Global SITREP D4-17: The War Continues...

Update 13 October 2017: As expected, and strongly hinted at in the previous update, in an important policy speech this afternoon President Trump de-certified the JCPOA. More importantly this speech should be regarded as (coining a phrase here folks) the "Trump Iran Doctrine" or (TID). The TID went well beyond the provisions of the JCPOA to include naming the Iranian Shi'a Hojjatieh regime itself and its primary support mechanism, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. 

The Trump Iran Doctrine outlined key items, specifically acts of war by Iran against the United States of America, that have occurred over the course of the past 39 years. These acts of war, thus specifically enumerated, constitute the casus belli for a formal declaration of war in the future. The United States Congress has 60 days to determine a course of action, failing which President  Trump can act under his Constitutional Authority in the manner he deems proper as the U.S. Armed Forces Commander-In-Chief.

Most media are decidedly playing down the gravity of what President Trump announced today. That is not done on Eschatology Today. This is extremely serious business, and in all likelihood will probably result in direct acts of military aggression by Iranian forces against American military forces and interests anywhere in the world.   

11 October 2017: This is not new news, but within a finite number of hours President of the United States Donald J. Trump will decertify the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Deal). As expressed on this blog from the get-go, the JCPOA was an absolute disaster; it was the still-born baby of the godless Global Elite. It is an international agreement which is diametrically opposed to the considerable national security interests of the United States. 

As many may already be aware, the mere threat of this action taking place has the Global Elite, (the Global Oligarchy to long-time Eschatology Today readers), and their global corporate media lapdogs, simply besides themselves in hand-wringing angst. If you want to understand global who's who in the run up to the 70th Week simply look to see if a given individual or organization is for the JCPOA. Those individuals and organizations will be the Antichrist's slavish followers. Nobody in their right mind gives apocalyptic Iranian Shi'a mullahs or North Korean dictators the ability to construct nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. That kind of thing is inherently suicidal for the people who allow it to happen.

The Global Elite plainly see that an American President is about to pull that still-born baby off of life support, and they will fight his action tooth and nail, at least for a while or until the point of the JCPOA has been made moot by the fulfillment of Jeremiah 49:34-39 and Ezekiel 38/39 or global thermonuclear warfare engulfs the earth..

What will president Trump's decertification of the JCPOA mean in real terms? It will be a defining moment. It will make clear the the U.N. IAEA has been unable to verify, as required by the JCPOA, from day one that Iran has been in compliance with the provisions of the agreement. How so? Because an America decertification of the JCPOA will make clear that Iran never halted its nuclear weapons program as required; that the nuclear weapons program has been going full-steam ahead within Iranian military infrastructure as well as within North Korea. This has been stated here many times over: a North Korean nuclear test is an Iranian nuclear test.

It is the opinion of Eschatology Today that the impending U.S. decertification of the JCPOA opens the door to the military option of enforcing compliance in that Iran will 

a) not acquire the ability to indigenously produce a nuclear weapon,
b) honor commitments in countering proliferation of nuclear technology and delivery systems, and
c) end its destructive and destablizing role in the MidEast as the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism.

All of these are the end result of the aforementioned prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

10 October 2017: Just realized that this SITREP is the 500th post on Eschatology Today. Kind of a milestone I suppose, but there is much yet to be done, so now is not the time to pause in reflection.

Israel24 has published, as have other Israeli media, a report on comments made by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman made clear that the next war will include all of Lebanon and Syria, as the correctly named "Northern Front." Lieberman also made clear that the old paradigm of northern sector fighting in either Lebanon or Syria is now dead and buried, never to exist again. From Lebanon's Mediterranean Coast clockwise to the Jordanian border is one, contiguous frontline that Israel will engage in warfighting operations with enemy forces.

Long-term Eschatology Today readers will recognize that these media reports mirror what has been posted here for a very long time now - that the next war will see the fulfillment of a flood of prophecies - one of which is key but unfortunately has long been ignored by other Bible prophecy teachers, websites and blogs. 

I am referring to Joshua 13, a chapter which belongs in a grouping of chapters 1-12, but for various reasons has been excluded from being grouped with those chapters. And this is just as well, because the chapter is actually a 2,700-year old prophecy for our time. 


5 October 2017: Most have probably heard by now the headline that burst forth at 4 AM this morning on the National Review that President Trump will de-certify that Iran is in compliance of the JCPOA nuclear agreement this coming Monday, 9 October.  The de-certification will effectively end the farce that has plagued the Trump Administration from the moment the president first certified that Iran has transparently, verifiably and fully implemented the agreement, and that the agreement is "vital to the national security interests of the United States."  

It has been beyond my ability to fathom why President Donald J. Trump would willingly continue with the deception and charade begun by the Barack Hussein Obama administration. The only recourse for a Christian is to state that God is in complete control and what is being done is being done because He wills it to be done. I accept this in faith; it is after all late in the 9th inning.

As the the title of this SITREP, take a moment to go over this report from Deutsche Welle issued a little over three hours ago. The so-called "de-confliction zones" have become killing zones for the Russian, Syrian and Iranian proxy forces in Syria. Indiscriminate slaughter and bombings of hospitals, schools and other critical civilian infrastructure has become rampant, intentional. Where's the antiwar crowd now? In Idlib there are now a half million civilians without and kind of medical institutions to turn to for care in a war zone.

If this kind of slaughter were done by American-led CJTF-OIR forces the antiwar crowd would be screaming for Trump's head on a silver platter. This is the kind of slaughter which could, and probably should, backfire on Russia, Syria and Iran. In all likelihood, it probably will.

Kurdistan and Israel are Allies

1 October 2017: Contrary to reporting in global corporate media of late, the war in Syria is not over. Nor is the war in Iraq. These obviously directly related wars are in fact the same war, but there is much more to come before either is resolved and not in favor of the most belligerent party driving both of them, the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

The war in Syria and Iraq, both of whom have governments completely dominated by the Islamic Republic of Iran, are integral to the international chaos being deliberately created by the Hojjatieh clerics of Iran. The Hojjatieh are Shia supremacists who instigated the revolution in Iran of the late 1970's, and who believe that the creation of international chaos will hasten the arrival of their long-awaited and entirely mythical al-Mahdi (the 12th Imam). 

The truth formula here is simple: the war in Iraq and Syria cannot end because neither war has yet managed to create the requisite level of international chaos (rampant war) to hasten their mythical al-Mahdi's arrival. They have managed to come tantalizingly close to bringing Russia and the USA into direct conflict, and that might occur at some point, but not due to the Hojjatieh's designs. As discussed in the previous SITREP, there's a truly Divine appointment book in progress to fulfillment.

Iraqi Kurdistan (Bashur), Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur) and Iranian Kurdistan (Rojilat)

So, the in-progress wars and rumors thereof will continue. And the next one looming large will pit newly emergent Kurdistan (the one in Iraq - see map above) against the combined military forces of the Iranian Shia dominated government of Iraq, Iran and its proxies and Turkey. But the Kurds have a stalwart ally in Israel, which is very interesting considering the majority of Kurds are decidedly secular Sunni Muslims. (In forethought of how this will likely play out one can almost sense the Kurds turning as a nation to the God of Israel and ditching the mythical Allah. This outcome would be in keeping with a future literal fulfillment of Isaiah 19:23-25 in the Millennium Kingdom.) Israel immediately recognized the validity of the Kurdish independence vote to achieve their own state.

In the recent 25 September referendum voting on national independence for that part of autonomous Kurdistan (i.e. the Kurdistan Regional Government or KRG) within Iraq's recognized borders a full 92% of Kurds voted for independence from Iraq. For all intents and purposes Iraqi Kurdistan has been autonomous (semi-independent) since the mid-1990's, and probably since Saddam Hussein attacked Halabja with his entire arsenal of chemical weapons (Mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun and VX) in March 1988 killing 5,000 people, 75% of whom were women and children. Iraqi Kurdistan was protected by American and Coalition combat pilots enforcing the No-Fly Zone from 1991 to 1996 (Operation Provide Comfort and Provide Comfort II) and by US and UK air forces from 1997 to 2003 (Operation Northern Watch). 

NOTE: Eschatology Today is ignoring global corporate media reports of the U.S. State Department rejecting the Kurdish referendum vote results. They do not pass the 'smell test' as they reek of "Deep State" and "DC Establishment" disinformation. The fact is that the Kurds are our allies. U.S. Special Forces are embedded with Kurdish military forces in Iraq and Syria; another 5,000 provide direct support; they coordinate CJTF-OIR airstrikes when and where needed. The U.S. has heavily armed and armored the Kurds military formations to the tune of $415 billion in the past year alone. Finally, the U.S. told the Turks to take a flying leap when we went to war at the side of the Kurds and their Syrian Arab allies (the SDF). That leap remains in-progress.

Self-explanatory image.

The battle lines are drawn. They look like this: Kurdistan, Israel the US and Sunni Arab Coalition standing against Iran and its proxies, the Shi'a dominated government of Iraq, Hezbollah of Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. So, if you're among those noted above as militarily opposed to Bashur Kurdish (Iraqi Kurdish) independence, which of Kurdistan's acknowledged allies would or could you strike? Israel, of course. Hezbollah, as Iran's preeminent proxy in the region, and the its leader Hassan Nasrallah, has already made threats this morning to strike all of Israel in the near future; that no place in Israel would be secure from Hezbollah's missiles. Nasrallah's calculus is as bad as his Iranian Ayatollah's, if not worse.

Global SITREP C11-16: The Levant Status Report

The Levant

26 August 2016: There's no beating around the bush on this one. The situation in the Levant, as well as in Mesopotamia (Iraq) is not good. In fact it is more than just not good, it is critical to the point of a major military conflagration as we have been expecting for some time now. 

In Iraq, both the jihadists of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda are literally screaming to their adherents to prepare for intense all-out war. War has been raging in Iraq incessantly since Obama's ill-advised withdrawal of US boots 5 years ago. Now US boots and US Special Forces are back in the thick of it in Iraq, just as the awaited Battle for Mosul is gearing up. Islamic State-controlled territory in Iraq is heavy around Mosul, but has been atrophied to nothing more than thin ribbons of land along major highways to the Syrian border.

In next door Syria, Islamic State is essentially telling its fellow jihadists in Iraq the equivalent of "you're on your own." Also and of major importance, the Turkish army launched an impromptu (planned and organized within a week) armored invasion of Syrian territory just east of the Euphrates River. This invasion's sole purpose, as Erdogan claims, is to keep Kurdish forces from establishing a line of contiguous territories along Turkey's southern border. The thing is, that's just a straw-man. Turkey's armored forces (tanks and APCs) invaded Syria near the town of Jarabulus in order to stake its own claim with its own favorite Turkoman jihadist militia employed as a proxy force. The Kurds had moved the the overwhelming bulk of their forces back to the east side of the Euphrates River a week ago. This Turkish action has absolutely nothing to do with NATO or the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State.

On the coastline there is every indication that a third Lebanon War could erupt with little or no warning.  Israel's greatest threat, as revealed in the IDF's publicly revealed strategy whitepaper 12 months ago (August 2015), is not focused on the threat posed by Iranian nuclear weapons or the ballistic missiles designed to carry them to Tel Aviv. Israel's military focus is on Hezbollah in Lebanon. This fact was recently reinforced by IDF Chief of Staff (Lt. Gen.) Gadi Eizenkot who declared Hezbollah to be "the most serious threat to Israel." This is without having to state the obvious that Hezbollah is fully under the control of the IRGC's Quds Force which takes its orders directly from the Iranian Ayatollah.

If you're a long-time or a newly arrived reader of Eschatology Today, then you implicitly understand all of the many prophetic implications of these real-world realities. Which of these is the first prophetic domino is an easy question to answer, it's where the war is already in progress, and that's pretty much from the coastlines of Israel and Lebanon all the way to the Persian Gulf. Just as Bible prophecy has foretold.

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.

Isaiah 19:23-25 (KJ21)

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.

Global SITREP B6-14: An Eye On Kurdistan

24 January 2014: This is a good time to look through the periscope and see what's going on around on the periphery of the Middle East battlegrounds. One rather expansive tract of territory to place an eye on is that of "Kurdistan."

What we know as Kurdistan looms large right now. The Kurds, all 30 million of them, live in contiguous territory within southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran and constitutes the world's largest ethnic group without its own internationally recognized homeland.

Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War the Kurds in northern Iraq, a/k/a "Iraqi Kurdistan," have maintained and improved on an autonomous political entity known as the Kurdistan Regional Government. This government essentially functions as if it were a separate country, but it remains an integral part of Iraq. In Iran and Turkey the Kurds have long been a festering insurgency for those two governments, especially with respect to Turkey. 

In Syria it's not much different, except that the over two million Kurds living there take on all sides in the ongoing civil war should they encroach upon "Syrian Kurdistan."  Following the rejection of a Syrian Kurdish request to join the Syrian civil war negotiations in Switzerland the Kurds on Tuesday of this week made known their extreme displeasure at being rejected as peace parlay participants and promptly declared the formation of their own provincial government for "Syrian Kurdistan." The image at the top is from one of the Kurds flag-festooned rallies this past week in northern Syria.

In the map image, the part of Syria is actually slightly out of date as the Kurdish militia has taken a lot more territory for itself with all lands from Ras-al-Ain on the Turkish border, south along the Khabir River to the city of Al Hassakah and then on to the Iraqi border being under their military control. 

The most interesting thing to note with respect to the above map is how much this territory resembles that of ancient Assyria prior to the conquest of Aram, Damascus and the northern kingdom of Israel. With 30 million people longing for a homeland of their own I have come to consider that the prophecy of Isaiah 19:23-25 might very well apply to Kurdistan (Assyria) during the Millennium of the Lord's reign finally getting their homeland as the inheritors of the northern part of ancient Assyria.

"In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”"

The prophetic "In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria - a blessing in the midst of the land..." tells me that the map of the Middle East will be radically different than it looks today. Gone from the current map are the countries of Lebanon, Aram (Damascus) Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In their geographic place are just three countries serving the Lord of hosts: "Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance."