The first article represents yet another timely review by Joel Rosenberg; this is a lengthy article but worth posting in full:
A growing number of journalists, political leaders, and foreign policy analysts are noting that Vladimir Putin is aggressively positioning himself as a new and increasingly influential force on the global stage generally, and in the Middle East, in particular.
Consider recent headlines:
- Russia re-emerges as Mideast player (Associated Press)
- Putin shoves Obama aside as he seizes Syria agenda (New York Times)
- Syrian weapons deal helps Putin and Assad, say Russian observers (Los Angeles Times)
- Vladimir Putin New York Times op-ed sparks tension ahead of talks
- Sen. John McCain: Russia deserves better than Putin as president (UPI)
- Putin plans to diminish U.S., Obama (Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies)
Are such headlines warranted? I believe they are. The Russian leader had actually been fairly quiet over the last several years. But he is suddenly re-asserting himself in international affairs with a boldness and an arrogance we have not seen in some time. Consider his moves just in recent days:
- Putin has announced he will soon make a state visit to Iran to further strengthen Russian ties to the Persian power.
- Putin and his team are hinting they will increase arms sales to Iran
- ‘Russia to sell Iran anti-aircraft system, nuclear reactor’: S-300 deal said back on track; Moscow legislator threatens further weapons sales to Tehran if US strikes Syria
- Putin blames Israel for the Syrian stockpile of chemical weapons — “Putin said on Thursday that Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons stockpile only serves to make the Jewish state “a target” and creates ’foreign policy problems.’ Putin’s comments…came in response to questions from reporters on the US and Russia-brokered deal to put Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under international supervision,” reported the Jerusalem Post.
- Amidst a growing movement at the United Nations to force Israel to disclose and destroy its alleged stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons, Putin seems to be positioning himself to be the “peace-maker” in the Middle East, the one trying to rid the epicenter of WMD, and thus a sharp critic of Israel’s unwillingness to discuss what strategic weapons systems it may or may not have. (shades of The Ezekiel Option?)
- Putin convinced Obama to strike a deal with Syria regarding chemical weapons, even though he says he’s not 100% sure Assad will actually comply — many analysts believe Putin has played the American President, prevented an American military strike, and protected Assad, a key Russian ally, from being toppled.
- Putin: Russia to reopen Soviet-era Arctic military base
- Putin has announced he is considering running for a 4th term — that would make him modern Russia’s longest serving leader since Stalin, but why announce this now when elections are not until 2018?
Such moves fit a clearly emerging pattern. As I recently mentioned in this blog, Putin smells blood in the water — he has used the Syrian crisis to seize global leadership from Obama. Consider some of the other moves he has made in recent weeks:
- granted former-NSA contractor Edward Snowden asylum in Russia and refused to extradite him to the U.S.
- hosted the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia
- insisted Obama and U.S. has no evidence of chemical weapons being used by the Assad regime
- called Kerry a liar
- moved Russian warships into the Med
- promised to resupply Assad in case of war with the U.S.
Where is all this headed? What are Putin’s objectives? What will he do next? It’s hard to say at the moment, but Putin’s moves are troubling and it’s important to be watching him closely.
Some are asking me if Putin’s moves are leading us rapidly to the fulfillment of Bible prophecies, such as those found in Ezekiel chapters 38 & 39, what Bible scholars call the coming “War of Gog & Magog.” In such prophecies, a Russian dictator forms an alliance with Iran and other Middle Eastern and North African countries to attack Israel in the “last days” of history before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Others are asking me if Putin is “Gog,” the Russian dictator of whom Ezekiel writes. My answer is that it is too early to draw such conclusions. Putin is certainly Gog-esque. That is, he is making moves that would be consistent with the preparing for the fulfillment of Ezekiel prophecies. That said, we must be cautious. We simply don’t have enough data yet to draw conclusions. It is important not to overreach. Perhaps someone far worse is going to emerge to lead Russia. Perhaps the fulfillment of the Gog & Magog prophecies is still many years off.
The important thing is to:
- help more Christians and non-Christians become aware of the prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39
- keep a close eye on Putin and his colleagues in the Kremlin
- watch particularly to see if Putin intensifies his alliance with Iran, and begins taking the lead in denouncing Israel and calling for Israel to be disarmed
- pray for Putin and for the people of Russia
- continue praying for Netanyahu and the people of Israel
- pray for the Khamenei, Rouhani and the people of Iran
- encourage and strengthen the Church in the Middle East and in Russia, so that they can be a light in the darkness right now, regardless of how soon or faraway the prophecies will come to pass.
“Vladimir Putin has accepted an Iranian invitation to visit the country and meet with newly elected President Hasan Rouhani, a spokesman for the Russian president confirmed,” reports the Times of Israel.
“Putin has been invited to Iran, and he will certainly take advantage of this kind invitation,” the Interfax news agency quoted spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Friday. “The dates of the visit will be agreed upon through diplomatic channels.”
“The announcement came on the heels of a report that Russia had agreed to sell to Iran the advanced S-300 air defense system and construct a new nuclear reactor at the Bushehr site,” the Times noted. “Putin met with Rouhani on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on Friday. During the meeting, Rouhani extended an invitation to Putin, who accepted, the Iranian semi-official Fars news agency reported. In July, there were reports that Putin would travel to Iran in August to revive negotiations over the country’s controversial nuclear program, but those plans appeared to fall through.”
This will be the second time Putin has traveled to Iran. The first was a two day trip on October 16-17, 2007. I wrote about the historic nature of that trip at the time. It was, after all, the first time a Russian leader had made a state visit to Tehran for the purpose of meeting with Iranian leaders in modern history. It thus raised many questions, including whether we were slowly but surely moving step-by-step towards the prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39 in which Russia and Iran form an alliance against Israel in the “last days.” It so happened that I was speaking about such prophecies at an event for military officers at the Pentagon and in private meetings with Members of Congress just days after Putin’s visit.
And we see this from Caroline Glick:
[If it wasn't obvious before, it should be obvious now: Just as the bible states - Israel stands alone]
Did US President Barack Obama score a great victory for the United States by concluding a deal with Russia on Syria's chemical weapons or has he caused irreparable harm to the US's reputation and international position? By what standard can we judge his actions when the results will only be known next year? To summarize where things now stand, last Saturday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov concluded an agreement regarding Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. The agreement requires Syria to provide full details on the size and locations of all of its chemical weapons by this Saturday. It requires international inspectors to go to Syria beginning in November, and to destroy or remove Syria's chemical weapons from the country by June 2014.
Obama and Kerry have trumpeted the agreement as a great accomplishment. They say it could never have been concluded had the US not threatened to carry out "unbelievably small" punitive military strikes against the Syrian regime in response to its use of Sarin gas to massacre 1,400 civilians in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.
According to Der Spiegel, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani may consider closing down Iran's illicit uranium enrichment facility at Fordo under IAEA supervision in exchange for the removal or weakening of economic sanctions against Iran's oil exports and its central bank.
The White House has not ruled out the possibility that Obama and Rouhani may meet at the UN General Assembly meeting later this month. These moves could pave the way for a reinstatement of full diplomatic relations between the US and Iran. Those relations were cut off after the regime-supported takeover of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979.
For their part, critics have lined up to condemn Obama's decision to cut a deal with Russia regarding Syria.
They warn that his actions in that regard have destroyed the credibility of his threat to use force to prevent Iran from developing or deploying nuclear weapons.
To determine which side is right in this debate, we need to look no further than North Korea.
Just as importantly, once the US accepted the notion of talks with North Korea, it necessarily accepted the regime's legitimacy. And as a consequence, both the Clinton and Bush administrations abandoned any thought of toppling the regime. Once Washington ensnared itself in negotiations that strengthened its enemy at America's expense, it became the effective guarantor of the regime's survival. After all, if the regime is credible enough to be trusted to keep its word, then it is legitimate no matter how many innocents it has enslaved and slaughtered.
With the US's experience with North Korea clearly in mind, it is possible to assess US actions with regards to Syria and Iran. The first thing that becomes clear is that the Obama administration is implementing the North Korean model in its dealings with Syria and Iran.
With regards to Syria, there is no conceivable way to peacefully enforce the US Russian agreement on the ground. Technically it is almost impossible to safely dispose of chemical weapons under the best of circumstances.
Given that Syria is in the midst of a brutal civil war, the notion that it is possible for UN inspectors to remove or destroy the regime's chemical weapons is patently absurd.
As for Iran, Rouhani's talk of closing Fordo needs to be viewed against the precedents set at Yongbyon by the North Koreans. In other words, even if the installation is shuttered, there is every reason to believe that the shutdown will be temporary. On the other hand, just as North Korea remains off the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism despite the fact that since its removal it carried out two more nuclear tests, it is hard to imagine that sanctions on Iran's oil exports and central bank removed in exchange for an Iranian pledge to close Fordo, would be restored after Fordo is reopened.
Like North Korea, Iran will negotiate until it is ready to vacate its signature on the NPT and test its first nuclear weapon.
Nestled deep in the maze of an Israel Air Force base, secretive units form an essential component in any Israeli air strike in enemy territory with air defenses.
Indeed, they would have been an inseparable part of recent air force strikes in Syria, attributed to Israel by foreign media reports, to stop the transfer of sophisticated missiles and air defenses to Hezbollah.
No potential future air campaign in Iran, against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, would be possible without the units.
This is the Electronic Warfare (EW) Section, which is made up of two units.
One operates from the air in specially fitted planes, and the second is ground based.
The two units work in synergy, viewing themselves as part of a greater whole.
They disrupt the enemy’s radar systems, blinding and dazing those being targeted for strikes. They can paralyze enemy communications systems needed to coordinated defenses.
The units also keep fighter jets safe from enemy EW attacks.
“We’re not firing kinetic weapons, but rather, electrons, so that the other side will find it very, very, very difficult to discover our jets,” the commander, a lieutenant-colonel, said.
The world of Electronic Warfare is like an eternal cat and mouse game, he added. “We must stay one step ahead,” he stressed. He warned against underestimating Israel’s enemies, and said that keeping a modest attitude is vital.
“EW is an intrinsic part of achieving aerial supremacy. If a plane penetrates Israeli air space, we have the ability to disrupt its communications,” he said.
“We’re a full partner in maintaining Israeli air security, and in missions of supreme national security,” he stated.
The son of Holocaust survivors, the commander has put up a poster in his office depicting the historic flight of Israel fighter jets over the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in 2003.
“My focus is on the resurrection of the Jewish people. I don’t live in the shadow of the idea that all was lost.
Revival is my home, a sense of mission and Zionism. We have no other land,” he said. “We are prepared to sacrifice our lives.”
It’s hard to explain to those on the outside what the unit does, the commander said.
“This is part of the challenge. We can’t talk about it at home. The people who make up this unit are the cream of the crop.”
“But they can say very little,” he added.
The air force’s EW Section has its own school that trains future generations of personnel.
Within hours of the Obama administration’s tentative indication on Friday that President Barack Obama might be willing to meet with new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, an influential Republican member of Congress cautioned that the administration should not put much faith in Tehran’s recent diplomatic overtures.
The White House intimated on Friday that a summit meeting between Obama and Rouhani might take place when both leaders are in New York for the annual UN General Assembly meeting next week
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, White House deputy spokesman Josh Earnest said the US would be ready to engage in talks “on the basis of mutual respect” with Iran over its disputed nuclear program. Earnest said the White House wants Tehran to prove that its program is only for civilian purposes.
“Rouhani is a master of deceit who has been putting on an all-out charm offensive since he took office,” Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Friday.
“In many ways Rouhani is much more dangerous than [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. At least with Ahmadinejad you get what you see – his hatred for Israel and the United States is not disguised with rhetoric or spurious gestures of goodwill,” added Ros-Lehtinen, who is considered a staunchly pro-Israel member of the House of Representatives.
“Rouhani, on the other hand, has managed to fool many with his manipulating words and his dog and pony show, and some have been so hopeful that he will be any different than Ahmadinejad that they have swallowed his act hook, line and sinker,” Ros-Lehtinen continued.
But, she warned, “Rouhani has no control over Iran’s nuclear program, and he will not change the regime’s stance on Israel. He is a regime loyalist, staunch supporter of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and vehemently opposes Israel and [the] Jewish State’s right to exist. His latest acts of tweeting a Rosh Hashana message and having the only Jewish member of the Iranian Majlis accompany him at the UN [are] all just smoke and mirrors.”
Rouhani “will use any opportunity he can to try to fool the US and the West into offering concessions and to stall for time while Iran completes its nuclear weapons program, as he had bragged about doing once before. Believing that he has any other agenda is folly.”
David Asman: What do you think about the Fed’s decision to continue money printing?
Dr Paul: I think it’s a very bad sign I think it means the Fed is really worried.
David Asman: Worried about what?
Dr Paul: About the economy. They are always bragging that things are really well, employment is up.
The seed of deception that they put out there is that things are really good. So now they are saying no, now it isn’t good and we have to keep inflating. So I think it's a bad sign but the markets liked it.
David Asman: The markets are doing well but the average American’s income is flat, plus add in even the little bit of inflation that the Fed is willing to admit to and frankly it is more than that because they are not including food and gas. Even then they lose value as a result of their income being stagnant.
Dr Paul: Think about it in a moral sense even if he gets his 2%? What right does the Fed have to take away 2% of their purchasing power automatically? What right does they have to punish the elderly who save money? I asked Bernanke and Greenspan the question and they throw their hands up and say that they feel some people will benefit by this.
David Asman: What happens now? If it’s Yellin she'll be like Bernanke on steroids. What does that mean for our economy?
Dr Paul: Prepare for the destruction of the dollar and the crash of the bond market one day. The bond bubble is weakening although the interest rates have doubled in the last year.
Also see:
[Ok, I added the parenthetical statement, but I can't resist pointing out the absurdity of this situation]
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