Will the Real Bashar al-Assad please stand Up!
June 10, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
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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