Oracles of the God of Israel” in the Holy Scripture, we discover two scenarios concerning the time of the end and the days of redemption called the Geula. With the pace of events rapidly escalating, these two scenarios are painted in stark reality for the citizens of the world to watch. The timing? In their minds, it will be in the only a few more months.
The “Achishena” or good scenario: If the Jewish people return to the God of their forefathers, then Iran (Persia) will collapse from within without even a shot being fired in a very similar pattern that the USSR and the “iron curtain” collapsed in the early 90’s. According to the Chassidic opinion), the War of Gog from the Land of Magog will be declared over, the Messiah of Israel will reveal Himself to the whole world and the process of redemption for the whole world will begin its final stages.
The “B’ito” is called the rough scenario: According to Rabbi Lazer Brody:
Rabbi Brody - “Gog Bush quick-draws a pair of atomic six-guns at nuclear high-noon between Iran and the USA (with or without Israel), where Iran will be wiped off the globe. The Israel of Sharon and Peres becomes a puppet state of the USA for 9 months, until Moshiach sends them all packing, and Israel renews its glory of old as Hashem's palace on earth, speedily and in our time, amen.”
Yet the powers behind the invasion of GogUMogog or the King of the North are the descendants of the apostate Roman Christian Church fronted by the Society of Jesus, the all powerful Jesuit Order. It is the Jesuits and the Knights of Malta who has infiltrated every intelligence organization in the western world. They command the largest espionage and intelligence organization in the world as every parish priest is their listening ear to the geo-political rumblings on every continent on this globe.
When Pope John Paul II came to Israel with an olive branch, seeking to heal the wounds over the graves of millions of forgotten Jews, what did he want? As documented in the three part series on BibleSearchers on January-February, 2005: “The Vatican Seeks to Reclaim its Own.,” the Vatican first wants the Church with the Upper Room that happens to be built over the recognized Tomb of David. Soon they will want the Temple Mount and East Jerusalem. Here is where the fight for the control of Jerusalem begins.
While most Christian scholars see Rome in its literal reality, the Jewish scholars see Rome in its symbolism. When we analyze this phrase, we must understand that all the Jewish scholars of Torah, whether Talmudic or Kabbalah, agree: “Rome” or “Edom” is symbolized today by the United States of America. This same typology is also symbolizes America or the “Land of Mogog” as being the “Great Horn” of the Hellenistic Ram of Daniel eight and Gog the leader of the Land of Magog as being the president of the United States. This is also consistent with the shadow picture of the modern globalists of Western Europe headed by the great power of the United States called by the world vision of Pope John Paul II as the “Golden Internationale.”
At the same time, the winner of the prize of global domination according to John Paul II will be the Vatican or “Rome”, whom he called the “Black Internationale.” Some of you might ask, now can this be? The current crisis with the new claimants of nuclear power, the mullahs of Iran, is only contrasted in the power behind their throne, the Red Communists, Leninists governments of Russia and China. Pope John Paul II saw them as the “Red Internationale.” As the descendants of ancient Persia, the Red Communists along with the Nation of Iran will come under the possession of the Black Internationale, just as the Red Seal of Revelation will be followed by the Black Seal of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Will we see this as such? Maybe not! It might be safer to say that the Golden Internationale of the western Globalists, Internationalists and Transnationalists will in a psychological and geo-political coup that possession of the Nation of Iran. Understand that the Black Internationale at that time will be the power behind the throne of the waning months of the “He-Goat with a Notable Horn” who took down the “Great Ram with Two Great Horns” in Daniel eight. What then comes is the “Great Horn of the He-Goat” gets even mightier with great power until it is broken.
So we might protest, these great prophesies of Daniel were fulfilled during the imperial era of the Persians and the rising Grecian era of Alexander the Great. That is true, but they were but a shadow picture of the time of the end, so that those with “eyes that can see” and “ears that can hear” will understand the significance of these great streams of prophecy. As the Lord of hosts sent Gabriel, the archangel for the gentile nations to Daniel:
Daniel 8:15-17 – “Then it happened, when I, Daniel, had seen the vision and was seeking the meaning, that suddenly there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man’s voice between the banks of the U’lai, who called, and said, ‘Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.’ So he came near where I stood, and when he came I was afraid and fell on my face; but he said to me, ‘Understand, son of man, that the vision refers to the time of the end.’”
Here we are at the time of the end and these great prophetic streams are swirling around us, blending and morphing into an apocalyptic tapestry before our eyes. When these prophetic images passed through the eyes of Pope John Paul II, his eyes were conditioned with the prophetic lens of the prophecies of Malachy that where written about in a BibleSearchers article titled, “Pope John Paul II and the Rise of the Black Internationale.” Here it spoke of the Papal prophecies of Malachy:
The Prophecy of Malachy - In spite of the origin of the prophecies, whether divine or satanic, these prophecies and their accuracy have withstood scrutiny over the passage of time. If there is a final note, he (Malachy) prophesied when he was to die and fulfilled his own prophecy. So we start with the successor of Innocent II, Pope Celestine II in 1143 and in a list of 112 (possibly 111 popes), their characteristics are noted to the last pope of a time of tribulation and destruction for the Vatican at the time of the end. Here were Malachy’s final words, “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city (Rome, the seat of the Vatican) will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.
The countdown to the possession of this prize is known not only to the Holy See but also to the mullahs of Iran. Here is the battle for the prize; the city of Jerusalem. What we are seeing unfolding before our eyes today is the messianic revival in Iran of the Mahdi, the prophesied future messiah of Islam whom some reports have announced as already arrived. This messianic drive of the Mahdi may take its revenge upon the evil power of the Vatican as the mother Church of apostate Christianity and the civilization that Islam abhors so much today, the culture of the United States as the “Great Satan” and the Western social cultures of Europe. It was the British and the French who dominated their lands with the British and the French Mandates under the League of Nations. They overthrew their Caliphates and divided up their lands. After World War I, at the Paris Peace Conference, the name “Palestine” was first applied to a defined piece of property that comprises the nations of Israel and Jordan today. It was to this Palestine that the British were entrusted by the League of Nations with the British Mandate (1920-1942) to implement the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917. It this declaration it pledged:
The Balfour Declaration - "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
If the Islamic rage does make a pyrrhic fire of the Vatican and the city of Rome, out of the ashes may arise the “Black Internationale” and the final seat of ancient Rome in the city of Jerusalem. It will be set up by the “Society of Jesus” better known today as the Jesuits Order. There is a reason today that the Vatican wants possession of Jerusalem. With the beginning of the year 2006, the voice of the Papacy erupted loud and clear. The Vatican wants control of East Jerusalem and the holy sites in Jerusalem.
In their own papal prophecies, the Vatican hierarchy understands fully that the days of the Vatican in Rome are numbered. Yet in their hearts, they believe that they will be victorious in their possession of the whole world, which in part will be true. The imperative to take possession of especially East Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and the Holy Sites of Roman Christianity is becoming stridently urgent. In their papal prophesies they will need a “New Rome” in the “New Jerusalem.” In their minds prophetic utterances of the Book of Revelation will be complete as their amillennial mindset will tell them that the millennium is already here and about over. According to St. Augustine, the Roman doctor of law in his book, “The City of God,” we read an analysis by the Barnes and Noble Spark notes or study guide on “Augustine and The City of God” that states:
St.
Augustine and the City of God – “Augustine presents the four essential
elements of his philosophy in The City of God:
the church, the state, the City of Heaven, and the City of the World.
The church is divinely established and leads humankind to eternal goodness,
which is God. The state adheres to the virtues of politics and of the
mind, formulating a political community. Both of these societies are
visible and seek to do good. Mirroring these are two invisible
societies: the City of Heaven, for those predestined for salvation,
and the City of the World, for those given eternal damnation.
This grand design allows Augustine to elaborate his theory of justice,
which he says issues from the proper and just sharing of those things
necessary for life, just as God freely distributes air, water, and light.
Humankind must therefore pursue the City of Heaven to maintain a proper
sense of order, which in turn leads to true peace.”
This gives a visible difference between the Torah vision of the future apocalypse and the millennial state and the vision of apostate Roman Christianity. On one hand the prophets of Israel and the Nazarene prophet in Revelation build upon the foundational Torah picture of a Creator and Adam (mankind) His creation, who was created in God’s image. We later read of the same typology called the Husband and the Bride, or Adam and Eve. The prophets also spoke of a Heavenly Eden (Ganz Eden) and Eden of the Promised Land, both throughout the prophets, the Lord of hosts claimed these two Lands as His own possession. Finally there was the Heavenly Jerusalem and the Terrestrial Jerusalem. Here we see a different philosophical base; the Person, the Land and the City. In the prophetic image of the millennium, there will be a “restored man”, a “restored Eden” and a “restored city of Jerusalem.” Throughout the entire Bible, the concept of Eden Lost, Eden Redeemed and Eden restored is a message that was never lost.