Replacement of Bashar Assad by Iranian directed Coup in Syria
August 12, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Although I believe numerous denials of the validity of the DEBKAfile Article, which follows, will come out of Syria, Iran, the West, and the Middle East, I have long believed a coup would eventually happen in Syria, and the Antichrist would arise out of the wake of it, with the only question being WHEN. I have seen nothing to change my mind. I expect such a coup to take place at some point in time between 2008 and the end of 2012.
Please take the time to read Archive Prophecy Update Number 143B, which follows the DEBKAfile Article.
Begin DEBKAfile Report
Iran Plots Syrian President’s Ouster
August 12, 2007, 9:54 AM (GMT+02:00)
Buoyed up by the triumphs of Hizballah’s war offensive against Israel in 2006 and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the clerical rulers of Tehran have invested so heavily in their expanding power structure across the region that a fiasco could push their regime and military prop, the fierce Revolutionary Guards, into a perilous slide at home. To play it safe, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran sources reveal they have hatched a plan to replace the vacillating figure in Damascus with a puppet at their beck and call, modeled on Hizballah’ s Ha
ssan Nasrallah in Beirut.
Thus far, Assad has not strayed too far from the guidelines he and his Iranian allies laid down together, but Tehran can never be sure when he might swerve from the straight and narrow to make his peace with the Americans. The can only guarantee Syria stays in their pockets by installing a pro-Iran loyalist in the presidential palace in Damascus.
Sources close to Persian Gulf rulers believe that if Tehran opts for this course, its chosen instrument for throwing up a military ruler would be the Syrian armed forces, on the assumption that a general has the best chance of unifying the country and its ethnic and religious minorities around the new regime. The Iranians have therefore doubled and tripled their efforts to build up influence in the Syrian army.
An overt manifestation of their success is the prevalence of Syrian army men sporting beards in the style of Revolutionary Guardsmen.
But two additional Iranian steps have been more discreet.
1. Three-week, five-star vacations in Iran are being handed out to hundreds of graduates of every Syrian officers’ course and their families. While the families visit tourist sites, the graduates undergo indoctrination at special RGs seminaries.
2. Last April, RG instructors began handpicking outstanding Syrian officers at these courses and forming them into secret cells for planting in military units on their return home.
They are trained to seize centers of government, military installations and public buildings.
It is not known if Assad knows what is going on in his armed forces, or how deeply collaboration with Iranian intelligence for implanting these cells has penetrated the high Syrian command.
Such information would be of paramount bearing on the Syrian ruler’s decision on whether or not to stage a flare-up with Israel, now projected for November or early next winter. An American intelligence estimate, passed to Israel last week, predicts that Syria will then plans to ignite clashes by low-intensity military operations to test Israel’s responses.
The Syrian leadership is divided on this issue:
The anti-war faction. This camp consists of the veteran class of Syrian army generals, traditionally the most American-oriented of the armed forces. Its leaders, defense minister Gen. Hassan Turkemany, chief of staff Gen.
Habib Ali, and the presidential military
and intelligence adviser Gen.
Muhammed Nasif, all urge abstaining from hostile action against Israel.
The pro-war faction. This camp is headed by the Gen. Assaf Shawqat, head of Syrian military intelligence and the president’s brother-in-law. Around him is a band of ambitious young Syrian generals and colonels who have not yet made their name. They network closely with the high command of Iran’s armed forces and Revolutionary Guards.
Their argument for war is that the Assad regime is wobbling so badly that it would take the extreme measure of a war with Israel to unite the country behind the national leadership.
These young Turks have convinced Asad that Israel is determined to avoid the kind of large-scale ground operation which went awry in the 2006 Lebanon War and will therefore focus on aerial bombardments of military bases and certain infrastructure targets such as bridges, power plants and water works. They estimate that even then, Israel will confine itself to a limited air offensive, because its policy-makers and military leaders alike will be leery of provoking reprisal from Syrian medium range ground-to-ground C and D Scud missiles against the central and southern populations.
By mid-July, the war faction appeared to be winning the upper hand with President Assad, against the veteran generals.
At the same time, neither camp can know for sure exactly where aggressive action against Israel may lead. A Syrian military defeat in a battle for the Golan and heavy Israeli bombardments deep inside Syria could generate conditions for a military coup d’etat against Assad by generals held up as popular heroes for fighting Israel.
At the same time, Assad’s failure to repulse heavy Israeli military pressure would open the door to Iranian military intervention and a tailor-made opportunity for ousting the regime in Damascus.
Begin Quote of Archive Prophecy Update Number 143B, October 26, 2003
SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 143B
October 26, 2003
Religious Unrest in Syria
As I reported in several previous Updates, one of the unusual things in Syria, as an Islamic country, has been the degree of religious freedom it has allowed its citizens.
And, as I previously reported, this has been due to the very small religious sect, the Alawites, to which the Assad family belongs. Because of the rise of extremist groups within the Brotherhood of Islam, there were increasing violent acts among them in the early part of the eighties, and President Hafez al-Assad, the deceased father of the current President, Bashar Assad, sent troops into their stronghold at Hama (ancient Hamath), killing some 10,000, and crushing the city. This city is to be the northernmost latitudinal border of the land grant God gave to Abraham, which will be occupied by Israel when Messiah returns to dwell among them.
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.
The southernmost border is to extend to Kadesh in the Sinai, and it is to extend westward from “the river” (the Euphrates) to “the great sea” (the Mediterranean) and the River of Egypt in the Sinai.
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.
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:
During the inquisition of Assad against
the Islamic extremists in the early eighties, hundreds of their most influential leaders were jailed, and many were never seen again. Their families, and the Islamic extremist groups, have not forgotten this religious inquisition.
Afterwards Hafez did some things to counter the sense that existed in the ranks of Syria’s massive Sunni Muslim population concerning religious suspicions of the validity of the Alawite sect. According to a recent news release by Neil MacFarquhar, in the New York Times, Assad built many mosques and founded myriad schools to study the Koran.
However, this has, in part, led to the current resurgence in militant Islamic beliefs.
According to the article by MacFarquhar, “Violent sermons delivered by young mullahs like Sheik Mahmoud al-Ghassi, provide the most startling example of the careful line negotiated by the politically inclined.” The Sheik, in a sermon last week, “attacked the ‘atheist dogs’ waging war in the region,” then went on to say the economic sanctions by the Congress of the United States was “part of an Israeli plot to control all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
How ironic that this will one day, in the not too distant future, be the case, and not because of an Israeli plot, but by an act of God he said he would perform thousands of years ago.
Micah 5:6 – And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders. (See Prophecy Updates 67 and 68 in our Archives)
I expect the military, political and religious situation in Syria to become increasingly unstable beneath the surface, and would not be surprised if a Sunni led Baath coup replaced Bashar Assad in the next few years.
End Quote of Archive Special Prophecy Update Number 143B, October 26, 2003
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