Sunday, February 13, 2011

Apocalypse Imminent: Looking at Iran

No, that isn't a prophecy site's headline. It comes from secular news/commentary (it is interesting how the secular news and the prophetic related news are merging, but that's another story).

Apocalypse Imminent

With the Muslim Brotherhood poised to emerge dominant in Egypt, uprisings rocking government foundations in Jordan and Tunisia and Algeria, domestic unrest bubbling up in Syria and Yemen, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah establishing control of Lebanon, the situation in the Middle East is ratcheting up from mere chronic instability to chaos. And looming over it all is the catalyst of a rabidly anti-Western, theocratic regime in Iran, in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons.


That serves as a pertinent reminder. Lets not forget Iran as the world's attention is focused on Egypt.

Recently I attended a packed screening at Los Angeles’ Luxe Hotel of the new documentary Iranium, about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, produced by the Clarion Fund, the same filmmakers of the controversial Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West and The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America. The audience so overflowed that the Luxe had to open up the adjacent conference room to accommodate everyone.


Before proceeding, here is the referenced film: Iranium

Featuring an array of compelling experts including former ambassadors John Bolton and Dore Gold, the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney Jr. and Clare Lopez, scholars Bernard Lewis and Walid Phares, political writers Clifford May and Kenneth Timmerman, and more, Iranium makes the case that keeping nuclear capability out of the hands of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs has never been a more urgent task.

Allowing it would result in a tectonic shift in the balance of power not only in the Middle East, but across the world, Gaffney asserts ominously that we have gone beyond the point where we should discuss the “risks associated with acting, to the point where we must discuss the risks associated with not acting.”


But it isn't only Iran's nuclear progress that should have us concerned. Iran's tentacles
are far-reaching throughout the Middle East:

Swiftly paced and increasingly gripping, the documentary depicts the rise of the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and the brutal power it wields behind the scenes; Iran’s expansion into South America and its alliance with Venezuela’s crafty socialist thug Hugo Chavez; its shrewd oil deals with China and Russia; and the apocalyptic insanity of Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly promised to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, and who is quoted in the film claiming that the highest form of art is “the art of martyrdom” — a man for whom the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction is not a deterrent but an incitement.


And we can also see how events in Egypt along with Iran's influence may be merging soon:

Speaking of Egypt: As the former head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Brotherhood-backed Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohammed ElBaradei repeatedly stonewalled international efforts to put the brakes on Iran’s ambitions; as recently as last month he dismissed the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. If ElBaradei ends up holding the reins of power in Egypt, the threat to Israel of a hostile, nuclear Iran becomes all the more substantial.


And of course, we cannot forget the fact that Ahmadinejad sees himself as the person who was put on earth to being forth the Mahdi - the Muslim "savior" who will come to earth during a time of warfare in the Middle East, to impose Sharia Law upon the world.

Ahmadinejad isn't a politician, he is a religious leader who is on a mission.

As Iranium director Alex Traiman told me, “the weapons themselves do not represent the depth of the danger. Rather, they are the final component of an extreme ideology that has been backed by extreme actions for three decades. … And to let Ahmadinejad, [Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei and company cross the nuclear threshold could literally be catastrophic.”

With the eyes of the world focused on the turmoil in Egypt and the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood there, Iranium is a disturbing and necessary reminder that Iran remains the truly imminent and terrifying threat to American interests and world peace.


Indeed. We can never forget this fact, nor can we take our eyes off Ahmadinejad as he attempts to trigger all out war in efforts to see the Mahdi appear.

The world is becoming stranger and stranger by the day.

No comments: