MIDEAST UPDATE: 3.20.21 -

Washington attempts to quell Israel’s shadow war with Iran at sea – Yaakov Lappin – https://www.jns.org/washington-attempts-to-quell-israels-shadow-war-with-iran-at-sea/ Recent reports suggest that the United States is disturbed by aspects of the Israeli-Iranian shadow war that is raging across the region—in this case, at sea. It seems reasonableto conclude that Washington is trying to lower tensions that it fears can spoil attempts to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Tehran. U.S. sources told The Wall Street Journal in recent days that Israel allegedly attacked 12 ships illegally carrying Iranian oil to Syria since 2019 using weapons such asnaval mines to damage the vessels. The report came just as signs of a possible escalation between Israel and Iran on the seas appeared, suggesting that the information was designed to send a signal to Israelto cool down the alleged special operations at sea. The report surfaced close to the time that Iran accused Israel of being behind an attack last week on an Iranian container ship in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, named asthe Shar e Kord, causing a fire. That attack came days after Israel said that Iran was behind an explosive attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship, the MV Helios Ray, in the Gulf of Oman. Israel’s alleged covert campaign at sea is part of a much larger campaign, dubbed by the defense establishment as the “campaign between the wars,” designed to prevent theradical Iranian axis from building up its military and terrorist power in the region but to do so without crossing the threshold of regional war. It is a delicate balancing act that has enabled Israel to put the brakes on alarmingly ambitious Iranian schemes, pioneered by the late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani, to use air routes, land routes and the sea to flood Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other areas with precision-guided missiles, missile factories, well-armed militias and the creation of new “rings of fire” around Israel. Jerusalem has created a powerful intelligence-gathering machine that is able to detect many of these activities in real time and disrupt them, using an array of precisionairstrikes, special operations, cyber technology and other means. Most of these activities remain hidden from public view. Cash payments from Damascus to Beirut So why have oil tankers that are moving Iranian oil to Syria become an alleged target? According to a recent analysis by Ynet’s veteran military analyst Ron Ben Yishay, Iranian oil-smuggling to Syria began even before the Trump administration placed sanctionson Iranian oil exports in May 2018 (when Trump withdrew from the former nuclear agreement), and before the United States slapped sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime for its countless war crimes. However, since May 2018, when the Iranians faced restrictions on transferring funds through the international financial network, they faced a new obstacle: How to get paidfor smuggled oil to countries such as Syria? They found a work-around: The Assad regime began paying its oil debts directly to Iran’s proxy Hezbollah, enabling Iran to launder its terror financing in new, convenientways, and to continue its backing for Hezbollah’s force build-up programs, according to Ben Yishay. To get around America’s Caesar Act, which bans international transactions with Syrian banks, as well as with Lebanese banks that work with their Syrian counterparts, theAssad regime was able to smuggle cash payments from Damascus to Beirut with ease. As part of this scheme, oil tankers are loaded up at Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf or at Qeshm island in the Strait of Hormuz and then proceeded to sail through a varietyof routes towards the Syrian coastline, where, still at sea, they rendezvous with Syrian ships and transfer their oil cargo, or alternatively, directly dock at Syria’s Latakia or Tartus ports and unload their oil cargo. With these journeys forming a key part of Iran’s radical axis financing, Israel may have decided that as part of its campaign between the wars, it was time to disrupt thisHezbollah financing channel. The Iranians, likely fed up with such operations, retaliated at the end of February by targeting the Israeli-owned cargo ship, and Israel may have decided to boost its owndeterrence by targeting the Shar e Kord ship in response. ‘Part of Iranian pirate activities to circumvent sanctions’ The resulting escalation dynamic appears to have set off alarm bells in the Biden administration, likely resulting in the leaked information on this previously unknown aspectof the campaign between the wars. A question that remains unanswered is how the ecological disaster caused by an oil spill off the Israeli coastline in late February, which has been linked by Israel’s EnvironmentProtection Ministry to a ship illegally smuggling oil from Iran to Syria, fits into this picture. Israel’s Environment Protection Minister Gila Gamliel said Iran was behind the spill, accusing it of “ecological terrorism,” though Israel’s defense establishment has notconfirmed that this is indeed the case. Meanwhile, dispelling rumors that Israel itself was accidentally responsible for the spill as part of its campaign against Iranian oil tankers, Israel’s Defense MinisterBenny Gantz firmly dismissed this theory. Presumably relying on an array of intelligence reports, Gantz said on Sunday, “I can tell you emphatically that Israel is not responsible for the oil spill that caused theconsiderable damage along the coast.” The cause of the spill, therefore, remains unresolved. “We are moving into the water arena. This is one of the arenas of conflict between Iran and Israel,” Professor Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Easternand African Studies at Tel Aviv University, observed on Sunday. “This is part of the Iranian pirate activities at sea to circumvent sanctions and sell oil,” he said, adding that Hezbollah and Iranian militias in Syria gain the returnbenefit. The wider context, he said, is that Iran is gathering negotiating “bargaining chips” ahead of talks with Washington. Describing the “Iranian paradox,” said Rabi, “The worsethings are inside Iran the more they ‘purchase’ bargaining chips on the outside.” As the region waits to see how Washington and Tehran engage, Israel’s defensive shadow war can be expected to continue, even though it might be adjusted to avoid angeringAmerica at this sensitive time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Next Crisis? � Terry James - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ This title indeed encompasses a huge question, seeing how the most previous crisis�COVID-19�slammed the planet out of nowhere. The next crisis could be most anything. Itcould be the Rapture of the Church. That is the hope of all who name the name of Jesus Christ, of course. That would not be a crisis for us. But it sure would be for the world! However, in this article I�m thinking more in terms of a crisis of prophetic import that we can see gestating in today�s news. The fact that it possibly involves nuclearweaponry makes it indeed a crisis of potential world-affecting dimension. We begin by thinking on how former President Donald Trump spoke frequently, as did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on how Iran would never be allowed to havea nuclear weapon. Trump, as we remember, took away the �nuclear deal� the Obama administration had made with the Iranian Ayatollahs. That greatly slowed Iranian progress toward developmentof such weaponry. But it didn�t stop it, as Russia, China, and even North Korea are thought to continue contributing to Iran�s quest to obtain a nuclear arsenal. One of the first actions the new administration took after January 20, 2021, was to enter into reactivating the �nuclear deal��to the great consternation, of course, ofNetanyahu and IDF leadership. The Israeli prime minister has expressed yet again his unyielding contention that the Israel-hating Iranian leadership will never achieve nuclear status. The following news excerpt explains. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Vice President Kamala Harris in a late-night phone call on Thursday that he will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons� Netanyahu in turn said that the US and Israel will continue to strengthen intelligence and security cooperation. He added that he is committed to preventing Iran from developingnuclear weapons intended to destroy Israel. Harris and Netanyahu agreed on the importance of the close cooperation between the two countries on regional security issues, which includes Iran�s nuclear program, accordingto the Vice President�s Office. (�Netanyahu tells Kamala Harris he won�t let Iran obtain nuclear weapons,� Jerusalem Post, March 4, 2021) With the Biden administration thought to be largely run by Obama administration officials, it�s difficult to believe that the new administration won�t subvert any and allefforts of Israel�s actions to halt the nuclear development efforts in Iran�s underground mountainous facilities. In all fairness to now VP Kamala Harris, she, surprisingly, consistently refused as a US senator to join in harsh criticism or condemnation of Israel for the most part.She and Benjamin Netanyahu, at least in the cursory contact they have made, seemed to have been in agreement on such things as dealing with hostilities in the Middle East and with actions against the COVID-19 so-called pandemic. Still, it is highly unlikelytheir seemingly cordial agreement in these matters will hold once the globalist momentum reaches full throttle. Israel, according to the prophet Zechariah, is in for total condemnation in the future from all nations of earth. And, at the moment, Iran seems to be the catalyst that could galvanize the world�s ire against the Jewish state. As stated above, Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear that Iran will never be allowed to achieve the ability to produce nuclear weapons. Now that his colleague inthe US presidency, Donald Trump, is no longer in the White House, his determination seems to have doubled down to assure that Iran as a nuclear state never happens. Netanyahu is backed even by those politically at odds with him, as reflected in the news excerpt that follows. Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Thursday said the Israel Defense Forces is continuously updating its plans for a prospective military strike on Iranian nuclear sites. Gantz, in an interview with Fox News, said the military plans would not be finalized until right before such a strike was set to be carried out. �Until then, we will continue to build them [the plans], to improve them� to the highest professional level possible,� he said. (�Gantz: IDF updating military plans forpotential strike on Iran nuclear sites,� Times of Israel, RR News, March 5, 2021) We have written a number of times regarding the prophecy of Elam found in Jeremiah 49:34�39. My friend Bill Salus, a highly studied prophecy writer on foretelling�s involving the region in question, gives fascinating insights into the developing crisis. Bill saysthe prophecy in Jeremiah 49:34�39 might be dealing with this very issue. Jeremiah says that Iran experiences a disaster, which, from the details of the prophecy, appears to be the result of a nuclear catastrophe. Salus unveils this prophecy in his book entitled,Nuclear Showdown in Iran, Revealing the Ancient Prophecy of Elam. See Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-uS1nv9vbA&t=8s Order book: http://ecommerce.solutionsimplicity.com/index I highly recommend this as reading, if interested in what certainly looks to be stage-setting for the fulfillment of a catastrophe on the brink of taking place within themountains of Iran. Again, Israel is the number-one signal to watch to determine the lateness of the prophetic hour. The developing crisis is a reminder to, as our Lord commands, keep lookingup in anticipation of His sudden coming for all who believe in His death, burial, and resurrection for their salvation (Luke 21:28). -------------------------------------------------------------------- VISIT: PROPHECY WATCHER WEEKLY NEWS: HTTP://PROPHECY-WATCHER-WEEKLY-NEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM