War Speculation

Long-time readers of this blog know I'm a big fan of Joel Rosenberg.  I just wanted to pass along his latest update for your consideration...

How much time do we have before war between Iran and Israel breaks out? Could it happen between the U.S. elections on November 4th and the inauguration on January 20th? A number of top U.S. and Israeli officials and analysts fear the answer could be yes. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again vowed to wipe Israel and "these germs of corruption off the face of the Earth." Israeli officials believe time is running out before Iran gets the Bomb. What's more, they know full well that President Bush — widely considered the most pro-Israel commander-in-chief in U.S. history — is leaving office very soon. One question, then, is whether Israel might launch a pre-emptive war against Iran's nuclear weapons program before a new American President steps in.

Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, this week actually guaranteed a major international crisis would erupt within the next six months if running mate Barack Obama is elected. "Mark my words — it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy," Biden told supporters in Seattle on Sunday. "The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America….Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Is Ahmadinejad and his regime preparing to launch such a crisis? They are certainly ratcheting up their anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli rhetoric. "The Zionists are crooks," Ahmadinejad said recently. "A small handful of Zionists, with a very intricate organization, have taken over the power centers of the world….Jewishness is a great lie. They have no religion whatsoever. They are a handful of lying, power-greedy people who have no religion, who only want to take over all the peoples and countries, and to trample the rights of the peoples….I've heard that one of them [Prime Minister Ehud Olmert] recently said that the idea of Greater Israel is dead. I would like to declare that the idea of 'smaller Israel' is also dead. The very notion of Israel is dead, but they are lagging behind the times. Just as the idea of Greater Israel died 30 years ago, and they did not realize this, and have continued to perpetrate crimes for 30 years…Today, I say to them: The idea of smaller Israel is dead." Ahmadinejad added that if the Jews do not end their support for Israel and Zionism, "the strong arm of the [Muslim] peoples will wipe these germs of corruption off the face of the Earth."

In other news from the epicenter, "Libya may agree to buy more than $2 billion worth of Russian weapons during a visit by Muammar Gaddafi to Moscow this month, Interfax news agency reported on Monday." The Israeli media immediately picked up on the reports. Given Libya's historic enmiity towards Israel, there is a very real concern that should Libya receive billions of dollars of advanced new weaponry from Moscow, those arms could eventually be turned against the Jewish State. There are also prophetic implications. The "War of Gog and Magog" described in Ezekiel 38-39 involves a military alliance between Russia, Iran, Libya and a group of other Middle Eastern countries that surround and seek to destroy Israel in "the last days" after Israel has been reborn as a country and Jews have returned en masse to the Holy Land. A development worth watching closely.

Is war imminent?  Well, it primarily comes back to what you believe about the Biblical prophecy.  Rosenberg has proven that he knows what he's talking about over the past few years.  At the very least, you need to consider his track record of predictions based on that Biblical prophecy.  I don't know that all the pieces are in place yet, but there are certainly a scary number of them that are.

Bottom line: pay attention to what's going on over there!

Another note on Biden's comment.  I happen to agree with him.  If you look at the last few times a new President has taken office in the U.S., a major attack has come soon after.  9/11 happened after George W. Bush took office in 2000; the WTC was bombed in 1993 aftr Clinton took office, and you could make an argument for the Kuwait invasion in 1990 for George H.W. Bush falling into that context, too.  It's a pretty solid pattern, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if we got attacked again in the next 18 months or so.  In my opinion, the problem with Biden's comments is that he's saying exactly what we on the Right are saying: Obama is inexperienced and incapable of having a strong response to that attack.  But, whereas Biden is saying that we just need to believe in Obama to guess the right weak reaction (even if it looks wrong), I would say we need to avoid putting Obama in the Commander-in-Chief chair altogether.

There's my two cents.