By Walid Shoebat

“Iran would build a nuclear bomb at their own peril” CIA Director John Brennan said Sunday. It all hinges on the nuclear talks, if they falter, Brennan believes that Iran will get nukes.

So, the United States and several other countries are working supersonically to finalize a pact with the devil dreaming it would temporarily thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions in return ease sanctions which also helps Iran’s gain for nukes. While Iran progresses in its program, a visit to the Sunni-Shiite divide reveals a major schism between two Muslim holy cities, Mecca on the one hand and Karbala on the other, an un-healable divide that Scripture predicts will end up in nuking Arabia. 

Republicans united with Netanyahu rightly doubt Iran will uphold its end of the deal. And while everyone scrambles to make the hopeless deal, they simply prove the Bible predicted this all along. Politicians and hopefuls would rather cling to Iran instead of clinging to  God’s truth. The struggle over nuclear bombs has more to do with Iran’s desire to dominate the Middle East more so than there desire to kill the Jews. Iran wants control over Mecca and Medina. These two cities are significant issues that divide Shiites and Sunnis. Mecca is the Muslim direction of prayer. When Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in 2013 said that the Shiite holy city of Karbala must be the new Qibla (direction to which Muslims pray) instead of Mecca, it stirred anger from Sunnis worldwide. If and when Shiites do away with Mecca as direction of prayer and its significance is undermined, Shiite Iran, united with Shiite Iraq and Yemen which is brewing by the day, will threaten Arabia.

“Karbala must be the Qibla of the Islamic world because Imam Hussein [the Prophet Mohammad’s second grandson, and an important figure in Shia Islam] is buried there,” Maliki said.

To Shia, Karbala supersedes Mecca. In the Shiite faith, there was a feud between the two cities. When Mecca felt haughty and arrogant that Allah warns her, he will toss the Ka’ba in hellfire and will utterly destroy her. This, in accordance to one very popular Shiite belief which utterly terrifies and angers Saudi Arabia:

Once the land of Ka’bah declared proudly, ‘Which land is like me? Allah has made His House on me. People from all parts of the earth come to pay homage to me. I have been made sacrosanct (haram) and sacred by Allah.’ On hearing this Allah, revealed, ‘Be silent! Wait a little (before you say anything further). By My Might and My Honour, the excellence and distinction I have granted to the land of Karbala is more than what I have given you. Compared to Karbala, your position is like a needle head sized drop in front of the sea. If the dust of Karbala had not been there, I would never have bestowed this honour upon you. If the one resting in Karbala (Imam Husain (a.s.)) had not been there, I would neither have created you nor the House over which you are so haughty. Wait, adopt humility and modesty and don’t be arrogant and boastful. Don’t try to prevail over Karbala in importance (as that is not possible). Else I will be displeased with you and throw you in Hell.’ (Kaamil al-Ziarat, p.267, tradition 13, narrating from Imam Ja’far al-Al-Sadiq also see here)

Indeed, Mecca can be seen as a needle head by the Red Sea. Saudi religious scholars described Maliki’s statements as incitement to strife and a call to divide Muslims. Indeed, this is Shia belief in which Arabia’s pride will cause Iran to finally do the honors and utterly destroy the Ka’ba using its nukes.

Karbala, not Mecca, is Iran’s holiest place. It was in it that al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib was martyred. To Shiites, he is their Messiah. He is the son of Ali ibn Abi Ṭalib (fourth Rashidun Caliph of Sunni Islam, and first Imam of Shia Islam) and Fatimah Zahra (daughter of the Muhammad). Al-Husayn refused to pledge allegiance to Yazid I, the Umayyad caliph because he considered the rule of the Umayyads unjust. As a consequence, he left Medina, his home town, and traveled to Mecca. There, the people of Kufa sent letters to him, asking his help and pledging their allegiance to him. So he traveled towards Kufa. At Karbala his caravan was intercepted by Yazid I‘s army. He was killed and beheaded in the Battle of Karbala in 680 (61 AH) by Shimr Ibn Thil-Jawshan, along with most of his family and companions. The annual memorial for him, his family, his children and his companions is called Ashura (tenth day of Muharram) and is a day of mourning for Shiite Muslims. The killings at Karbala fueled the later Shiite movements. Anger at Husayn’s death was turned into a rallying cry that helped undermine and ultimately overthrow the Umayyad Caliphate.

Westerners should comprehend the significance of this divide on how Shiite messianism and near worship of Hussein whom they blame Arabia for, could appreciate a scene from Karbala as the grave of Hussein is paraded on Ashura where millions have their needles stuck at the time when Hussein was killed:

In the song, Hussein from his death supposedly cries out to all the Shiite pilgrims: “You know me. I am the redeemer (Messiah) of the world. I register your names [in heaven]. Welcome my visitors. O you vist me. I make a covenant with you. You know me. I am the redeemer of the world. Your banners you carry comfort me. Your tears quenches my thirst … I will not abandon you on day of judgment.” Hussein’s mother is as if she was Mary, a saint that can also see them and her son was martyred as Messiah.

To add more insult to injury, the bedrock of sectarian conflict has always been the matter of the Imamate–the question of legitimate authority in Islam. Sunni-Shi‘ite differences took the form of Ottoman-Safavid armed conflict, beginning in the sixteenth century. That was perhaps the most divided century in Islamic history, marked by great wars of religion between Sunnis and Shi‘ites. When the holy cities were under Sunni Ottoman rule, there were years in which the Ottomans denied entry to Shi‘ites coming from Safavid domains. The Safavids reacted by trying to discourage the pilgrimage to Mecca and emphasizing the importance of Shi‘ite shrines in their own domains. (1) A repeat of this is not unlikely given the current schism between Iran and Arabia escalating into a major conflict.

Saudis, in their purifying zeal against Shiites, again demolished the domes of al-Baqi‘ in 1926, a move regarded by Shi‘ites as desecration of their hallowed shrines. The demolition created so profound a sentiment in Iran, especially in religious circles, that the Iranian government refused to recognize Ibn Sa‘ud’s rule. Instead, Iran demanded that a general assembly of Muslims be created to regulate the holy cities, while a Shi‘ite conference convened in Lucknow, India, called upon all Muslims to use every possible means to expel Ibn Sa‘ud from the Hijaz. (2)

Messianism and rightful rule between Sunni and Shia forces is now feeding the Syrian civil war that threatens to transform the map of the Middle East, spurred violence that is fracturing Iraq and even Yemen and widened fissures in a number of tense Gulf countries. Islam’s schism has been simmering for fourteen centuries. The divide will culminate between the two countries that compete for the leadership of Islam, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. Iran has used the sectarian divide to further their ambitions,  especially in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Bahrain.

Shia identity is rooted in victimhood over the killing of Husayn, the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, in the seventh century, and a long history of marginalization by the Sunni majority. Islam’s dominant sect, which roughly 85 percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims follow, viewed Shia Islam with suspicion, and extremist Sunnis have portrayed Shias as heretics and apostates.

The transformation of Iran into an overtly Shia power after the Islamic revolution induced Saudi Arabia to accelerate the propagation of Wahhabism, as both countries revived a centuries-old sectarian rivalry over the true interpretation of Islam.

When it comes to stereotyping, Sunnis dismiss Arab Shias as Safawis, (a term that paints them as Iranian agents from the Safavid empire), rafidha (rejecters of the faith), and “majus” (Magi, Zoroastrian or crypto Persian), to describe Shias. Iranians describe Sunnis as takfiris (code for al-Qaeda terrorists) and Wahhabis. Westerners relate to having animosity with the latter, and the ISIS massacres of Shiites aids in ignoring the situation when Shiites could just be as ruthless as Sunnis. This cycle of demonization has been exacerbated throughout the Muslim world in which nearly half of each side believes the other half are not true Muslims.

In Islam, the peace of Mecca as a city open to all Muslims, in which all forms of strife and bloodshed are forbidden during the annual Muslim pilgrimage. But the myth was shattered several times in history. In 1987, Mecca became a site of unprecedented carnage when demonstrating Iranian pilgrims clashed with Saudi security forces in a bloody confrontation that claimed over four hundred lives. Mecca historically was catapulted by Al-Hajjaj Ben Yusuf Al-Thaqafi and later by the Ottomans who shelled the Ka’ba itself shattering the black stone.

 

No matter what political gibberish one listens to these days, and no matter how many times Benjamin Netanyahu calls to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and no matter what prophecy teachers proclaim that Israel will hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, they are all wrong; Iran will build nuclear weapons, but instead of aiming them at Israel, they will aim them at Mecca.

Iran hates Arabia more than they hate Israel. Ayatollah Husayn Ali Montazeri, at the time Khomeini’s successor-designate, met with the foreign guests and denounced the Saudis as “a bunch of English agents from Najd who have no respect either for the House of Allah or for the pilgrims who are the guests of Allah.” Just as Jerusalem would be liberated from the “claws of usurping Israel,” Mecca and Medina would be liberated from the “claws of Al Sa‘ud.” (3)

A Sunni cleric at the conference apparently took the analogy still further, denouncing the Saudis as Jews. The insinuation that the Saudis were Jews–the worst possible libel–echoed an old piece of Shi‘ite bigotry that attributed Jewish origins to the Saudi ruling family.

This and for many other reasons, the noose is tightening on Al-Sa’ud which now rummages to form a Sunni Alliance to save itself. Arabia’s days are numbered. There has been an immense oversight by many in the field of biblical eschatology; that when it comes to the destruction of end-days Babylon, Scripture makes no mention of any of the ancient Babylonian cities: Nineveh, Ur, Babel, Erech, Accad, Sumer, Assur, Calneh, Mari, Karana, Ellpi, Eridu, Kish, or Tikrit. All of the literal references in Scripture are in Arabia. The reason for such oversight is simple; people overly focused on traditional rhetoric while God focuses on a plan that He etched in the Bible. The use “Babylon is fallen is fallen” references Arabia, literally. Isaiah even brilliantly predicted that Iran (biblical Elam) must and will destroy Arabia. In Isaiah 21:9, Isaiah levels a prophetic oracle against Babylon using the same announcement in Revelation 18:1-2 and Revelation 14:8: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen”:

“The burden against Dumah” (Isaiah 21:11)

“The burden against Arabia” (Isaiah 21:13)

“All the glory of Kedar will fail” (Isaiah 21:16)

These “Dumah” and “Kedar” are all in Arabia as well as “Arabia” (v.13) is also in Arabia; it can’t get any clearer than this, which is destroyed by Iran “Elam” (Isaiah 21:2) in a complete wipeout.

For evidence on biblical Babylon, read: Muslims Rebuild The Tower Of Babel (Shocking Research!)

The Bible is also precise and pinpoints a geographic location for this “Babylon” as was predicted in Jeremiah 49:21, literally, “the Red Sea” which confirms Arabia’s destruction. This is also confirmed in Revelation 18 regarding the harlot city:

“And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning” (Revelation 18:9). “And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What [city is] like unto this great city!” (Revelation 18:18).

And once one studies Isaiah 34, there should be no doubt. In nearly identical language concerning Mystery Babylon in Revelation 17, 18:

“Its streams shall be turned into pitch and its dust into brimstone; its land shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night or day; its smoke shall ascend forever” (Isaiah 34:8-10).

Incredibly, almost three millennia before the discovery of fuel oil, Isaiah predicted the burning of the very thing that was used in Babel to build a name for the rebellious ones – the pitch. Pitch is bitumen and tar, which technically is simply crude oil.

This judgment on “Edom” which extends from Teman (Yemen) to Dedan on the Red Sea coast:

“Thus Says the Lord GOD; ‘Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and revenged himself upon them. ‘Therefore thus Says the Lord GOD; ‘I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cutt off man and beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman; and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword’” (Ezekiel 25:12-13).

Is it no wonder why Teman (Yemen) today is in turmoil as I write with the Shiites there upset with Arabia? Karbala will destroy Mecca. Students of the Bible should pay closer attention to the geographic locations which God focused on instead of their preconceived suppositions by imposing their own geography over the Bible.

SOURCE

(1)  See Khomeini’s Messengers in Mecca. On the doctrinal shift from pilgrimage to visitation, see Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 168-170. On Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, see Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683 (London: Tauris, 1994), 134-39.

(2) Oriente Moderno 6 (1926): 310, 513-14, 610.

(3) Montazeri’s speech, Radio Tehran, 27 November 1987, quoted in FBIS, 29 November 1987.