Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Global SITREP A9-16: Rise of the Prophetic Assyria?


Critical Update 9 March 2016: The U.S. CENTCOM Commander, General Lloyd Austin, informed the U.S. Congress yesterday that the failure of Mosul Dam (ancient and Biblical Nineveh) is a catastrophe waiting to happen: "If the dam fails, it will be a catastrophic. There will be thousands of people downstream that will either be injured or killed, certainly displaced. And the damage could extend all the way down to -- close to Baghdad, or into Baghdad"

 According to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad the "unprecedented" catastrophe would be of biblical proportions with the resultant 200-mile long flood potentially killing 500,000 to 1.5 million of the people who live in Mosul, the Tigris Valley towns of Tikrit and Samarra and southwards to Baghdad. The Mosul hydroelectric dam holds 2.2 cubic miles of water behind it in Lake Dahuk. These flood waters could reach depths of 45 or more feet during their rampage to the south. Mosul itself could suddenly find itself under 70 feet of water within an hour of the dam's failure.

Since the dam was build in the 1980s is has required a constant maintenance practice known as 'grouting' to keep it from collapsing completely. The process of grouting essentially shores up the ground underneath the dam with millions of tons of concrete. In 2014 when forces of the Islamic State over ran Mosul and took control of the dam all of the maintenance workers fled for their lives and have never returned. For two years now the critically essential grouting maintenance has not occurred and the dam is now in imminent danger of collapse.


27 February 2016:  There are a couple OSINT items that need to be part of an update to this SITREP. The first is from Bloomberg Business News which reported early this morning that all Kurdish leaders have agreed to proceed with a national referendum. In this referendum the issue of Kurdistan's independence from Iraq is an issue that will be decided by the Kurdish people themselves. 

An independent Kurdistan will be born with a Kurdish-developed petroleum production infrastructure sitting on 45 billion barrels of crude oil reserves according to British Petroleum (BP Plc) data. The Iraqi government, for its part, says the planned referendum is illegal without coordination and approval from itself. Kurdistan has been exporting its own oil and reaping the financial benefits through a pipeline into Turkey for the past six months. These profits has largely been consumed by a collapsing oil market as well as the increasingly successful prosecution of the war against Islamic State invaders.

A report in The Economist supports what has been posted below, Kurdish independence is a virtual fait accompli among the resident 6 million Iraqi Kurds. What they have yet to determine is when independence will occur and where the national borders will be fixed. All of the factors necessary for a successful independent nation exist in Kurdistan. A hundred years after the Kurdish people were divided up by European colonial powers (principally Britain and France) into four artificially created national borders of the former Ottoman Turkey, Iran, Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) self-determination will be begun by the Kurds in Iraq. The rise of the Islamic State has been central to the drive for Kurdish self-determination and, ultimately, independence as a nation-state.

 

25 February 2016: There are strong indications that a specific but rarely discussed Bible prophecy from the Book of Isaiah may actually be in the process of becoming a reality in the world.


In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.
In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance.”
As clearly indicated by the map above, I think this prophecy may be directly related to the emergence of an independent Kurdistan, which for all intents and purposes is occurring in de facto fashion due to the fracturing of Iraq and the ongoing war against the islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Compare the above map with one which depicts the same area as it was circa the time that Isaiah lived gave this prophecy.


The point of this map is the area of the in the darker shade of green. You will notice that the intended future state of Kurdistan is virtually identical to that which was the central homeland of Assyria in Isaiah's day, or roughly 800 to 750 BC.

In the past several weeks an increasingly loud call for an independent Kurdistan has been made not just by Kurdish leaders, but also by an array of international voices. Notable among them is the State of Israel, in particular its Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who one month ago called for an independent Kurdistan. Her call was more or less specific to Iraqi Kurdistan given that the rest of Iraq is currently under the Ayatollah Khamenei's domination.

But what is perhaps one of the driving forces at present is an American reliance on the Kurds in the war against the Islamic State. Iraqi Kurds are fighting to free themselves and others who live in the region from IS tyranny, such as the Yazidis and native Assyrians. It is highly unlikely the Kurds will relinquish a de facto independence they have purchased with their own blood.

But the Kurd's are taking their quest for statehood a step further than just de facto existence. Masoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has announced that the time has come for a popular referendum of Kurdish independence. There is little doubt that the referendum will pass with 98% of the people voting for independence.

To be sure there are other important factors involved. Chief among them from the eschatological point-of-view are the fulfillment of prophecies regarding Syria (Isaiah 17, and Jeremiah 49:23-27), Iran (Jeremiah 49:34-39), as well as Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38/39. What all of these prophecies make clear is that, with the exception of Israel, the majority of current nations which these prophecies directly involve will have ceased to exist in the not too distant future. That leaves a vacuum in the region, one that a new country such as a Kurdistan, or as the Bible prophetically calls it, Assyria, to fill those territories north and east of the Euphrates River.'

This is another of the rapidly changing dynamics in the Middle Est that could have been part of SITREP A8-16, but I believe warrants a SITREP of its own given that the Bible prophecy of Isaiah 19:23-25 clearly foretells the rise of a new nation north of a greater Israel in the near future.

12 comments:

  1. Hmm interesting, I always thought that the kurds were the ancient medes

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  2. I have a map of the Middle East on the wall in my office with one half showing B.C. boundaries and names and the other half showing present boundary and names. The developing Kurdistan also resembles the shape of ancient Mesopotamia but maybe larger in size. As in the days of Noah............

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  3. Always thought that prophecy was for the Millennial Kingdom.

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  4. Nathan,

    (Sidebar before I respond to Nathan's comment: Wow and LOL!!! Ya'll are definitely getting way ahead of the remaining paragraphs paragraphs for this SITREP.)

    Indeed, Isaiah 19:23-25 is a prophecy whose fulfillment will occur during the Millennial Kingdom.

    We are all fond of saying, nay, believing absolutely, that the Harpazo can occur at any microsecond. Okay, then it follows the 70th Week is just as imminent, and since the 70th Week is a literal number of days (2,520) and Jesus' Kingdom occurs no later than the additional 45 days later (2,565 total) just how far into the future are we talking?

    It is not distant fulfillment, and from the point of the start of the 70th Week, which I also believe it not too far away (certainly IMHO less than a decade) we are not that far from the "confirming of the covenant among many."

    In fact, I believe the Millennial Kingdom is temporally closer to us in early 2016 than the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom is to us in history (March 2003).

    How's that for a perspective on prophetic fulfillment?

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  5. Hi Sean,

    A very relevant possibility (an independent Kurdistan country). Ok, we look forward to your development of this, I'm thinking of the extraordinary geo-political movements required to see such an INDEPENDENT (recognised by the big players - USA, E.U, etc), which means that trenchant Turkish resistance, and Iraqie resistance will be eliminated. However if this will fit in with the prophetic actions of Messiah Jesus, thus this Isaiah verses, then we know it will happen irrelevant of any men's opposition. Praise Messiah Jesus !. .

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  6. "As it was in the days of Noah" -- that is what is about to take place in the flood of prophetic fulfillment.

    However, in the days of Noah, there was no such thing as Asshur, or Babylon, or Persia. It was the sons of Noah's sons who gave rise to these nations and all other nations.

    I have yet to find the mention of any nation of people relative to Genesis 6. The Table of Nations does not appear until Genesis 10, which is a very long time after the Flood of Noah. In that long-gone era there were only Shemites, Hamites and Japhethites living in the early post-Flood world.

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  7. This Kurdistan would also resolve the current problem with Russia, Persia, and Ottoman Turkey invading Israel as allies per Ezekiel 38 and 39. It appears that Erdogan Turkey is a close Obama ally whereas Russia is apparently helping the Kurds. Does this mean that Russia will succeed in dethroning Erdogan and Obama or is it simply another Obama deception? Could Israel's support for the Kurds perhaps lead to the inevitable agreement with the Antichrist at the beginning of the 70th week? I really appreciate your expert opinion on these matters.

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  8. Curt,

    The Kurds are at the moment divided into different factions depending on where they are located.

    For the most part this report is about the Kurds in Iraq and their semi-autonomous region which is seeking full independence through the referendum.

    The Kurds in Syria and the Kurds in Turkey are a different matter. Those in Syria, as well as those in Iraq are both opposed to and at war with the Islamic State.

    However, the Kurds in northwestern Syria are also pro-Assad; they fight against the various rebel groups in and around Aleppo.

    The Kurds in northeastern Syria (east of the Euphrates River) are concerned only with war against the Islamic State, and are not in open rebellion against the al-Assad regime. I think eventually the Iraqi and these northeastern Syrian Kurds will achieve unity, and that could lead to a Kurdistan from the east bank of the Euphrates River in Syria to the Tigris River in Iraq.

    I still do not see Turkey as one of the Ezekiel 38/39 invaders of the Magog Confederation. Those peoples that Ezekiel prophesied about migrated north of the Caucasus Mountains more than 1,000 years ago, and were driven there by invading Seljuk Turks between 900 and 1000 AD.

    The coming series of much larger full-scale wars in the Middle East will determine what the maps will look like at that time, and I believe the result of the Ezekiel 38/39 prophecy is what will make the "covenant among many" possible.

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  9. Thank you very much for the information about the various Kurd factions!

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  10. Sean, I read about once a week, Debka. I know you're more insightful, but I was intrigued by the (apparent) building of a dirty bomb by Hezballah in Zabadani, Syria. Any veracity to this? THX.

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  11. Scipio,

    I got wind of that story at around 3 AM this morning, and I soon found myself looking at recent satellite imagery of al-Zabadani and the whole Qalamoun border region. I know that Israel conducted airstrikes in this same area a few months ago (JUL 15) and it has been the scene of intense warfare between Sunni jihadist rebels and al-Assad's forces backed by Hezbollah units since 2014. If there's WMD here IAF jets will certainly return soon. I'm not done checking on this report.

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