blog.Tribulationperiod.com

Only God knows what to do with this Mess!

June 10, 2007

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For a large part of my life I have been plotting and analyzing one form or another of intercept. When I was called into the ministry in my late 30’s, and retired at the National Security Agency in 1971, I thought my days as a synoptic analyst were over.

One of the main tasks the analyst faces is to correctly eliminate the phony baloney from the data. I was thrilled to have a single document, the Bible, to analyze, because it does not contain any phony baloney. So my seminary years and the first few years at Dardanelle were among the happiest in my life. But then along came

the Internet, and before long the intelligence traffic on it was the biggest bunch of garbage I had ever seen.

Eventually, there was such a volume of massive information from multiple sources that I began to take a serious look at it, and eventually was able to assign some sort of a reality check on part of it. After some seven years of riding the bucking mule called the Internet, I have a good feel of what is reliable, and what is in the absolute lie category, with most of it being somewhere from pitiful to halfway descent.

My major purpose in constructing the lengthy paragraph you have just read is to say this – Since the loss of Ariel Sharon, the situation in Israel, and around her borders, is the most confusing mess of political and military mumbo-jumbo-feely-gumbo I have ever encountered, and to attempt to analyze it with any great degree of confidence is enough to drive an analyst into an early grave. The Hizbullah, Hamas, Syria, and Iran do not seen to have any trouble of knowing what to do, or how to go about doing it.

If I did not have the Scriptures to keep my projections within limits, I would long ago

have given up.

Two articles follow, one from DEBKAfile, and the second from the New York Sun. Since the era of Ariel Sharon’s administration it has become so mixed-up in the Knesset that I have reached the same conclusion as Youssef Ibrahim in the second article, namely, “Doing Nothing is the Best Policy.” The “good guys in the white hats” seem to be afraid of doing anything out of fear of making more boo-boo’s like those which occurred in last years war with Hizbullah.

I am afraid that will be our policy toward helping Israel to any great extent in a major Middle East war – “Doing Nothing is the best Policy!”

Begin Article 1 from DEBKAfile

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Syria holds back full-scale war with Israel as last resort while its proxies win low-intensity conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza

June 6, 2007, 3:00 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli ministers holding a cabinet session Wednesday, June 6, are divided over the mixed war and peace signals coming from Damascus. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that Syrian ruler Bashar Assad’s war intentions and methods are easy enough to read in Lebanon and Gaza, where Damascus launched proxy offensives on the same day, May 15.

The pro-Western Fouad Siniora in Beirut has abruptly called off his army’s efforts to crush Damascus-backed uprisings in the Palestinian refugee camps of Nahar al-Bared in the north and Ain Hilwa in the south.

Lebanese troops failed to break through despite military assistance from the US and friendly Arabs governments.

Therefore, Fatah al-Islam and the pro-Syrian Palestinian Fronts headed by Ahmad Jibril and Naif Hawatme have come out on top.

Assad has pulled off a signal victory in Lebanon.

In Gaza, Israel’s half-hearted aerial strikes did nothing to snuff out the missile offensive Hamas and its Syrian and Iranian patrons launched three weeks ago,

the same day as the Palestinian uprising in Lebanon. The missiles fly at a slower pace but the initiative for resuming them to the 20-per-day level rests with Hamas. Its ceasefire proposal reads like a dictated Israeli capitulation plan. Here, too, the Syrian proxy tactic is working well.

Bashar Assad is likely to maintain this local war pressure while deploying his surrogates in additional targeted zones.

The UN force in southern Lebanon is in his sights. A bomb planted at a beach house resort popular with international peacekeepers near Tyre was safely defused Wednesday, June 6. The next one may strike home.

During the summer months, the Golan can expect to be targeted by “Golan Liberation Fronts” fashioned in Damascus out of Syrian and Palestinian “resistance fighters” (terrorists). They will find succor and sanctuary in the Druze villages of the territory for harassing Israeli civilian locations, military positions and roads.

This will go on until Israel is goaded into striking back against targets inside Syria. At that point, Damascus will fire up Hizballah for action against Israel from the Lebanese border, just as it activates the Palestinians in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

The Syrian army will meanwhile stand ready for the final confrontation with Israel.

The Assad regime is getting away with this low-intensity combat tactic for waging war through proxies on Israel, the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority headed by the Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, with little risk to itself.

No one is raising a finger to scotch this war of attrition, even though it is building up step by step to the next full-scale Middle East conflict.

Begin Article 2 from the New York Sun

Forty Years Later, Doing Nothing Is the Best Policy

Youssef Ibrahim

In this week’s torrent of 40th anniversary recollections about the Six-Day War, one TV image cut straight to the chase: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia staring into a camera to say, “The essential point remains the total elimination of Israel.” The king’s statement of principles was captured in “Six Days in June,” an impressive two-hour documentary that aired Monday on PBS.

For all the noise about peace in the 40 years since, the Saudi monarch’s silver bullet solution is still the basic Arab mindset.

As do-gooders and militants reflect on what Israel should have done, what Arabs failed to do, what the UN ought to do, I vote for doing nothing. Regardless of the peace treaties with Israel forged by President Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, the overwhelming majority of Arabs need more time to dismantle their war posture. At this point, Israel’s primary antagonists in this conflict, the Palestinian Arabs, are no longer an entity that can be engaged. Having dissolved into a myriad of warring gangs, there is no one to settle with.

And still more time is necessary to contemplate whether what has been achieved can be retained.

Egypt’s 1979 peace accord will not survive a day if the Muslim Brotherhood succeeds in its decades-old effort to topple President Mubarak’s dynastic military reign. The Brotherhood is significantly closer to that goal now. In Jordan, since the peace treaty of 1994, the anti-Semitic discourse has grown thick, leaving little room to imagine that peace with Israel could survive a change in leadership.
It is pointless even to think about structuring new accords with Arab societies that are relentlessly marching toward various stages of radicalism, Islamic or otherwise. It would not help, and it would not hold. As for Israel, going forward with more unilateral evacuations, as in Lebanon and Gaza, has only liberated land for terrorist operations. (New York Sun)

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Will the Real Bashar al-Assad please stand Up!

June 10, 2007

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As far as I am concerned, the real Bashar al-Assad stood up some time ago, and even if he were to agree to break his current relationships with Iran, I assure you he would never keep his word, even if he were able to do so.

President Bashar Assad stood up and made his choice more that three years ago, and it was a very bad choice as we reported March 5, 2004 in Special Prophecy Update Number 161C, which we are repeating ahead of the recent article from CHINA DAILY.

SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 161C

March 5, 2004

Syria Makes a Very Bad Choice

I have always believed and taught that the most likely part of the old Roman Empire, which would foster the rise of the Antichrist, would be Syria. Syria has been hanging suspended between two choices: (1) Turn toward the United States in order to avoid sanctions, and to gain support from the western world in a war on terror, or, (2) Turn toward Iran to make an alliance and continue to give support to all the terrorist groups. On February 28 Syria apparently made its choice. The Iranian Defense Minister, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, came to Damascus and signed a new military pact with the Syrian Defense Minister, General Mustufa Tias. I believe this is a clear sign that President Assad has made his choice to put his trust in an Iran-Syria Axis to protect his administration from a coup by terrorist groups in his own country. President Assad has been active recently in communications with Washington to see what they would give him in the w ay

of security if he should choose to give up sponsoring the many terrorist group offices in Syria, and Hizbollah in Lebanon. Really, he did not have much of a choice. Had he turned pro-west and resisted the terrorist groups, his regime would have been overthrown in a matter of weeks. Syria’s new military pact with Iran likely contains an Iranian promise to invest in additional long range Scud-C missiles, now in mass production at Syria’s underground missile facility near Hamah, which is somewhat ironic in that the northern extent of Israel’s territory, after it defeats Syria at the end of the tribulation period, will extend to Hamah. The biblical name for Hamah is Hamath.

Ezekiel 47:17 – And the border from the sea shall be Hazar-enan, the border of Damascus, and the north northward, and the border of Hamath. And this is the north side.

Genesis 15:18 – In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

Ezekiel 47:19 – And the south side southward,

from Tamar even to the waters of strife in Kadesh, the river to the great sea. And this is the south side southward.

If you want to envision the size of the Abrahamic Land Grant

promised to the descendants of Abraham through Jacob (Israel), then go southwest from the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip along the coastline of the Mediterranean 35 miles and place a point on the shoreline. Then draw a line directly east from that point until you hit the Euphrates River of Iraq. That is the southern border of the land God promised to the seed of Abraham through his grandson, the man whom God renamed Israel, the man Jacob, the son of Isaac, the promised seed God gave through Sarah. The northern border of the land grant may be visualized by finding Hamah or Hama in north central Syria, and then drawing an east-west line through it, which ends on the Mediterranean to the west, and on the Euphrates River to the east.

This is the northern border of Abraham’s God given Land Grant. As you can see, this is a very large tract of land, 95 percent of which is occupied by descendants of Abraham through Ishmael’s twelve sons, the six sons of Abraham by Keturah, and Moab and Ammon, the two sons of Abraham’s nephew Lot by his own daughters. They are identified generally as Arabs, and some 95 percent of them are of the Islamic faith. Since they believe that the promises of God come through Abraham’s son Ishmael through Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s handmaiden, you can see the basic reason for the hatred between Arabs and Jews that has only intensified with the passage of the centuries (See Prophecy Updates 67 and 68 in the Archives).

I am confident that the new military pact will undoubtedly transfer the information necessary for the manufacture of the advanced Shihab-3 missile in Syria, as well as the financing for greater production of long-range artillery and ammunition.

The United States and Europe wanted Syria to follow Libya’s lead, but Bashar Assad was really in no political position to do so without being overthrown by the terrorist elements in his own country.

There were four things the United States wanted Syria to give up.

(1) Scrap your long-range missile program.

(2) Scrap your WMD program.

(3) Drive all the terrorist groups out of Syria.

(4) Stop supporting Hizbollah in Lebanon.

I feel confident it was a choice Bashar Assad simply could not make. Iran and Syria are of the same mind on these four issues. Had Syria chosen to do those four things, it would have cut Iran’s flow of weaponry and the movement

of terrorists to Hizbollah. Syria was left without any military backup with the fall of Iraq, so Assad has chosen to shore up and expand its existing ties with Iran, and create new military ties with them for a joint defense against the west.

The strong showing by the radical Shiite hardliners in Iran’s elections last month was a strong element that Assad considered in making his choice. Iranian Shiites will continue to have a direct pipeline via Damascus airport for massive shipments of military hardware to the large Hizbollah terrorist army, which it has supported in southern Lebanon for years, as have the Syrians.

Rest assured that Israel has three very definite targets on its mind for the possibility of future air strikes, namely, the Syrian underground and surface facilities near Hamah, the Iranian nuclear complex centered ten miles south of Bushehr, and selected weapons supply depots in southern Lebanon (See Prophecy Update 160A). By no stretch of the im agin

ation will Iraq remain a democracy any great length of time after the election of a new government. It will take less than two years after Iraqi elections for most of Iraq to become an Islamic Republic. And, when it does, there will be a military Islamic union stretching from Iran to Lebanon through Iraq and Syria.

Contrary to today’s popular belief, the antichrist will not come out of Europe, but out of the area that includes Syria, Lebanon, and northern Iraq (See Special Prophecy Update 74B and Whole Numbered Prophecy Updates 62 to 69).

And, contrary to today’s popular belief, the 10 toes of Daniel’s statue and the 10 horns on his fourth beast, which are the same 10 nations that will make up the coalition of nations that attack Israel in the last days, will not come out of Europe, but out of the southern half of the old Roman Empire, which included lands from Morocco to Iran, and as far north as Turkey (See Prophecy Updates 54 and 78).

Daniel 2:42 – And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

Daniel 7:24 – And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

Revelation 17:12,13 – And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. [13] These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.

Begin CHINA DAILY ARTICLE

CHINA DAILY

Israel, offering Golan, waits Syria proposals

(Reuters)

Updated: 2007-06-09 00:40

Israel has told Syria it is willing to trade land for peace and is waiting to hear whether President Bashar al-Assad would cut ties with Iran and hostile guerrilla groups in return, Israeli officials said on Friday.

One said Syrian officials had so far indicated a willingness to conduct discreet contacts that might lead to a resumption

of formal peace talks after a seven-year hiatus. In two weeks, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is due to meet President George W. Bush, who would play a crucial role in any such process.

Two days after Olmert confirmed Israel had sent conciliatory messages to Damascus, Israeli media widely reported a leak to a newspaper that quoted a senior diplomat saying Syria had been reminded that Israel was ready to discuss returning the Golan Heights, captured 40 years ago this week, if peace talks resume.

A former Israeli diplomat who has taken part in efforts to revive dialogue said Olmert — deeply unpopular after last year’s inconclusive war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon — was preparing his voters for possible concessions to Syria in a process that will probably need strong U.S. support to succeed.

A senior serving Israeli official told Reuters that Syrian officials appeared open to discreet dialogue and Israel was now trying to determine what concessions Damascus might be willing to make, notably in severing alliances with Israel’s enemies in Iran, Hezbollah and Palestinian militant movements like Hamas.

“Nobody knows the answer,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity and has been involved in the discussions.

“We don’t know what is the Syrian definition of peace — if Syria will really position itself with the U.S. and its Western allies or stay with Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas?

“There are no preconditions for the beginning of the negotiations. But (Assad) will have to send an indication.”

He and a second Israeli official confirmed that Turkey, which maintains good relations with both Syria and Israel, had helped promote dialogue, resuming a role that diplomatic sources have said it played in behind-the-scenes discussions in 2004.

A senior aide to Olmert was in Turkey recently, the two officials said. A spokesman for Olmert declined comment.

Israeli spokesmen also declined to be drawn on Friday’s widely splashed report in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that Olmert had passed Assad the message through Turkish and German channels that Israel was ready to give up the Golan Heights.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev noted, however, that Israel has long been willing to negotiate on the future of the strategic territory, captured in the Six Day War of June 1967.

There was no immediate comment from Damascus.

Polls show about half of Israeli voters would be ready to give back some of the Golan but few would give up all of the land. That poses a challenge to a leader as unpopular as Olmert.

Some analysts believe, however, that with little prospect of progress on peace with divided Palestinians or on the Lebanese border, talks with Syria could bolster the premier’s standing.

Olmert is also considering his response to a renewed peace initiative from the Arab League.

Syria’s fellow Arabs, like the United States and Israel, seem keen to loosen Assad’s ties to non-Arab Iran, whose nuclear program and influence over fellow Shi’ites now running Arab Iraq have caused them concern.

Alon Liel, a former top Israeli diplomat who has taken part in discreet contacts with Syrians for some years, said he thought the basis of a deal between Israel and Syria was taking shape but that the key to any accord lay in Washington.

“I think the deal is pretty much closed. But you can’t move forward on the ‘small’ deal with Israel without the ‘big’ deal with the U.S.,” said Liel, who new heads the Israel-Syria Peace Society, dedicated to promoting a settlement.

Assad, Liel said, would not give up his alliance with Iran without an assurance of aid and other benefits from the United States and other Western powers — similar to those that Egypt secured by making peace with Israel in 1979.

Israeli officials have said that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s meeting with the Syrian foreign minister a month ago showed a softening in Washington’s attitude to Syria that indicated Bush would not oppose Israeli peace moves.

Assad has publicly expressed interest in resuming talks with Israel that stalled seven years ago over the extent of an Israeli pullback from the Golan Heights, but he has also hinted Syria could resort to force if it deemed diplomacy a dead end.

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from which we extracted it.

Hot Potato, Hot Potato!

June 9, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

It is one thing to KNOW a particular event IS going to occur, but quite another to KNOW WHEN it will occur – KNOWING WHEN has been a hot potato for me for 40 years.

I have believed for 40 years, the time frame during which a major war would begin in the Middle East, was likely to be associated with the end of the generation that began in 1967, which would be the year 2007. This has been my “hot potato!” A while back, I put all my hot potatoes in one basket, and made a guesstimate I said I would sink or swim with – My guesstimate is that the final major war of this Age of the Gentiles will begin at some point in time after 2007 ends, but prior to the beginning of 2013.

Scriptures have always indicated that a mindset of “Peace and safety” would be a part of the pre-attack scenario, but HOW it would arrive on the scene has been another “hot potato” for me. I can only be sure it will come into the minds of the Israelis before the attack begins. First, I am going to ask you to read what I wrote six years ago on the subject, and then ask you to read the Jerusalem Post Article which follows it, which illustrates the mass confusion on HOW and WHEN the false peace will come in, followed by the attack that initiates the last major war of the Age of the Gentiles.

Begin Quote of Archive Prophecy Update Number 12

PROPHECY UPDATE 12

March, 2001

The Apostle Paul had a deep spiritual burden for his own people, the nation of Israel. His born again heart longed for them to forsake their unbelief by turning to Jesus as their Messiah. He expresses this desire in Romans 10:1 as he states: “Brethren, my hearts desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.” There is no question that Paul saw Israel as being in unbelief. But he knew that some future day they would believe, and consequently be grafted back into God’s olive tree,

from which they had been broken off because of their unbelief.

He stated this principle in Romans 11:20, as he wrote: “Well, because of unbelief they were broken off.” But he goes on in verse 23 to indicate they will one day believe, and thereby restored to being part of God’s olive tree. He writes, “And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.” I said all this to explain the words “they” and “them” in I Thessalonians 5:3, where Paul states: “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh on them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” Paul, in his use of “they” and “them,” is referring to the nation of Israel in unbelief. However, it would also in part apply to all unbelievers in the last days.

So why have I given this discourse? The word translated as “safety” is “asphaleia,” which means “the security one experiences when standing on something that is firmly fixed.

It gives the one standing on it a sense of “not falling.” The last four leaders of Israel have worn out the following expression: “We must have a peace with security.” We have heard it used hundreds of times on the media, and it has been printed over and over again in countless articles. Why is this important? God indicates a time will come when Israel actually believes she has “a peace with security.” Why is it so important that we understand this prediction? Because we can know that the final war, involving Israel’s Islamic neighbors, will not occur until it is fulfilled! Israel must be lulled into a false sense of security before any united Islamic attack against her can be successful. Until this happens, and it will, I merely wait for it to come to pass. Then, when peace and security for Israel does appear to arrive in the Middle East, you can know that the final war of this age is about to occur. Don’t believe all these terrorist attacks will suddenly cause the final war of this age to begin. It is only when they cease that you can know the last war, which finally produces Armageddon some 3 and ½ years after it begins, is imminent.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

‘PM wants to save his skin by giving up the Golan Heights’

AP and JPost Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST

June 8, 2007

Report:

Right-wingers were seething on Friday afternoon after a report that a recent flurry of secret messages from Israel to Syria signaled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s willingness to give up the Golan Heights in return for a peace agreement.

Effi Eitam (NU-NRP) said: “The Olmert government that failed in Lebanon, is behaving as failed regimes have acted throughout history, and in an attempt to hide his responsibility for the failure he is embarking on a dangerous political adventure.”

Eitam’s party colleague MK Zevulun Orlev said that Olmert was “ready to sell the Golan for his chair,” adding that in his opinion, Olmert was attempting to save his skin by means of a declaration of his willingness to cede the Golan.

Likud faction chairman Gideon Sa’ar called on Israel Beiteinu and Shas to withdraw for the coalition.

“The prime minister has no legitimacy to withdraw for the Golan,” Sa’ar went on to say, adding that Olmert’s continued leadership endangered Israel’s security, Israel Radio reported.

According to the report in Yediot, quoting officials close to Olmert, the prime minister sent messages with German and Turkish diplomats to Syrian President Bashar Assad indicating that Israel was willing to hold direct peace negotiations and give up the Golan.

According to Yediot, Olmert repeatedly said he would be prepared to negotiate with Syria only if Assad’s regime cut ties with Iran and Hizbullah and ceased its support for terror.

US President George Bush gave Olmert the green light for negotiations with Syria in an hour-long phone conversation last month, according to the report, and the two leaders will further discuss the possibility of talks during their scheduled meeting at the White House on June 19.

The Prime Minister’s Office neither confirmed nor denied the report.

Israel Radio quoted a senior political official as saying that the details of negotiations with the Syrians must not be talked about but that Israel was willing to pay the agreed price for peace.

A Syrian diplomat in London denied the Yediot report, saying that Damascus had not received any invitation from Israel to open negotiations, Israel Radio reported.

Another senior Syrian diplomat also denied that Damascus had received an invitation from Washington or from any other officials to renew negotiations.

In an interview the diplomat gave to a Syrian newspaper, he also said that Olmert’s “defeated and weak government is not a partner for negotiations.”

Meanwhile, Construction and Housing Minister Meir Sheetrit said he would be able to accept Syrian sovereignty over the Golan Heights on condition that Syria agreed to lease the land back to Israel for 20 years.

“If in this period it becomes clear that there is real peace then the Golan Heights will be less important,” said Sheetrit.

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai said that if Syria really wanted peace Assad should come to Israel.

In an interview with Israel Radio, Yishai reiterated Shas’s support for an exchange of land

for peace to avoid bloodshed. However, Yishai refused to answer if it included a withdrawal

from the Golan Heights, saying negotiations must not be conducted in the media.

Ahmed Tibi (UAL) said that a withdraw from the Golan was a move that could be have historical importance. “Negotiations with Syria are inevitable, and the price of true peace with Syria is well known – a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Eventually, this will bring regional stability and a decrease in the level of violence I the area”

Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin also spoke in favor of an agreement with Syria, saying that if the prime minister was serious in his intentions, the path to peace with Syria was short. “All the understandings were already reached under the Barak government,” added Beilin.

Also Friday, the Nazareth-based A-Sinara newspaper reported that Syria had announced to European emissaries its willingness to reach a deal with Israel which would include the return of kidnapped reservists Elad Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who are being held by Hizbullah.

Meanwhile, a Ma’ariv-TNS poll showed that only 10% of Israelis supported a full withdrawal from the Golan, 40% were in favor of a partial withdrawal and 44% were opposed to any withdrawal. The poll also showed that despite recent peace overtures from Damascus, 74% of Israelis did not trust Assad.

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We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.

Iran has the Greatest ISLAMIC Missile Inventory in the Middle East

June 9, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Iran has the Greatest ISLAMIC Missile Inventory in the Middle East, and is indeed driving toward development of nuclear bombs to mount eventually as warheads on their Shihab Missile series, I do not believe they will be launched in what many refer to as WWIII. My reasons for believing this are included in my lengthy discourse following the June 2 article extracted from:

http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=926130

Begin June 2 Article

Iran leveraging its missile arsenal to intimidate U.S. allies in Gulf region

http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=926130

June 2, 2007

WASHINGTON

Iran is threatening to use its huge missile arsenal in any attack on American allies in the Gulf, the U.S. intelligence community has determined.

Officials said the mullah regime seeks to intimidate Gulf Cooperation Council states with Teheran´s ballistic missile arsenal. They said Iran views its missiles as the primary element in power projection.

“Iran is enhancing its ability to project its military power — primarily with ballistic missiles and naval power — with the goal of dominating the Gulf region and deterring potential adversaries,” National Intelligence Director John McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb.

27.

The intelligence community said Iran has the largest missile inventory in

the Middle East. Iran´s Shihab-2 medium-range and Shihab- 3 intermediate-range missiles could strike virtually any strategic site in the Gulf.

“Teheran views its growing inventory of ballistic missiles as an integral part of its strategy to deter — and if necessary retaliate against-forces in the region, including U.S. forces,” McConnell said.

Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Maples said Iran has been developing weapons of mass destruction for use with its missile arsenal. Maples said Iran, which increased defense spending by 6.7 percent in 2006, is expected to advance in its nuclear weapons program this year.

“In 2007, DIA expects further progress including completion of a nuclear reactor Fuel Manufacturing Plant and installation of additional centrifuges at Natanz,” Maples said.

“Iran has a growing biotechnology industry, significant pharmaceutical experience and the overall infrastructure that could be used to support a biological warfare program,” he said. “DIA believes Iran is pursuing development of biological weapons. Iran has a large and growing commercial chemical industry that could be used to support a chemical agent mobilization capability.”

Maples said Iran has been training its missile forces in an attempt to hone wartime operations skills and tactics.

He said Iranian missiles could strike Israel as well

as Central Europe.

“It is fielding increased numbers of theater ballistic missile, and claimed it has incorporated anti-missile defense tactics and capabilities into its ballistic missile forces,” Maples said.

Maples said Iran plans to use missiles and naval attacks in any war with the United States. He cited the Great Prophet exercise in November 2006, which focused heavily on the use of missiles.

“Iran intends to rely on asymmetric tactics, using its ballistic missiles, naval attacks in the restricted waters along its coast against U.S. forces, and possibly a strategic terror campaign to disrupt U.S. war plans,” Maples said.

Maples said Iran “may be in the process of receiving the SA-15 short- range air defense system from Russia. Iran could acquire other advanced defense systems.

“Anti-ship cruise missiles, a small boat fleet, sea mines, and submarines comprise Iran´s efforts to contest access to the Persian Gulf,” Maples said.

Teheran has also been producing enhanced anti-ship cruise missiles for any attack on U.S. or Gulf Arab shipping. Officials said the use of the C-802 cruise missile by Hizbullah in the war against Israel in 2006 marked a test of Iran´s development program.

“They´ve [Iran] put a great deal of concentration into things like submarines and cruise missile-equipped patrol boats that could go out to sea to be able to attack naval forces that might be approaching,” McConnell said.

“They´ve also recently acquired surface-to-air-missiles in the country to be able to repel an attack on the country.”

End June 2 Article

Begin Excerpts from Special Prophecy Updates 129C and 187A

“One of the main reasons I wrote three books on prophecy in the late seventies and early eighties was to establish a case advocated by teachers of the pre-World War

II era. It was, simply stated, that man would not destroy the earth with his weaponry, but rather that God would destroy the earth by the use of this own power. I am certain that the horrifying changes in the topography of Israel, as well as the terrifying destruction of the antichrist’s forces at Armageddon, are by the awesome power of God, not atomic, chemical, or biological weapons of man.

The lifting of the land from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem, the breaking up of Jerusalem into three sections, the splitting of the Mount of Olives, and the consuming of the flesh, tongues, and eyes of the antichrist’s men are natural phenomena unleashed by God, not by man. All the Scriptures dealing with these phenomena unleashed by God are covered in Birth Pang and Prophecy Archives.

There are many advocates of a great atomic, chemical, and biological war in Israel when the antichrist attacks 1260 days before Armageddon.

It might happen at the time of Armageddon, but the initial attack will start what amounts to a non-nuclear, non-chemical, and non-biological war. So why am I so confident and outspoken about this being the case?

Israel has more than 200 extremely well concealed missile sites in the Negev between Beersheba and the Gulf of Aqabah.

(1) It has more than 300 nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads to mount on Jericho missiles.

(2) The Jericho is a very accurate missile, and can hit a target in any Islamic country from Morocco to Pakistan and from Turkey to Yemen.

(3) Israel has an excellent anti-missile defense to protect its array of silos, warheads, and missiles. It is able to pick up an incoming enemy missile launched from Syria before it reaches it maximum altitude.

(4) So why do I believe this array of WMD will not be unleashed by Israel when it is attacked? Because the Israeli War Contingency Plan of Israel directs that WMD will never be launched against a foreign nation unless they are first launched against Israel.

(5) So how do I know the Islamic countries will not launch WMD in their initial attack? All of them are well aware of what is listed in (1) through (4)! The former Soviet Union, which it existed, shared Israeli intelligence information with Syria, which it collected over a long period of time from its hundreds of spy satellites it launched from pads between Moscow and the White Sea, and on the eastern side of the Aral Sea. Syria, in turn, has shared it with some of the other Islamic countries around Israel. Only a leader possessed of rank insanity would ever launch WMD first against Israel, which is why I was so relieved when Saddam Hussein was taken out of the way.

Many believe the United States will quickly rush to the aid of Israel, and, as the world’s greatest power, will immediately deliver her from any kind of attack she can’t handle. There are two problems with this idea: (1) The United States believes Israel can defeat any Islamic attack on its own without any help from us. After all, Israel has easily done so in three previous wars and, (2) This will be a lightning Jihad, and better coordinated than any of the previous wars, and this time Israel will have a Palestinian state attacking it from within, while the other Islamic nations come in from outside its borders. It will probably last less than a couple of weeks, and Jerusalem is likely to fall within four days. By the time we decide they must have our help it will be too late, because they will have occupied most of the land from Dan to Beersheba. It would take months, as it did in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Freedom Iraq, to get enough American troops on the ground to do any good.

I do not believe a major attack will be launched against Israel as long as American troops are in Iraq, nor do I believe one will be launched prior to the Iranian development of a deliverable nuclear weapon. I do not believe we will commit American ground troops in Israel.

What was the character of Israel’ s pa

st three wars? They were all very short in duration, and they all ended abruptly in a truce.

That will be the case in this war. The United States knows that the Negev is the place where Israel will flee. When we believe they are safely in the Negev, we will be more than willing to accept a truce to give us time to think about what to do, and Israel will remain trapped in the Negev for some three and one-half years.

The part played by the United States during this period of three and one-half years is interspersed throughout our Prophecy Archives, with some of it in Prophecy Updates 5 through 11, 32 & 33, and 74 & 75.” (END QUOTE OF UPDATE 129C).

Since Update 129C was issued, several noteworthy things have come to pass that reduce the likelihood of a nuclear war in the Middle East. The area is headed toward a situation where both sides will realize a nuclear war would leave the victor, or victors, in such a powerless state, that any future they might have would be desolate, and leave them in a position of great vulnerability to the rest of the oil consuming nations. Some of these noteworthy recent events, which would tend to create a standoff, such as the one that developed between the United States and the once mighty Soviet Union, are as follows:

(1) Syria now has a better Scud than the Scud B. The Scud D missile, considered to be the most sophisticated weapon of its kind, is now in the hands of the Syrian military. It is able to deliver nuclear, chemical, or biological multiple warheads to their targets in Israel from Syria.

(2) The jointly developed American-Israeli Arrow 2 missile successfully launched an Arrow 2 missile that destroyed a Scud B over the Pacific Ocean earlier this year.

The Arrow 2 is designed to intercept an enemy missile before it reaches its peak altitude, far from Israeli territory. However, in a recent test against the Scud D, it failed to intercept the detached warhead. It was not a complete failure, and the results are in the process of being analyzed. Israel says it can still effectively destroy the Scud D.

(3) Syria also maintains a sizeable ballistic missile arsenal and, like Iran, is active in upgrading and expanding its capabilities.

(4) Iran has announced it is building its first stealth missile, a rocket that can evade electronic detection.

The missile was named Kowsar, in honor of the Kowsar river in paradise, which is found in the Koran, the Holy Book of Islam. Iran announced it would be capable of hitting ships and aircraft.

(5) Iran is continuing to steam toward development of its own nuclear bomb, which many believe it could develop as early as next year. It has now going underground, and is spreading out its nuclear development sites in order to limit the damage that could be incurred by an Israeli air strike, like the one carried out on Iraq’s nuclear facility in 1981.

(6) Iran is manufacturing various missiles, chief among them being the Shahab-3, whose range of 1300 km (793 mi) allows it to reach Israel.

It is designed to carry up to a 700-kilogram conventional warhead. But the Iranians are currently developing the Shihab 4 and 5, with ranges of 3000 km (1830 mi) and 6000 km (3660 mi), which puts all of Europe in its sights, and these both missiles will be able to carry chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons.
(7) At the same time that Iran and Syria are attempting to manufacture weapons of mass destructions, and the missiles to deliver them, they are also building up their conventional arsenal of weapons. Iran has been making its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, and fighter planes, inside its own borders for some time. They have been guided by the designs of weaponry supplied to them by North Korea, Russia, and even China in both their conventional

and non-conventional programs of weaponry development.

The huge payments from the Iranian oil money have, for some time, helped to keep

the Russian Economy afloat, and the North Korean economy from completely collapsing.

I do not believe there will be a nuclear, biological or chemical war in the Middle East. I have long been convinced of this.

It will be a great war, but only conventional weapons will be used.

I will not rule out the possibility of some being used at Armageddon, but I really don’t believe they will be launched even them.

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War this Year – Yes or No – Newspaper Pros and Cons!

June 8, 2007

http://www.tribulationoeriod.com/

In my opinion, there will be no major all-out-war in the Middle East as long as U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and not until Iran develops a nuclear bomb arsenal that can be delivered by missile to Israel. I am also of the opinion that Iran’s primary objective in obtaining a deliverable weapon is as a deterrent to cause Israel not to launch its mighty nuclear arsenal when the major war begins. My guesstimate, as to the point in time Israel will be attacked to start this major war, is that it will occur after 2007, and before 2013 begins.

The following two articles from THE INDEPENDENT and HAARETZ, offer a long discourse on the pros and cons of the possibility of a variety of scenarios.

Begin Excerpt from HAARETZ Article

Chronicle of a war foretold

June 8, 2007

Amir Oren

The Israel Defense Forces this week pressed the button on the stopwatch for the next war with Syria.

The act of starting the clock does not necessarily mean that a war is un avoida

ble next month, but it does have an element of a countdown – like in the launching of a space shuttle – that can be reversed and stopped. This time, the army’s statements do not contradict the actual intention to issue the draft of the order (No. 001) to prepare for war. Defensive preparedness – that is, as opposed to a call-up of reserves, preemptive strike, or an attack.

For almost 20 years, from January 1964 until April 1983, the head of the Northern Command had an advantage over his colleagues from the Southern and Central Commands in the competition to be appointed Israel Defense Forces chief of staff. Yitzhak Rabin, David Elazar, Motta Gur, Rafael Eitan – all shared the formative experience of the confrontation with Syria.

(Haim Bar-Lev was an exception in that he never served as GOC but was the Northern Command Chief of Staff). This streak, interrupted for about a generation, was recently renewed with the appointment of Gabi Ashkenazi as chief of staff.

For a war with Syria, much of which would be expected, nevertheless, to take place in the air and deep inside the two countries, far from the line of contact between the forces at the front, a chief of staff such as Ashkenazi would bring the asset of years of experience in planning and drilling. One can expect that, in a confrontation with Syria’s 68-year-old chief of staff, General Ali Habib, he will come prepared.

Not that Ashkenazi wants to get to a war, but in his statements this week he contributed to the escalation that he seeks to avoid. He is not eager for an unnecessary battle, and sounds wary of its potential cost. In discussions within the military establishment and in its contacts with the political echelon above it, he takes a moderate line, which is shared by GOC Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin and other generals; at present there is no general who clearly embraces the opposing, combative approach.

This is a contrast with the situation in Gaza, where GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant, and Division Commander Moshe (Chico) Tamir are advocating a more aggressive approach.

Officers who’ve been listening to him get the sense that the chief of staff, on the job for nearly four months now, is already looking forward to the autumn.

The summer of 2007 – which was first cited as a potential time for war in the strategic assessment of the Planning Branch made last November, back during the tenure of Ashkenazi’s predecessor – took on a magical, fateful significance as time went on, something between a ticking bomb and the anticipated Y2K bug of the turn of the millennium, which all awaited with bated breath until the threat just evaporated.

There is no precedent for a war that is announced in advance, like a summons to a duel, but Ashkenazi cannot rely on precedent; who should know better than he, before whom no reserve major general had ever been appointed chief of staff, that for everything there is a first?

Contrary to popular conception, there was no major difference between the basic military approaches of Moshe Ya’alon and Dan Halutz: In the Syrian context, they were practically a single chief of staff, “Ya’alutz,” and Ashkenazi, Ya’alon’s top deputy, was involved in formulating the IDF’s operational concept, which was adopted primarily under Ya’alon and then finalized under Halutz. And part of the assessment, even before the hostilities of last summer between Israel and Hezbollah, was the understanding that Syria would seek to wage a war of attrition. That war would begin with a sudden move and continue with an erosion that would undermine the Israeli home front, and eventually launch a diplomatic process that would lead to the return of the Golan Heights of Syria.

Of Syria’s three “arms,” its armored branch would be used to confine IDF forces, while its missiles (and perhaps also biological and chemical warheads) would strike deep in Israeli territory, and be aided by the terror and guerilla activities of Hezbollah and Hamas. The Israeli threat, over the years, was to view the ruling Assad family, which maintains power with the help of the Alawite minority, “as a clear address [operating] politically in a logical manner,” and to pay it home visits that would strike at the assets that are “most precious” to it personally and that serve as props for its authority. Meaning, practically, that the traditional missions of destroying enemy forces and conquering territory would be superseded by an attempt to strike at the regime’s stability, at its economy and at the system that protects the rulers from being overthrown.

Begin Article from THE INDEPENDENT

The Big Question: Is Israel heading for a peace deal with Syria – or another war?

By Donald Macintyre, Jerusalem Correspondent

Published: 08 June 2007

Why are we talking about this now?

Because Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has seemingly put Syria at the top of his foreign policy agenda. He convened a Cabinet meeting this week to discuss it, insisted that Israel wanted peace and not war with Syria, and sounded warmer than in the past about the possibility of negotiations with Damascus. This was in response to a series of suggestions in interviews by President Bashar Assad that this was what the Syrian leader wanted.

At the same time, however, the Israeli military has been cranking up well publicized preparations for any possible war with its north-eastern – and until now – most unremittingly hostile neighbour. This is partly the result of what Israeli military intelligence says are movements of troops and rockets close to Israel’s current north-eastern front. And part of the job Olmert gave the Cabinet committee he set up on Syria this week was to review the Israeli military’s state of readiness for a war with Syria.

But if negotiations happened and worked, they would be potentially momentous, eventually involving Israel handing back the Golan Heights, the fertile stretch of Syrian territory it seized exactly 40 years ago in the Six-Day War.

But having held on to the Golan for so long, why give it up now?

Peace with Syria – and Damascus’s recognition of Israel – would be a huge prize in itself, which is one of the reasons that Prime Ministers Barak and Rabin were ready to negotiate with the President’s father in the 1990s – though that ended in failure. But it’s a fair question. Apart from the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when Syria briefly overran the Golan and was then repulsed, Israel’s relations with Syria since 1967 have been of the Cold War variety and Israel has largely lived with that, not to mention enjoying – literally – the fruits of the Heights, not to mention the excellent wine produced by some of its 17,000 Jewish settlers there.

What lends everything fresh urgency – quite apart from the important realization that war might be

the alternative, with heavy civilian casualties as well as military – is what Israel might get in return. The prospect that Syria might detach from Iran and stop its support for Hamas, and even more so Hizbollah in Lebanon, has huge potential attractions

for Israel.

So is Syria serious about making peace

?

That is the question which has been vexing the best minds in Israeli intelligence for months now. Hawks, who at least until recently appeared to include Olmert, have been arguing that Syria is playing games, and simply wants to give itself some bogus legitimacy to deflect the impact of the international tribunal set up to investigate its role in the murder of the Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. But the counter- arguments are increasingly persuasive, and not just because a senior Syrian official yesterday responded to Israel’s Cabinet meeting by insisting that it was indeed serious.

What Assad – like Olmert – wants to do is survive politically. Not only would recovery of the Golan massively help him to do that, but if it helped bring him in from the cold from the point of view of the West, he might be prepared to pay a real price in return.

Unlike Olmert, who disowned the back-channel negotiations carried out with Syria by former foreign ministry director general Alon Liel that ended two years ago, Assad has made it clear that Liel’s US-based interlocutor Abe Suleiman had his blessing.

And finally while Syria has always insisted on starting negotiations at the point where Rabin left off – namely a full return to 4 June 1967 borders, including on the north-eastern shore of Lake Galilee – it is not insisting that Israel must sign up to this in blood before the negotiations begin.

Ide ally Isr

ael would like a return to the British mandate borders which would guarantee it a wider strip of territory on the Galilee shore.

But the informed view in Jerusalem is that Syria will never renege on the 4 June point. That said, it’s less clear exactly where the border is.

Bill Clinton thought he had finessed this point at the Sheperdstown talks at the turn of the century, but Ehud Barak hardened his position and the talks broke down.

Syria thinks all these amount to real and important concessions, even if it is harder to convince Israeli public opinion reared on dramatic gestures like Sadat’s epoch-making visit to Jerusalem in 1977, paving the way to the historic Israel-Egypt treaty.

What alternative is there to an Israel-Syria deal?

War – though when it might happen is harder to say. Syria is currently modernizing its army with state-of-the-art weaponry funded, Israel believes, from Iran, and this could take up two or three years to complete. One senior Israeli government analyst suggested yesterday that Syria had no intention of initiating a war now, before it is ready. Instead, he said, Damascus has carefully noted comments by Amos Gilad, a key Israeli Defence Ministry spokesman, at the beginning of the year that 2007 was when Israel would have to confront the choice between peace and war with Syria.

The analyst declined to say whether that choice had been resolved, but it was also clear that Syria’s existing rocket arsenal – with a capability to reach much deeper into Israel than anything Hizbollah used in last summer’s war – would put civilians straight into the front line.

What do the Americans think about all this?

At one point Condoleeza Rice told the Israelis that the US doesn’t want them to negotiate with Syria, and there is every sign that President Bush is still, to put it mildly, very wary about anything that could legitimize Syria. Olmert has also several times in the past few months used US hostility to the idea of talks with Syria as an excuse for not embarking on the process. But the increasingly chaotic, Iraq-generated political atmosphere in Washington, coupled with the fact that Bush let Rice talk to the Syrians about Iraq, means he is in a less good position to call all the shots than he might have been.

So will Olmert talk to the Syrians?

It’s still unclear. All the logic points to this being the time to test – at the absolute minimum – the Syrians’ intentions through talks which have the potential to transform the region. Second, it would give Olmert the agenda he desperately needs if he is going to survive his post-Lebanon unpopularity. His right-wing opponents won’t like it but talks would unite the centre and centre-left of Israeli politics behind him, rather as Gaza disengagement did for Ariel Sharon. The question is whether Olmert has the courage, the political imagination, and the sheer belief in the urgent desirability of talking to Damascus that he will need if he is to persuade Bush and other sceptics, including in the supposedly friendlier Arab countries. On all that the jury is still out.

So will Israel really negotiate

?
Yes…

* It would give Olmert the political agenda he badly needs after abandoning his policy of unilateral withdrawals from the West Bank

* There’s a growing view within the Israeli security establishment that now is the time for talks with Syria

* A peace treaty would be the gigantic prize that eluded Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin

No…

* Olmert is, as Damascus Radio said yesterday, too weak and unpopular to pull it off, particularly in the face of US opposition

* Negotiation would lead to a politically dangerous revolt from the Israeli right

* A failure is too big a risk, and could even bring war nearer, with high civilian casualties a likely price

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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.