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Massive fireball |
(UPDATED Below) 30 April 2018: It was a very bad day for the Islamic Republic of Iran, and if it's any consolation to the Ayatollah, much worse days are yet to come.
The image above is of the fireball that erupted following a preemptive strike on what had been known as the Syria Arab Army's 47th Brigade base located 7 miles south of Hama in northwestern Syria. The base, which had been occupied by an IRGC militia of Pakistani Shi'a known as Liya Zaynabiyoun, is adjacent to the village of Ma'arin al-Jabal. The "had been" is due to the size of the first and second order detonations; it is unlikely much remains of this base.
This base itself has been noted by some as a bunker complex. On the contrary, the three massive above ground structures were perfect for housing and/or assembling fairly large ballistic missiles. The largest of the structures, seen in satellite images captured earlier this year, was well over 400 feet in length and 300 feet in width, two relatively smaller structures measured approximately 300 feet in length and 75 feet in width. Eight ancillary buildings were adjacent to the larger ones and could not have escaped the primary and secondary blasts intact.
Accordingly, use of a bunker buster bomb does not fit the above-ground nature of this facility. However, Israel's version of the US Mk-82 laser guided bomb, known as the MP-500 (Massive Penetrator 500 lbs) could have been the weapon of choice to level this facility and leave a gigantic smoking hole in its place.
The main blast registered as a 2.6 Richter scale event on regional seimosgraphs. According to many reports the blast and dozens of simultaneous secondary ordnance detonations killed or wounded a very large number of the Pakistani Shi'a militiamen who apparently had duty safeguarding two hundred Iranian ballistic missiles destined for delivery to Lebanese Hezbollah. That delivery has obviously been cancelled. Additional strikes are reported to have occurred at bases near Aleppo, but they do not even remotely compare to what happened at Ma'arin al-Jabal at 10:30 PM Sunday night.
Then came Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's equally massive nuclear bombshell regarding the Iranian nuclear weapons program. To be short and sweet on this issue, this intelligence coup makes preemptive strikes on the Iranian nuclear weapons sites more likely than not. The nonsensical JCPOA that Obama and Kerry masterminded is now just so much burnt toast. We'll find out how burnt it is in about 12 days time.
It also must be noted that the Israeli human intelligence collection operation which secured the hundreds of thousands of documents and digital data is unlike anything any nation has achieved in modern history. A close second intelligence coup might be the Polish engineer during WWII who memorized the Nazi "Enigma" cryptographic machine's impossibly complex inner workings so that allied engineers could reporoduce it in England. However, even the Enigma machine pales in comparison the the details exposed by the Israeli operation.
And as US President Trump prepares to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Eschatology Today would be completely remiss to not note one important detail revealed by PM Netanyahu. The Iranian warhead design appears to be virtually identical to the primary core that Kim Jong Un was photographed standing next to not too long ago. As has long been maintained here, the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs have been conjoined twins for decades.
UPDATE 1 May 2018: If you've not yet seen the entirety of PM Netanyahu's presentation on the Islamic Republic of Iran's "Project Amad," please make the effort to do so as what I am adding as an update will bring all of his revealed information full-circle and bring full understanding on why Iran has been dead set on the development nuclear weapons.
The Iranian development of nuclear weapons has always been 100% about Shi'a Islamic eschatology. In fact the name of their effort, which PM Netanyahu revealed as "Project Amad" is actually over-anglicized from the Farsi language, and should be "Project Amahd." "Project Amahd" itself is actually Farsi shorthand for its true name, "Project al-Mahdi." Many of you are now likely having light bulb illuminating in your minds because you are aware that the al-Madi is central to much the Islamic creed. For Shi'a Islami, the al-Mahdi is ground zero for all of their eschatological belief.
The focus here will not be on the man who is this Shi'a messianic figure, but what his adherents, known as Hojjatieh and Twelvers, believe. For them the al-Mahdi is the foundation of everything they believe. And what they believe is the utility of nuclear weapons in quickly achieving their end-state objective in hastening hthe al-Mahdi's reappearance once they possess such weapons. Israel knows this, and the U.S. Government ever since the Clinton Administration has known this. Now we all know this.
A few brief points on what the Shi'a believe, and are acting on. The Iranian Shi'a Twelvers, who are 85% of Shi'a Islam, all believe that the Sunni Muslims will make war on the al-Mahdi. So iran has been at war with Sunni Islam for some time due to this belief.
The ranian Shi'a Twelvers also believe - and this explains perfectly why Iran is so invested in the Syrian Civil War - that a great war must occur in Syria until the country is completely destroyed. A similar rationale exists for the country of Iraq. The Shi'a Twelvers, such as former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his clique of clerics, believe that provoking nuclear war with Israel or America will hasten al-Mahdi's reappearance; such chaos is critical to this end. If the Islamic Republic of Iran acquires nuclear weapons, such as the five weapons PM Netanyahu cited, they will use them.
Now you should should have full understanding on why the U.S. and Israel, and a precious few other nations, particularly Saudi-led GCC, see the imperative necessity of preempting Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons even if it means launching strikes into Iran.