Update 05 January 2016: That didn't take long. Exactly one week after posting the three sentences highlighted below (in red), Hezbollah has begun its attack upon Israel as ordered by Ayatollah Khamenei for the reasons outlined in the opening paragraphs of this SITREP. The next steps will be to witness the response Israel has promised will be the result of such attacks.
That this attack occurs just as Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab allies have entered into a state of virtual war with the Islamic Republic of Iran fully exposes the overall eschatological mindset of the Twelver regime in Tehran. In keeping with the Twelvers fervent brand of political messianism and desire to hasten that eschatology by all means available to them, the greater the chaos in the Middle East the better their chances of self-fulfilling their eschatological expectations. War with Israel has always been the key to this expectancy.
What is occurring on Israel's border with Lebanon and the Golan is far more than mere retaliation for Israel's dispatching into eternity of the baby-murdering Islamic terrorist Samir Kuntar; this is an emergent battlefield which could quickly envelope the whole of the Northern Front, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Galilee with the eternal fate of the city of Damascus hanging in the balance.
28 December 2015: There is every indication this morning that Israel is prepared to strike "crushing blows" against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Whether those blows are preemptive or reactionary may depend a lot on exactly what intelligence Israel has collected regarding Hassan's Nasrallah's bombastic rhetorical threats against Israel.
That this attack occurs just as Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab allies have entered into a state of virtual war with the Islamic Republic of Iran fully exposes the overall eschatological mindset of the Twelver regime in Tehran. In keeping with the Twelvers fervent brand of political messianism and desire to hasten that eschatology by all means available to them, the greater the chaos in the Middle East the better their chances of self-fulfilling their eschatological expectations. War with Israel has always been the key to this expectancy.
What is occurring on Israel's border with Lebanon and the Golan is far more than mere retaliation for Israel's dispatching into eternity of the baby-murdering Islamic terrorist Samir Kuntar; this is an emergent battlefield which could quickly envelope the whole of the Northern Front, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Galilee with the eternal fate of the city of Damascus hanging in the balance.
28 December 2015: There is every indication this morning that Israel is prepared to strike "crushing blows" against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Whether those blows are preemptive or reactionary may depend a lot on exactly what intelligence Israel has collected regarding Hassan's Nasrallah's bombastic rhetorical threats against Israel.
Preliminary airstrikes launched within the past 24 hours by the IAF appear to have occurred along the Lebanese-Syrian border; according to YNet the strikes were confirmed by Israel's Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold to have preempted the transfer of SA-22 'Greyhound' mobile SAM systems (Pantsyr S1) from Syria to Hezbollah. These strikes are likely both a stern warning and a dare to Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah: if Hezbollah is feeling froggy - go ahead and jump, but the result will be a dead frog hitting the ground impaled on an IDF bayonet. See Samuel 13 for the strong prophetic relevance here.
Hezbollah's forces have been decimated in Syrian combat, not unlike their Iranian officer corps, regular IRGC forces and proxy militias. The recent combat death of IRGC Major General Hossein Hamedani, among the hundreds of IRGC combat deaths suffered in the last two months, has resulted in Ayatollah Khamenei's appointment and return as overall IRGC commander in the region their most senior veteran flag officer, Major General Mohammad Jafar Assadi, a/k/a Abu Ahmad. Major General Assadi was the IRGC commander in Lebanon a decade ago so his appointment to return along with another thousand or so fresh IRGC troops may well be what lies behind Hassan Nasrallah's braggadocio regarding what he is sending to Israel in retribution of the recent assassination of the child murdering terrorist Samir Kuntar.
This also belies the seriousness with which Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei regards the overall situation in Syria where continued defeats will almost certainly provide cause to the Iranian Expediency Council's Assembly of Experts, led by Hashemi Rafsanjani, to call for the ousting of the Supreme Leader. After all, in Twelver-Hojjatieh ruled Iran there is the essential necessity for a Supreme Leader who effectively demonstrates the kind of "rightly guided" leadership for hastening the arrival of the al-Mahdi. Negotiating away Iranian nuclear weapons with the "Great Satan" is another sign of weakness in the velayat-e-fiqh this Ayatollah has come to personify, and is not something a Twelver truly worthy of his jihad can live with. Regime change in Iran is an integral theme of the Jeremiah 49:34-39 prophecy.
Therefore, attacking Israel in an attempt to instantly widen the war, and thus the al-Mahdi-hastening chaos that would ensue, appears to be what the current Ayatollah is counting on to maintain his position. A Syrian regional official from Quneitra, Ra'afat al-Bokar, confirmed this Iranian plan in telling the Fars News Agency the coming attacks will occur from Israel's Golan as well as from Syrian territory as well. This does not bode well for the longevity and well-being of Lebanon, Syria or Iran and is certainly in keeping with the multiple prophecies levied against them by the Lord's prophets of Israel.
The above map indicates the triangle-shaped area (left of the red-line) on the Golan frontier between Israel, Jordan and Syria where the Islamic State-aligned terrorists of the Liwa Shuhada al-Yarmouk (Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade) are known to have maintained predominant territorial control since 2013. An official IS announcement of a 'Wilayat Yarmouk' or 'Wilayat Deraa' may be only a matter of time.
Hezbollah's forces have been decimated in Syrian combat, not unlike their Iranian officer corps, regular IRGC forces and proxy militias. The recent combat death of IRGC Major General Hossein Hamedani, among the hundreds of IRGC combat deaths suffered in the last two months, has resulted in Ayatollah Khamenei's appointment and return as overall IRGC commander in the region their most senior veteran flag officer, Major General Mohammad Jafar Assadi, a/k/a Abu Ahmad. Major General Assadi was the IRGC commander in Lebanon a decade ago so his appointment to return along with another thousand or so fresh IRGC troops may well be what lies behind Hassan Nasrallah's braggadocio regarding what he is sending to Israel in retribution of the recent assassination of the child murdering terrorist Samir Kuntar.
This also belies the seriousness with which Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei regards the overall situation in Syria where continued defeats will almost certainly provide cause to the Iranian Expediency Council's Assembly of Experts, led by Hashemi Rafsanjani, to call for the ousting of the Supreme Leader. After all, in Twelver-Hojjatieh ruled Iran there is the essential necessity for a Supreme Leader who effectively demonstrates the kind of "rightly guided" leadership for hastening the arrival of the al-Mahdi. Negotiating away Iranian nuclear weapons with the "Great Satan" is another sign of weakness in the velayat-e-fiqh this Ayatollah has come to personify, and is not something a Twelver truly worthy of his jihad can live with. Regime change in Iran is an integral theme of the Jeremiah 49:34-39 prophecy.
Therefore, attacking Israel in an attempt to instantly widen the war, and thus the al-Mahdi-hastening chaos that would ensue, appears to be what the current Ayatollah is counting on to maintain his position. A Syrian regional official from Quneitra, Ra'afat al-Bokar, confirmed this Iranian plan in telling the Fars News Agency the coming attacks will occur from Israel's Golan as well as from Syrian territory as well. This does not bode well for the longevity and well-being of Lebanon, Syria or Iran and is certainly in keeping with the multiple prophecies levied against them by the Lord's prophets of Israel.
