Global SITREP C7-17: The Syrian Situation Revisited, Part VIII

The military Situation in Syria, 7 July 2017. These are current and true front lines of the Trump-Putin agreement. Click on the map for greater detail. Less than 24 hours later Syrian and Hezbollah forces launched a major assault upon rebel-held As-Suweida.

The former line beyond which enemy forces of Iran and Hezbollah were not to advance southwards.

Update 14 July 2017:  Now it gets a whole lot more interesting, prophetically speaking! Eschatology Today has learned that Russia wants its CSTO allies, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in particular, to deploy their military forces into Syria in support of Russian military objectives.

As most of you are aware from previous Eschatology Today reports, the view here is that the prophecy of Ezekiel 38/39 reflects modern-day geo-political realities. This interpretation holds that the Central Asian nations (former republics of the Soviet Union) constitute the bulk of the nations identified in Ezekiel's prophecy which also participate in the near future doomed-to-failure attempt to invade and conquer Israel for the spoils of war.

Here these nations are now with Russia putting the prophetic hooks in their jaws in drawing them into a middle eastern war which itself is like a derailed locomotive disaster about to happen at the next bend in the tracks. Looking up with eyes wide open, brother sand sisters!

11 July 2017: The US-Russian agreement for a partial ceasefire in southwestern Syria along the Israeli-Jordanian borders went into effect two and one-half hours ago. (See new 7JUL17 map at top) This is not a formalized, written and signed document for a cessation of hostilities, but a verbal agreement made between the US and Russian leadership during their sidebar meeting at the G20 conference in Hamburg, Germany. It is the most recent ceasefire in a long series of failed ceasefires brokered by the US and Russia in Syria. 

The closest thing to any detail of what is in the agreement is that all opposing forces must maintain their current positions; they are essentially to be frozen in place. Reportedly, according to the Russian side, the cessation is to be policed by Russian MPs. There are no US forces on the ground in southwestern Syria east of Al-Tanf or Raqqa. In Syrian government media there has been no mention of the cessation of hostilities.

Israel, Jordan and the US have long been monitoring southern Syria with the most advanced, high-tech surveillance systems on any international border in the world. Since the surrveillance system made by Raytheon went active there has never been a succesdful infiltration of Jordanian territory. The system monitors troop movement deep inside Syrian territory. Any infiltration attempt receives a warning. If the warning is ignored the infiltrators are summarily exterminated.

7 July 2017: The unexpected has happened. The expected 30-minute meeting of presidents Trump and Putin at the G20 became an unexpected meeting of two and a quarter hours. The unexpected happened again when the announcement of a negotiated ceasefire in Syria to commence Sunday was made public by SECSTATE Tillerson right after the US and Russian presidential meeting concluded. 

Details on what is within the ceasefire agreement should be forthcoming. However, initial reporting seems to confirm that Iranian militias, including Hezbollah, must withdraw at least 30 miles from the Israeli and Jordanian borders as related in the 3 July update below. Also, combat operations against IS will continue. How Iran and Turkey will respond to this agreement is unknown, but Iran is likely going to be furious at being jilted by their Russian ally.

And there's the rub. No ceasefire of Russian involvement in Syria has ever been worth the paper it wasn't written on. This fact is also primarily superceded by what Isaiah and Jeremiah wrote more than two and one half millennia ago. How the truce collapses is not as important as how Bible prophecy guarantees that it will fail.

VBIED terror attack in Damascus on 2 July 2017. Image by AFP from Times of Israel. This image is proof that Damascus is not yet destroyed as some prophecy teachers are prematurely teaching.

3 July 2017: Part VIII of this SITREP series on the war in Syria begins by focusing on a rather critical circumstance. This circumstance is present, as seen in the map above, from Israel's Golan Heights adjoining Lebanon, south to Quneitra and on down to and along all of the 235-mile long Syrian-Jordanian border. Under a joint US-Jordan-Russia agreement no military forces other than Syrian government's own forces are permitted to be any nearer than 30 miles of the border as indicated by the red line. This agreement exists despite the fact that the Syrian armed forces are under the de facto control of IRGC-Qods Force commander, Brig. Gen Qassem Soleimani, and therefore, Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei. Also in accordance with this agreement only token Syrian government forces would be present at border crossings. This 'closed' foreign military region clearly includes the city of Dara'a.

The truly critical and problematic circumstance detail is that the IRGC-led Hezbollah and Iranian proxy militias are present within this established foreign military no-go zone. They have made no effort to withdraw, and actually have continues their advance. Keeping these Iranian-led forces away from the Israeli and Jordanian borders was the key objective of the tri-party agreement in order to forestall an escalation of the warfighting to include Israel and Jordan in defense of their borders from Iranian military encroachment. 

As of this point in time, particularly in the pro-regime offensive against rebels in and around Dara'a (ostensibly under the control of the Multinational Operations Center (MOC) in Amman) and just outside of Quneitra, the agreement has become an objective failure posing a clear and present danger for unpredictable consequences. These unpredictable consequences, which we have been expecting per Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49:23-27, could quickly become tomorrow's headlines.