By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Exclusive)

After Israel’s surprise air strike inside Syria on 18 January inside territory under the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad which killed an Iranian general and several Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas as Israel aimed to stop an attack on Israeli soil, it was clear that Hezbollah and its Iranian backers would feel obliged to respond. Now that they have done so, with an attack, which killed two Israeli soldiers, tensions have escalated in the border region in the 10 days since an Israeli air strike on Brigade 90 of the Syrian army and other positions held by the military in Quneitra province, which borders Lebanon and Jordan as well as Israel.

In the Israeli air strike on a Hezbollah convoy near Golan on Jan. 18, Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, Mohammed Allahdadi, was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group’s late military leader, Imad Moughniyeh.
Both Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran had fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, and the Revolutionary Guards vowed to avenge the deaths.

Every time Israel is attacked many ask if this could escalate and could this be the trigger of an all-out war or even a wider conflict between Israel and Syria?

But at times it is better to answer a question with another question; it was Iran’s backed Hezbollah which has been fighting alongside Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian forces in Syria’s civil war and have helped turn the tide in favor of President Bashar al-Assad. These forces are fighting in Syria in part to prevent Islamist militant fighters, such as al Qaeda’s Syrian wing, the Nusra Front and ISIS from advancing into Lebanon and even Israel in the future. And since ISIS is a threat to the Arab regimes and also to the security of the West, one would think that the prevailing wisdom is that the enemy (Hezbollah) of my enemy (ISIS) should temporarily be my friend? Right?

In other words, if ISIS is the main target, as the world claims, let Hezbollah and Syria have at it and even indirectly help these eradicate ISIS. Fact is, Israel is less interested in ISIS which is a menace for Israel’s main enemies in the Arab sphere more than even Iran. This will prove to be a major blunder in the future since Arab regimes are way more easily contained than Islamic revolutionary regimes that aim at uniting the region into one collective enemy against not only Israel, but the west as well.

And while the media says that Syria claimed responsibility behind the latest attacks, Bashar Al-Assad stated that Syria never planned to attack the Israeli side of the Golan Heights and that Israel had sought to undermine the Syrian army to benefit those fighting to bring down his own regime and kill Hezbollah members.

This is true.

“Never has an operation against Israel happened through the Golan Heights since the cease-fire in 1974. It has never happened,” Assad said. “So for Israel to allege that there was a plan for an operation—that’s a far cry from reality, just an excuse, because they wanted to assassinate somebody from Hezbollah.”

And why would it make any sense for Bashar to pick a fight with Israel when all he is trying to do is just survive the onslaught from Syrian rebel forces as well as from ISIS?

Truth is, ISIS is a current threat, not to Israel, although that will be true in the future, but it is a threat to the Arab regimes and it serves (as the politicians in Israel and elsewhere) to be in the politician’s interest in being also a menace for Iran and its puppet regime in Syria including Hezbollah and is why in the Arab street they say that ISIS and Al-Qaeda already has an air force: the Israeli Air Force which aids in an indirect way in helping ISIS. It is these types of scenarios that make the Middle East appear complex when in reality it is not and is why the Arab media is plagued with the conspiracy theory that ISIS is the creation of Israel.

Russia for example, does not support Iran for the sake of advancing the Islamic revolution, but for aiding any menace to the United States.

While the world worries that the situation between Israel and Syria escalates, it usually ends up not escalating into a “full-blown war” but rather “rumors of war”, the real war will erupt not when the world is concerned about war, but when the world is enamored with peace in order to prevent a war. Such peace is usually offered by the evil party prior to a military land grab in which a sacrificial offering is always given to appease the tyrant in hope he leaves you alone. This is what we should learn from history when we have seen Britain and France made a pact with Hitler giving the Sudetenland to Germany while Czechoslovakia was not even invited to the ‘peace’ talks.

The Czechs were free to fight if they wished, but they had no support. They chose not to fight and Chamberlain returned to England with his famous piece of paper. ‘I believe it is peace for our time’, he told the cheering crowds and Hitler marched unopposed into the Sudetenland saying that it was the start of a 1000-year German Reich empire. It is that sort of scenario that must happen before we get all concerned about a major war between Israel and Iran with its proxy, Syria.

While Prophecy students think that when Israel is involved in a conflict this should be the major concern, biblically speaking, Antichrist does not invade Israel first, but last, first things are the invasions of North Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia which includes Somalia and Sudan (Daniel 11).

Turkey will emerge as this Hitler-like threat and it is for this reason we focus on Turkey’s relations with Egypt and Syria before we concern ourselves of the relations between Israel and Syria. Turkey must first bring in a facade of peace between Shiite and Sunni by blaming Israel and the West for the conflict in which will unite several Muslim nations under Turkey’s sphere of influence.  It is this false peace that must happen prior to feeding Turkey the sacrificial offering, Israel just as Hitler was given the Sudetenland, this emerging Hitler must also invade Egypt, Syria and the Sudan-land to later come at God’s apple of His eye: Jerusalem.

All the chips have to fall in the right place before the real game begins. We must always focus on the big players behind the little events.

Hezbollah is not the big dog, Iran is the Rottweiler if you will, which has provided the bulk of its weapons to avenge the death of the Iranian general. But Hezbollah is not ISIS, it has learned lessons and will try to keep its response proportional, to avoid a repeat of the 2006 war with Israel that devastated much of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants a new war at the moment.

The game in the ‘complicated’ Middle East is not so complicated; we have two Islamic types of revolution; one is the Shiite Crescent under Iran and yet another which is forming and even more dangerous, a Pitbull; the Sunni Crescent under Turkey’s revived neo-Ottoman sphere.

So on the one hand we have Iran, which has been trying for a while through Hezbollah to open another terror front against Israel on the Golan Heights. Why? The game is simple and all one has to do is to look at the Muslim street; the politician that strikes Israel gains the support of the masses. This is why the Arabs struck Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. ISIS has not struck Israel militarily and neither has Turkey, which is simply using an effective cold war approach against the Jewish state. This will be effective, but ultimately both Turkey in unity with Iran must strike Israel (Ezekiel 38) and this still needs a few years before we sound any alarm bells. The bottom line is, it is all about killing Jews, both types: literal Israel and the grafted in Israel, the Christians.
In the short run, Israel has long been preparing for what it views as an inevitable next round against Hezbollah, but will Israel exploit the current situation as an opportunity to strike at Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles? No.

Entering into a full-scale confrontation just before Israeli elections scheduled for March 17 could be a gamble and as usual, politicians, be it Israeli or any other, are more interested in competing for another term to be ‘politicians’ and ‘clowns’, not heroes.