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| 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.
