In the news...

There are two interesting articles this morning. The first deals with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scheduled speech at the U.N. in two weeks. Recall, the last time he spoke at the UN, he closed with a prayer for the Mahdi to return. In addition, he was quoted many times as saying that he was covered in light as he spoke these "divine" words. If he speaks again at the UN, it should be interesting as usual. However, as seen HERE, a protest is forming, calling for a worldwide boycott of this scheduled speech. A rally will be held next Thursday, across the street from the U.N. headquarters. He will probably still make this speech, based upon past actions of the U.N., and odds are he will make some interesting statements. We'll be watching this.

Also in the news we see an article with the title "Iran attack: Israel ex-min sees end-year deadline", and once again we see the end-year deadline discussed article here. In this article we see Ephraim Sneh, who is a former Israeli deputy defense minister, stating that Israel will be compelled to attack Iran's nuclear sites if Western powers cannot agree to crippling sanctions against Iran by the end of the year. Once again, we see this time frame which targets the end of this year.

Quotes:

"We cannot live under the shadow of an Iran with nuclear weapons, by the end of the year, if there is no agreement on crippling sanctions aimed at this regime, we will have no choice."

"This is the very, very last resort. But ironically it is our best friends and allies who are pushing us into a corner where we would have no option but to do it."

"Israel has said a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to its existence and points to Iranian President Mamoud Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel to be wiped off the map."


Iran keeps telling the world that they have no plans to discontinue their nuclear development. "The world" doesn't seem to be listening as the EU and US continue to attempt to level sanctions against Iran, but Russia and China continue to effectively block such actions. Meanwhile, Israel watches the situation all while their very existence hangs in the balance.

The end of this calendar year is a consistent time frame given in terms of the "break-point" on dealing with Iran. There have been a number of similar comments which reference the end of 2009 as significance, not only in terms of Israeli action, but when Iran is expected to have capable nuclear weapons.

The clock is ticking. We may be on the verge of seeing some huge events in the Middle-East.