With missiles being launched from Gaza into Israel and Israeli retaliation now taking place, things seem to be heating up in Israel:
"Israel strikes Gaza targets after Grad rocket attack".
IAF strikes Gaza smuggling tunnels".
"Grad-type rockets land in Netivot".
As usual, when I see such activity, the first question becomes "What is Iran's end-game?", as they have Hamas and Hezbollah firmly under their wing.
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In a separate story coming from Iran, we see the continued protest movement. This is interesting and intriguing on many levels.
In fact, many of prophecy watching colleagues have already written off the Ahmadinejad administration and making assumptions on what the world will look like with a different regime in Iran.
Not so fast.
First of all, the protest movement in Iran is in its very early stages and it is hard to know how it will progress. Secondly, the article below, coming from the Jerusalem Post, contains a lot of pertinent information which relates to the protest movement:
"Muslim World: The end is not nigh"
This article reveals that there are two separate "movements" within Iran, with the first being the protest movement. It is the "second movement" that I find interesting.
Below are some revealing quotes from this article:
"Still, the overheated punditry of the last week predicting the imminent demise of the regime, claiming that this is the beginning of the end for the Islamists in Teheran and that a "tipping point" has been passed is misleading and should be questioned."
"THE SECOND "movement" exists within the regime itself. This is the trend whose most visible representative is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The coalition of hard-line conservative political associations which produced Ahmadinejad, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, have been steadily advancing in the institutions of the Islamic Republic over the last half-decade."
"Unlike their opponents in the Green movement, this group has a clear and unifying set of ideas and goals. Their aim is a "second Islamic revolution," which will revive the original fire of 1979. What they are aiming at is the replacement of clerical rule with a streamlined, brutal police-security state, under the banner of Islam. This state will be committed to a goal of building regional hegemony - through possession of a nuclear option and the backing of radical and terrorist movements."
"Should a real challenge to the power of the hard-liners emerge, the likely prognosis would be for prolonged civil strife, rather than their swift departure. This is not a tired and decaying elite, parallel to the East European communists in 1989. The Iranian hard-liners and their allies regard themselves as the wave of the future, only now ascending to the pinnacles of power. They will not go quietly."
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As stated, this situation is Iran is far from over, and the "second movement" could actually benefit from the protest movement (much like China approximately 20 years ago) - and their hard-line stance could precipitate what they really want - as stated in the article - which is a "streamlined, brutal police-security state, under the banner of Islam".
This article closes with the following statement, to which I fully agree:
"But contrary to some of the more overexcited opining this week - the playing out of all this still has a way to run. The end is not yet at hand."
Indeed.
The prophetic questions obviously come into play. How does this situation relate to biblical prophecy. Of course, it is hard to know specifically. But Ahmadinejad HAS to be feeling some pressure to complete his ultimate goal of hastening the return of the Mahdi - with whatever means he has. I would imagine more and more "crackdowns" from the state with more and more movement towards this "brutal police-security state", at least in the short-term.
Either way, things are definitely not quiet in the region. Far from it.
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