Or more stage-setting for the coming Gog-MaGog war?
Even as Prime Minister Netanyahu meets with President Obama in Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin is suddenly signaling a major new international move that could shift the focus off of Iran’s nuclear threat and place enormous international focus and pressure on the State of Israel to disclose and dismantle its own strategic weapons.
“Russia wants to revive plans for a conference on ridding the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction now that Syria has pledged to abandon its chemical arms, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments published on Monday,” Reuters reported on Monday.
“Such a move could put Moscow at odds with Washington which announced the conference would be delayed last year,” notes Reusters. “Analysts said it feared the event would be used to criticize its ally Israel, believed to be the region’s only nuclear-armed state.”
“Russia has been pushing to extend its influence in the Middle East. It initiated a UN deal to get Syria to abandon its chemical arms after Washington threatened military strikes to punish Damascus for a sarin gas attack on rebel areas,” notes Reuters.
“We will seek to have this conference take place,” Lavrov said.
This is a striking development, coming as it does on the heels of the Russian gambit that prevented a U.S. military intervention in Syria and ostensibly a deal with Bashar al-Assad to disclose and destroy Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
A similar international effort was set into motion in May 2010, but then ran aground. At the time, however, Russia was not in the lead. Other countries were. Now, the Kremlin seems to be ready to lead the initiative.
Israel is already increasingly isolated from the international community. The “charm offensive” by new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been dazzlingly successful in shifting the debate and putting Israel on the defensive. The likelihood of an Israeli first strike on Iran appears to have receded significantly if President Obama is eager to engage in diplomacy with Tehran and pressures Israel to hold off on an attack.
And as amazing as it is to say it, the events of this week could theoretically set into motion the fulfillment of the End Times Bible prophecies found in Ezekiel 38-39 — i.e, the “War of Gog and Magog” — if the leader of Russia begins to emerge as the leader of the anti-Israel coalition and requires Israel to comply with the treaty or face an international military coalition prepared to force her to comply.
Meanwhile, “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 agencyquoted spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Friday. “The dates of the visit will be agreed upon through diplomatic channels.”
This will be the second time Putin has traveled to Iran. The first was a two day trip on October 16-17, 2007
Developing…..
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Monday evening, thanking them for their support of bills sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program, and urging them to continue to pressure the Islamic Republic.
Netanyahu also informed the senators that he told US President Barack Obama in their meeting earlier in the day that it was the sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table.Netanyahu, for his part, told the president he appreciated the reiteration of that commitment to stop Iran, and advised that “sanctions should be strengthened” if Iran continues to move ahead toward the bomb. Iran, Netanyahu told Obama in their joint media appearance at the Oval Office, remains bent on the destruction of Israel.
The White House meeting marked the first time the two leaders had sat together since Obama’s visit to Israel in March. More relevantly, it marked their first personal contact since Obama and his Iranian counterpart, Rouhani, spoke by telephone over the weekend. Israel was informed prior to the conversation, but not consulted on the content, Israeli sources said.
Inspectors charged with the enormous task of overseeing the destruction of Syria’s deadly chemical weapons stockpiles kicked off their mission Monday, racing to meet tight deadlines against the backdrop of civil war.
New splits within the opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, also emerged on the conditions for attending the planned conference in Geneva. After meetings with US officials in New York last week, the group’s leader expressed readiness to attend talks aimed at establishing a transitional government with full executive powers, leaving open the question of whether President Bashar Assad could stay on.
Inspectors at The Hague said Sunday the inspectors’ priority is to achieve the first milestone of helping the country scrap its ability to manufacture chemical weapons by a November 1 deadline, using every means possible.
That may include smashing mixing equipment with sledgehammers, blowing up delivery missiles, driving tanks over empty shells or filling them with concrete, and running machines without lubricant so they seize up and become inoperable.
Some of the inspectors will be double-checking Syria’s initial disclosure of what weapons and chemical precursors it has and where they are located. Others will begin planning the logistics for visits to every location where chemicals or weapons are stored.
Within a week a second group of inspectors will arrive — fewer than 100 combined — and form teams that will fan out to individual sites. Their routes are secret — both for their safety and because Syria has the right not to reveal its military secrets, including base locations.
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