Mobile launched Missiles are now Purportedly Aimed towards Tel Aviv
According to the London Sunday Times, the ballistic arsenal in Syria under the top command of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad have been aimed at Greater Tel Aviv arena if Jerusalem gives the order by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu for any more aerial strikes inside the borders of Syria. This came in response to two separate attacks in three days that was formulated by the anti-Assad Quartet; United States, Israel plus the two Sunni powers of Turkey and Qatar.
In a military strategy seeking to break the radical Shiite radical block of Tehran, Damascus and Beirut, the first bullets appear to have been fired that many claim will become World War III or the GogUMogog War. This scenario is what western military strategists think how it might be interpreted by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. At that moment of time, they were carefully calculating their next strategy.
In January, the Jamraya military research center north of Damascus was hit by what was believed to be an Israeli strike against a convoy of weapons of mass destruction heading to Lebanon. According to AFP through an unnamed Israeli official, four months later on May 5, two separate strikes in three days occurred that included destroying Iranian F-110 weapons that were heading from Damascus to Lebanon for the Hizballah Shi-ite militia there.
While the population of Damascus was awakening with fear with the roaring of airplanes overhead, the Jamraya military research center north of Damascus was hit a second time. This was no longer just a surgical strike for according to Russia Today, the Israeli rocket struck again the facility caused heavy Syrian casualties that included upwards to 300 of the Syrian elite forces plus chemical weapons researchers at the Syrian Army’s 501st unit. The region was immediately cordoned off against any non-official entry. According to local reports by residents, they described the blast as shaking the ground like an earthquake which later was calculated to be a magnitude 4 Earthquake. These strikes immediately made the Syrian Damascus government and military “serious loss of face.” As DEBKAfiles reported:
DEBKAfiles – “If this military strike is confirmed, then the unit which operates the chemical weapon facility at the Barzeh district north of Damascus at the foot of Mt. Qassioun was hit.”
Here is the heart and soul of the Assad Alawite dictatorship that rules by fear and has claimed over 90,000 Syrian lives in a civil war that has failed to redeem them from the Assad government; the purported chemical weapons of mass destruction have been confirmed by multiple different sources, but have failed to convince the reluctant White House’s Oval Office that its confirmations are true. In the meantime, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast stated that Israel’s “acts of aggression against Syria will not go unanswered and Tel Aviv will receive a crushing response.
Quickly after the attack, the Israeli Defense Forces calculated that Syria would be too busy to quickly open it own attack against Israel, the northern borders of Israel near Galilee including the huge port city of Haifa and nearby Safed were protected by additional Iron Dome anti-missile batteries. These were expected to be the highest of risk to be attacked by Hizballah rockets and the Palestinian terrorist proxies of Assad. The northern Israeli airspace was shut down to civilian traffic, and all local civilian authorities were advised to go on standby.
Immediately the spectrum of all-out war ricocheted across the entire region. Syrian and Iranian official such as Deputy Information minister His Al-Yiftah said, “A new foreign element has entered the Syrian conflict overnight and this would cause war” without expressing whom with.
The Iranian foreign ministry official condemned what he reported as “Israeli aggression on Syria” and then accused Israel of fomenting instability and ethnic discord in the region. Syria’s Deputy Foreign Faisal Mekdad stated that the Israeli strike was a “declaration of war” by Israel while Russian and Iranian media were predicting that Middle East hostility would erupt region-wide within hours and rumors were cascading over the region that Syrian President Bashar Assad was preparing to declare war against Israel.
With Iran fomenting a path of war for Syria, Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah quickly embraced raising the “Islamic black flags” of war. Nearby, Anmed Jibril, the radical Palestinian leader, now heading the Assad-satellite Popular Front-General Command, was eagerly offering the services of his commandos.
According to DEBKAfiles, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the presidential compound in Sochi north of the Black Sea on May 14, where the Israeli Prime Minister pushed hard to convince Russia not to enter into the potential and impending war with the delivery of the advanced S-300 anti-air missiles that Russia was promising to supply to Syria. Flanked by Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the impelling message from Netanyahu fell on “deaf ears” to both Putin and his Russian foreign intelligence chief, SVR Director Mikhail Fradkov.
Both of the Russian leaders were “infuriated” when at the same time the news was leaked that the USS Kearsarge bringing 1,800 marines plus a platoon of 20 V-22 Osprey helicopters was docking at the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat. This was exactly as US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had promised and was already engaged in delivering during his earlier visit in April.
Putin quickly saw this as an “act of bad faith” from the White House, with the arrival of the Kearsage’s force in the Gulf of Aqaba only two hours away from the Israel-Syrian border. Bitterly complaining to Netanyahu, he stated, “they (America) want us to cooperate for an international conference to end the bloodshed in Syria, while on the other, they deploy military forces.”
In the dueling between Netanyahu and Putin, the Israeli prime minister warned that Israel would continue to strike weapons of mass destruction destined from Syria to Hizballah in Lebanon and if retaliated by Assad, the Israeli forces would intensify their bombardments of Syrian target until “Assad was left to fight off rebel assaults empty-handed.” As reported by DEBKAfiles:
DEBKAfiles – “Neither Putin nor Netanyahu put all their cards on the table, but the conversation ended with the Russian leader fully confident that his capabilities for safeguarding Assad were greater than Israel's ability to destroy him. In the end, Netanyahu and his party arrived home Tuesday evening with a bad feeling. They were certain that Moscow had given Assad the green light to go through with his threat to make the Syrian Golan and the Horan of southern Syria “a front for resistance” – i.e. the platforms for embarking on a war of attrition against northern Israel with the help of a flow of advanced weapons to Hizballah.”
Only 24 hours after returning back to Jerusalem from Sochi, Anmed Jibril’s Popular Front-General Command began firing mortar fire upon the Israeli Mt. Hermon ski site from its military positions in Syria. This was confirmed by Israeli intelligence to have been a deliberate attack and a direct response from the failed encounter between Putin and Netanyahu to quell the Syrian-Iranian fomenting of regional war against Israel.
Netanyahu quickly reacted to the deteriorating relations between Syria and Israel with the warning that Assad would be “removed from power.” This was counted from a different venue when a “senior Israeli official” contacted The New York Times with a more detailed and potent warning:
DEBKAfiles – “If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”
Quickly military arms became the potent form of communication by Syria to Israel. Later on May 16, the Palestinian group called “Martyrs of the Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades” aimed their rockets at the Israeli military observation post on the Golan Heights and later boasted they were firing in honor of Nakbah Day, with a Damascus based message, “We are not celebrating but avenging the blood of our martyrs.” Clearly the Arab Ishmaelites are envisioning a continuation of the 1948 war when the newly-born babe called the Nation of Israel found herself surrounded by enemies from five Islamic countries while Assad was choosing to fight Israel by her Assad proxies rather than confront Israel face-to-face.
Washington in the meantime was stalling but expected
by the end of May to follow up on the Israeli aerial operations in Syria. With
the marines landing in Eilat earlier than expected in early June, the time
table appeared to escalating. At the time, the military operations by commando
forces on the ground with rebel forces being supplied by US arms assisting them
to demolish Syrian air force bases and missile sites continued to be
enforced. Yet, according to military
strategists, the United States Air Force will eventually have to strike from
Turkey, Europe and Israel. At least this was the plan as envisioned by
President Barak Obama, the same military strategy he used to overthrow Muammar
Qaddafi in Libya two years ago.
A Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile system on display in an undisclosed location in Russia (photo credit: AP)
Israel was concerned that Moscow would decided to send the six S-300 batteries carrying 144 missiles. Not only that Netanyahu was concerning that with the arrival of the missiles, would come Russian missile and air defense specialists who would remain on site and be harmed any collateral strike against the S-300 anti-missile batteries. They would also be available for operating the anti-missile batteries that could be effective in downing Israeli Air Force jets striking targets in Syria and Lebanon. Netanyahu was trying to warn Putin for he did not want any Russians to be injured or killed during potential attack against the S-300 batteries. Putin appeared not concerned for he was deliberately placing a severe constraint on Israel’s moral attitude towards war which Russia does not necessarily share. He knew that he would be limiting Israel’s operational freedom by spreading an anti-air missile cover over the Syrian, Hizballah forces and with the Iranian Basij forces fighting for Bashar Assad.
The Russian S-300 was designed to be capable of shooting down planes and missiles within a 200-km (100 m.) range, so it could also be a strategic offensive threat to Israel. Yet, it may be a threat also to any intervention by the United States Air Forces that may be considering sorties from Turkey in the near future. Even more alarming, Putin pointedly told Netanyahu that he was not sending the S-300 system but had already sent the missiles and the Russian officers supervising the S-300 missile operation to Syria, and they were already operational at that time.
Russian diplomats earlier had leaked to the London based Arab press, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, that the S-300 missile systems have already arrived in Syria and were in the midst of being deployed all over the Syria. The implication of this threat was that Russia was no longer in control of using the weapons. The Israelis would have to look to the Syrians to blame.
Yet, this news came with another inconvenient truth. There had not been any discussions by Putin with America, Britain or Israel concerning the “ground rules” for Israeli bombers to refrain from destroying the anti-missile launchers, killing the Russian technicians and supervisors, or for Russians for avoid hitting Israeli Air Force jets. The “rules of war” were now changing and the fallout could lead to a war not between the Middle Eastern powers but the larger Quartet of global military powers including America, Europe, Russia and China.
It appeared that Netanyahu visit was “too little, too late” and appeared that his trip to Sochi was a waste of time. Moscow had already delivered the 200 launchers (probably missiles, and the Syrian missiles teams were already prepared to use them. Putin message indirectly to Netanyahu was, go home and have another session with the Obama administration. It was time to accept Assad as part of the Middle East landscape and come to terms and “accept a more realistic stand on Syria and Assad.”
Photograph of the Russian Warship Varyag (Photo credit: CC BY randychiu, Flickr)
At the same time that Putin was talking to Netanyahu, the Times of Israel reported that Putin had already ordered the dispatch of a fleet of five Russian warships that were entering the Mediterranean Sea to bolster the Russian’s regional task force at the Russian port in Tartus in Syria in the next two days for these five ships set dock on Thursday, May 17, at Limassol, Cyprus.
During the Cold War, the Russians maintained a squadron of 30-50 ships in the region between the years of 1967 to 1992. The Russian task force consisted of an anti-submarine ship, a frigate, and rescue tugs. Joining this task force was a Russian destroyer, amphibious warfare ships for launching troops onshore from the ships, and a tanker. In the future, nuclear powered submarines could be a part of this Mediterranean task force whose command and control center was still based in Novorossiysk, Russia or in Sevastopol, Ukraine.
Washington in the meanwhile was expected to follow up on the Israeli operation in Syria by the end of May, early June, with operations ranging from US arms supplies to the Syrian rebels to demolishing Syria’s air force facilities and missile sites by US air strikes from Turkey, Europe and Israel. Barak Obama used this tactic to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya two years ago.
The war of attrition is gradually changing courses, with Assad against given the ascending hand. The waging of war was waxing and waning between the pro-Assad and the anti-Assad forces, yet as DEBKAfiles military sources recently opined, it was noted that the “Syrian rebels were being systematically being ground down and falling apart under the crushing weight of the Syrian army back by Iranian and Hizbullah troops and Moscow, feeding the rebels may no longer avail.”
Obama has periodically offered for Russia to join up with America to end the Syrian war. This American president would also be the first that was not adverse to even collaborating with Russia to allow Russia to land military forces in Syria to enforce the termination of hostilities, even it was directly adverse to the safety and future of the State of Israel.
Yet, Putin, at the last moment, added another game changer by ordering the Russian military to provide Bashar Assad’s regime with anti-ship missiles, which according to the New York Times was Russia’s advanced version of the Yakhont anti-ship cruise missile. America responded vehemently when both Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel criticized and urged Russia to reconsider his war games for it would fuel a regional war.
The Obama administration denounced Russia on Friday for providing Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime with anti-ship missiles, saying the weapons would only worsen a war that Washington and Moscow have been promising to work together on stopping.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized what he called an "unfortunate decision that will embolden the regime and prolong the suffering." He spoke at a news conference after the New York Times reported that Russia recently delivered an advanced version of Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria. As Fox News reported in the article, title, “Russia slammed by US for sending anti-ship missiles to Syria”, we read:
Fox News – “For the Obama administration, the anti-ship missiles are the second such worrying report in as many weeks at a time when Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov say they are coordinating closely to try to get Syria's government and rebels into the start of a peace negotiation. They are hoping the talks begin next month in Geneva. Almost immediately after last week's announcement by Kerry and Lavrov of a new peace push, Israeli officials warned that Moscow was preparing to give Assad state-of-the-art ground-to-air missile systems in the coming months.
Both sets of missiles would only add to the administration's reservations as it evaluates a range of options, including military ones, to break the stalemate in Syria's civil war and respond to evidence that Assad's forces used small amounts of chemical weapons in two attacks in March. Obama previously declared chemical weapons use his "red line" for a more forceful American intervention, though Kerry and other U.S. officials have since suggested that no such step would be taken while the new peace push still has hope.
The cruise missiles and the new surface-to-air batteries would significantly upgrade the Assad regime's capacity to target manned planes, drones and incoming missiles after its systems were easily circumvented in 2007 when Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria. Apparently successful Israeli strikes in recent weeks on weapons convoys to Hezbollah show the Syrian defenses are still far from impregnable, but the new weaponry would make it harder for United States to consider enforcing a no-fly zone in the country or otherwise intervening militarily.
Dempsey also warned specifically about the surface-to-air missiles, saying they provide Syria with defenses at higher altitude and longer range, and with better tracking capability. "It pushes the standoff distance a little more, increases risk, but not impossible to overcome," he told reporters. "What I really worry about is that Assad will decide that since he's got these systems, he's somehow safer and more prone to a miscalculation.”
According to The Telegraph in their recent article, titled, “Al-Qaedas-Syrian-wing-takes-over-the-oilfields-once-belonging-to-Assad”, we have to admit that we do not know the true reality of how the “wars and rumors of wars” will end in this region that is erupting into a full scale war. If we thought the anti-Assad rebels were down and out, we also have to know that they now control the region near the city of Raqqa and the desert regions to the east, where once 380,000 barrels of crude oil were produced in the wells of that region are now in the hand of the strongest Al-Qaeda off-shoot of the region, called the Jabhat al-Nusra, a violent anti-Western jihadist group that now feeds its own economy in the region by selling low-grade crude oil to local entrepreneurs from home-made refineries.
Yet, the Jabhat al-Nusra are also children of America’s war in Iraq, their homelands in the three provinces closest to Iraq; Hasake, Deir-al-Zour, and Raqqa who share the same religious ideology of the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq. Given all of these circumstances, the come-back-kid of the region is Russia, who DEBKAfiles cited that after a 21-year absence is now back in the fray armed to the teeth with a “cornucopia of weapons” aiming to win new client for their fate and destiny at the end of days.
The biblical portrayal of the Israeli and Jewish prophets depict a Russia that may either be one of the “two great horns” on the mythical and apocalyptic beast in Daniel 8 called the Persian Ram with two Great Horns. This portrayal depicts Russia and China as the loser of the battle between Persia/Iran battling against Greece/NATO-American military might in which the latter mythical Ram like Unicorn Beast with One Great Horn meets each other in battle and the results:
Daniel 8:5-7 - “I was contemplating [this] and behold! A he-goat (NATO-US) comes from the west across the surface of the entire earth, but not touching the ground; and the two-horned ram (Persia-Iran) that I had seen standing before the stream, and ran at it with the fury of its might. I saw it reach the ram; it fought bitterly with it, and smote the ram and broke its two horns (Russia and China). The ram had no strength to stand before it; [the goat] threw it to the ground and trampled it, and there was no one to rescue the ram from its hand.”
But then we have scores of biblical scholars who have paraded their end time prophecies identifying Gog of the Land of Magog as Russia, who will be drawn into the fracas of a major world war by the G-d of Israel leading him (Russia) by clamps tied into his nose to the final, “GogUMogog War.” If you don’t believe that this is Russia, then you might want to consider that many of the Jewish rabbinic interpretation allows “Gog of the Land of Magog” to be the United States, for America was first inhabited by the first colonizers of the Magog Manchurians who could not descend down into the Hun dominated region of Greater China because of the Great Wall of China, called the “Wall of Magog”. So they headed east across the Aleutian Straits and became the Navajo and Hopi American Indians who populated North America from west to the Six Nations of Native Indians in the east. Then they headed south to the land of the Aztecs, the Mayans, and earlier the Olmecs in South America.
So will Obama be Gog of the Land of Magog whose last fate will be to lead a coalition of nations into a war against Israel, but this time they are destroyed to their final fate when Messiah of the G-d of Israel comes to protect His people and His “Holy Land?”
Ezekiel 38:3-4, 8-9; 39:1-4 (parts) – “Son of Man, direct your face towards Gog of the land of Magog…Thus said the L-rd HaShem/Elohim: Behold, I am against you Gog, the prince…I will lead you stray, and I will place hooks into your cheeks and bring you out with your entire army, horses and riders, all of them clothed in splendor…You will be repaid for [your sins] of ancient times; in the end of years you will come to a land restored from the sword, gathered from many nations, upon the mountains of Israel that had lain desolate continuously, [to people] who had been brought out from the nations. All of them dwelling in security. You will attack; like a storm you will come; you will be like a cloud covering the earth, you and all your cohorts and the many nations with you…
Behold I am against you, Gog, the prince…I will lead you astray and seduce you; I will cause you to ascend from the uttermost north and bring you upon the mountains of Israel…you will fall upon the mountains of Israel, you and all your cohorts and the peoples that are with you…”
But what about the Land of Syria? What is their prophetic fate?
Isaiah 17:1-3 – “A prophecy concerning Damascus: Behold, Damascus will be negated from being a city, and it will be a heap of rubble. Deserted will be the cities of Aroer; they will be for flocks that will lie down with none to disturb them. The stronghold will cease from Ephraim, and monarchy from Aram; they will be like the glory of the Children of Israel – the word of Hashem, Master of Legions.”
Isaiah 19:23 – “On that day there will be a road from Egypt to Assyria (Syria); Assyrian will come into Egypt and Egyptian into Assyria, and Egypt will serve Hashem with Assyria. On that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land, for Hashem, Master of Legions will bless them saying, ‘Blessed is My people, Egypt; and the work of My hands, Assyria; and My heritage, Israel.’”
In spite of the world swirling in anger and rage around Israel, she and her people who have been “restored from many nations” will still be there “resting in peace” while the rest of the world crashes and craters around her. Let us consider that this “restoration from many nations” includes both the Jews from the House of Judah and the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel from the House of Israel.
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If you have wondered the difference between the Biblical concepts of Torah’s true “Culture of Life” as compared to a “Culture of Death”, you might desire to learn of the Biblical portrayals on what is and may be happening in your near future.
This Biblical portrayal includes Prophecies that the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel are about to return to the Land of their Biblical Inheritance. This is Divine Destiny in living reality as the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel return to their Homelands first in Shomron (Samaria), Israel. If you want to learn more, Contact “Kol Ha Tor Vision”, the Voice of the Turtledove.
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