Has it Already Started? - By Daymond Duck - http://www.raptureready.com/2018/07/01/already-started-daymond-duck/
A few weeks ago, Israeli Prime Min. Netanyahu was talking about Israel's conflict with Iran and Hezbollah in Syria; and he said, "It is not over."
He recently saw fit to repeat that statement.
I have often said everything Jesus said is important, but the things He said more than once are very, very important.
When Mr. Netanyahu deliberately repeats something, it is very, very important.
On June 21, 2018, Israel Today Magazine carried an article by Yochanan Visser titled "ANALYSIS: Has Iran's Multi-Front War Against Israel Already Begun?"
Every good student of Bible prophecy knows that Prime Min. Netanyahu was right when he said, "It is not over," but Mr. Visser's article generates at least three questions.
One, has the Psa. 83 War started (if there is one because some writers include it as part of the Battle of Gog and Magog)?
Two, are the events that are taking place in Syria a prelude to the destruction of Damascus (Isa. 17)?
Three, is the Battle of Gog and Magog on the horizon (Ezek. 38-39)?
First, concerning the possibility that the Psa. 83 War has started; since March 30, 2018, under the influence of Iran, thousands of Hamas terrorists and Palestinians have been rioting in Gaza, firing rockets and mortars into Israel, sending helium-filled balloons with bombs into Israel, etc.
These crude weapons have destroyed thousands of acres of Israeli crops and forests. And the Hamas terrorists and Palestinians say they plan to keep doing it.
Dozens of Hamas terrorists and Palestinians have been killed and thousands have been wounded.
About 200,000 Israelis are sent scurrying to bomb shelters every night.
Israeli officials say they have plans to stop it, they are prepared for war, they will be forced to launch a major invasion of Gaza soon, etc.
Three days before the Visser article, the situation was bad enough to cause the UN Sec. Gen. Antonio Guterres to warn the UN Security Council that Israel and Gaza are "close to the brink of war."
Second, concerning the destruction of Damascus, troops from Syria and Iran recently attacked targets in a de-confliction zone established by Russia in agreement with the U.S. on Syria's border with Israel and Jordan.
The U.S. and Israel had both warned Syria and Iran not to attack these targets, but they did it anyway.
Thousands of people have fled the area in anticipation of a widening war.
Syria and Iran want to take control of this area to create a way to get behind Israeli troops on the Golan Heights and expand the war against Israel.
Many think it is unwise for Syria and Iran to ignore the clear warnings of Pres. Trump and Prime Min. Netanyahu.
On June 26, 2018, a large Iranian cargo plane landed at the Damascus International airport in Damascus, Syria.
The plane was struck by two Israeli missiles while it was being unloaded.
There are contradictory reports on what happened, but one source said the plane exploded and many people were killed.
Third, concerning the Battle of Gog and Magog, the U.S. doesn't believe Syria and Iran would attack targets in the de-confliction zone in Syria without the permission of Russia.
The U.S. was recently proven right when Russian jets provided air cover for another attack in the de-confliction zone.
Since that attack, Iran has started massing troops in Syria near the Golan Heights on Israel's border with Syria.
This confirms that Iran is not satisfied with the territory they now hold.
Iranian and Hezbollah troops keep moving closer and closer to Israel's border with Syria (or should I say closer and closer to their destruction).
On June 26, 2018, loud explosions were heard near the Golan Heights. Sources said Syria was firing anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli jets.
On that same day, Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah troops violated a Syrian-Israeli agreement and took illegal possession of an abandoned UN post in a demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights.
This writer can't predict whether Israel will respond or not, but Israel has made it clear that the Israeli military is aware of the illegal presence of those troops, and the Israeli military may have to remove them by force.
It is anyone's guess as to whether or not the prophesied wars have started, but the conflict is definitely not over, and it is growing more serious with each passing day.
Incidentally, before I close, on June 25, 2018, the value of Iran's currency plummeted against the dollar and massive protests broke out in Tehran.
Protesters chanted "death to Syria" and "our enemy is here, not the U.S."
A report on June 25, 2018, by The Times of Israel staff said: "Videos posted to social media showed protesters chanting: 'No to Gaza, no to Lebanon' and 'Leave Syria and think of us.' Chants of 'We don't want the ayatollahs' and 'Death to the dictator' were also heard at some rallies."
The Mullahs of Iran badly need silver and gold, cattle and goods (Ez. 38:11-12).
Prophecy Plus Ministries, Inc.
New Cold War: Russia, China & The United States Preparing For Future Conflict - By Michael Snyder -
While most of the world is focused on the World Cup and other trivial pursuits, the three global superpowers are busy jockeying for nuclear superiority. Historians will debate the extent to which the first Cold War ever really ended, but everyone pretty much agrees that a new Cold War has now begun.
Russia, China and the United States are all racing to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and at this moment it is unclear who will ultimately come out on top in this new arms race.
In Russia, nearly the entire nation is united behind the push to modernize the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal, but the United States is a deeply divided society today, and most of the population believes other priorities are far more important than developing new weapons.
Of course the United States started out with an edge in this new arms race, but now Russia and China have been working extremely hard to eliminate that edge, and to a large degree they have succeeded.
When World War 3 is fought someday, submarines capable of delivering nuclear weapons will be one of the key factors, and all three global superpowers are rushing to upgrade their fleets. The following comes from USA Today...
The world's three largest naval powers are all developing the next generation of their nuclear submarine fleets, accelerating the underwater arms race between the United States, China and Russia.
In this race, the United States is focusing on sheer power, but for both Russia and China "speed and stealth are key"...
Meanwhile, Russia expects to complete four Borei-II submarines by 2025, and China will begin constructing Type 096 submarines in several years, both of which will be able to travel at speeds of more than 30 knots - or about 10 knots faster than the new Columbia-class SSBN.
While the United States is most focused on the lifetime savings from the Columbia-class's improved nuclear core reactor, for both Russia and China's next generation of boomers, speed and stealth are key.
Russia has already developed "black hole submarines" that can approach our coastlines without ever being detected by us. Theoretically, someday the Russians could send an entire fleet of these "black hole submarines" along our coasts and hammer us with a barrage of nuclear missiles before we even know what hit us.
And don't think that this type of scenario is too far off in the future. According to naval analyst Christopher Cavas, a new super-silent Russian attack submarine called "the Severodvinsk" has "got everybody spooked"...
"The Severodvinsk is way quieter than anything we've encountered and it's got everybody spooked," said Washington naval analyst Christopher Cavas.
Of course the Russians are not just developing a new generation of submarines.
They are also reportedly building "intercontinental nuclear torpedoes" that could potentially travel thousands of miles underwater and hit U.S. coastal cities without warning...
It sounds like the stuff from a Cold War novel: A Russian intercontinental nuclear-armed torpedo that can travel thousands of miles and strike U.S. coastal cities with minimal warning.
But that weapon isn't just a work of fiction. It's actually being developed in Russia, according to a new Defense Department report that assesses the arms advancements being made in other countries.
If relations with Russia were rapidly deteriorating, this is the kind of stuff that should be keeping our leaders up at night.
Oh, that's right, our relations with Russia are rapidly deteriorating.
The Russians are also way ahead of the United States when it comes to developing hypersonic missiles. This is something that Vladimir Putin made a point of emphasizing during a speech to the Russian public earlier this year...
He said the plane-launched hypersonic missile, called Kinzhal or dagger, could manoeuvre while travelling at more than 10 times the speed of sound, making it "guaranteed to overcome all existing and I think prospective anti-missile systems" and deliver a nuclear strike. Putin claimed it had completed testing and was already in use.
He also spoke about the RS-26 ballistic missile, Avangard, which Putin said "heads towards its target like a meteorite". The missile has already raised concerns in the US about its compliance with global arms treaties.
By the way, the United States doesn't have anything that can shoot down a hypersonic missile.
Meanwhile, the Russians have the best anti-ballistic missile technology on the planet and can handle just about anything that we can currently throw at them.
The Chinese are working extremely hard to develop hypersonic missiles as well, and the brass at the Pentagon has been trying to warn us that this threat is very real...
Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said he has the full support of Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin to advance the development of space-based sensors that would defend the nation from hypersonic attacks by America's adversaries.
The Pentagon believes funding will be in place next year to begin the constellation of missile-surveillance satellites amid new warnings of hypersonic weapons being tested and deployed Russia and China.
"The hypersonic threat is real, it is not imagination," Lt. Gen. Greaves explained Tuesday at the Capitol Hill Club, emphasizing that defending against hypersonic missile attacks has become a top priority for the agency. But he forewarned the audience at the elitist, members-only club in Washington, D.C., that the Pentagon has a poor track record developing satellite constellations and should not deploy new systems unless a considerable amount of testing has been completed.
Let us pray that war with Russia or China (or both) is as far off as possible.
It has been said that nobody wins a nuclear war, but Russia and China are both rapidly developing systems that we cannot defend against, and meanwhile Russia has extremely advanced anti-missile systems that can definitely handle most of our very antiquated missile systems.
And when you throw in the fact that the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal has declined by about 95 percent since the height of the Cold War, it could be argued that a nuclear war against the United States could conceivably be won if a devastating surprise first strike eliminated our ability to launch a sufficient counterattack.
Unfortunately, most Americans have been trained not to think about these things since the end of the first Cold War, and that could end up being an absolutely fatal mistake.
Hezbollah's Indefinite Presence in Syria - by Sirwan Kajjo -
After weeks of shuttle diplomacy allegedly carried out by Russia and Israel, Iranian forces and allied militias -- including the so-called "military wing" of the Lebanon-based organization Hezbollah, all of which has been designated as a terrorist group by the US -- reportedly began to withdraw from parts of southern Syria, near Israel's border. According to other reports, however, many Hezbollah fighters, disguised as members of the Syrian army, have simply remained on their bases to escape being targeted by the Israel Air Force. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel's air force has carried out sporadic strikes against Iranian and Hezbollah bases and convoys across its neighbor on the north. After more than seven years of fighting alongside the Assad regime in Syria, the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah is highly unlikely to make an easy exit from the war-torn territory, no matter what supposed agreements are reached or promises made.
In a televised speech on "Quds Day" -- which Iran has marked every year since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 -- Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah addressed his supporters as follows:
"We are in Syria because we should be there. The Syrian leadership has asked us to be present there based on developments in the ground.... Gulf states and Israel must know that we will be happy when we return our men to Lebanon... we will be happy and we will feel victorious to complete our mission. So what keeps us in Syria is our duty and the Syrian leadership, but at the same time I would like to tell you even if the entire world decided to remove us from Syria, we will not leave."
Nor does it seem that the Syrian regime is in a rush to tell Hezbollah to leave the country. In a recent interview with an Iranian state-run news channel, Syrian President Bashar Assad said, "Hezbollah is an essential element in this war -- the battle is long and the need for these military forces will continue for a long time."
Having helped defeat anti-regime rebel forces in the suburbs of Homs, Aleppo and Damascus, Hezbollah fighters are now in control of much of Syria's border with Lebanon. In fact, the Shi'ite terrorist group is in charge of controlling the Lebanese side of the border, despite the presence of the Lebanese military, which is weak. The areas in which Hezbollah operates are of great importance to the group, which uses the mountainous terrain as a route to transport military equipment between Syria and Lebanon. So entrenched is Hezbollah in that region that it has managed to build multiple military bases within a small radius.
With those fronts of Lebanon and southern Syria already secured, Hezbollah fighters increasingly have moved to the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria to aid the Syrian military in its battle against Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists. Meanwhile, Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias - such as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) -- are largely in control of strategic areas along Syria's border with Iraq.
Not far from those frontiers, the U.S.-led coalition has been aiding Kurdish-led forces to push out ISIS from other parts of Deir Ezzor. The months-long campaign has liberated large strategic areas from ISIS. More than once, however, these two anti-ISIS campaigns have come head to head in Deir Ezzor, leaving the U.S. with no choice but to defend its local partners.
Once ISIS is completely defeated in these areas, Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups could be better positioned to wage attacks on U.S. interests there and elsewhere in Syria.
With no end in sight to Syria's seven-year war, Hezbollah will undoubtedly continue its military expansion, causing more instability in an already volatile region.
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