By Walid Shoebat

Today the news says that the US special forces – escorted by Apache attack helicopters and heavy weapons – have arrived at Ein al-Assad airbase in Baghdadi District, west of Anbar in Iraq. The loss of Mosul and Raqqa would kill off Al-Baghdadi’s delusion of an Islamic Caliphate. Thats the plan. Then we have Turkey and Saudi Arabia are also sounding the drumbeats of war and is preparing for a military incursion into Syria to also kill Al-Baghdadi’s henchmen. Then we also have Saudi Arabia sending in ground troops on Thursday stationed in Turkey while the Russian prime minister threatened that the move could spark World War III.

So what will the outcome be? Will Iran have a face-off with Turkey? Will there be a Turkish-Russian war, and if so who will be the victor, Russia or Turkey?

THE KEY IS TO FIND THE LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP
Are all these militaries converging on the Iraqi-Syrian scene to collect the US State Department $10 million reward to bring in Al-Baghdadi dead or alive? Common sense begs to examine these players. We have Iranians who love the Syrian regime only, but they hate the Syrian revolution. They also hate Al-Baghdadi as much as they hate the Saudis. And then we have the Russians who hate the Turks, they also hate the U.S., they hate the Syrian revolutionary Sunnis and they hate Al-Baghdadi and only love Syria’s regime and they love the Iranians. And then we have the Saudi Arabians who hate the Syrian regime and loves the Syrian Islamist revolution but they also passionately hate Iran more so than they hate Al-Baghdadi’s ISIS. And then we have the Americans who hate Russia, they hate Iran and also hate the Syrian regime while they tolerate Turkey and Saudi Arabia and say they love the Syrian Islamist revolution and they hate Al-Baghdadi’s ISIS. And then we have this last odd-ball, the Turks who hate everybody except one. The Turks hate the Russians from time immemorial, they also hate the Syrian regime, they also hate the Iranians for supporting the Syrian regime. The Turks even hate the Saudi Arabians for collaborating with the British to oust the Ottomans. The Turks only love the Islamist Syrian revolution and the Islamist Al-Baghdadi’s ISIS.

The Jesus-style question is: if the goal is to kill Al-Baghdadi and his ISIS henchmen, why then would Russia be upset at Turkey and Saudi Arabia for wanting to kill a common enemy? Why is the U.S. upset at Russia for killing Al-Baghdadi’s men and why is Iran upset at Saudi Arabia for wanting to kill Al-Baghdadi and his men especially that now Saudi Arabia would be killing the killers of Shiites?

The answer is that this war has little to do with ISIS and more to do with regional power struggles. Prognosticators predict all sorts of scenarios, but most of these predictions were wrong.

WILL TURKEY HAVE A CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN 
Some prognosticators say Iran will move in to fight Turkey. Will this happen? No. Iran can’t afford loosing its relationship with Turkey. Turkey and Iran have a common interest in preventing an independent Kurdish nation. The more the United States supports the Iraqi Kurds there will be a greater danger of an Iranian-Turkish alliance, which is what we project will happen. The Ezekiel 38 program is on course, Gog is a leader from Turkey who unites with Persia (Iran), Libya and Egypt (after occupying them). We say Egypt because it is clear that there is a league (Ezekiel 30:8). Most students isolate Ezekiel 38 ignoring that the whole theme of Ezekiel’s prophecy stems from Ezekiel 28 to Ezekiel 39. All this needs to be viewed in whole. Unfortunately, many do not like to read the entire context and seem to be satisfied to only reading one chapter—Ezekiel 38. In the Christian world there are only two spheres: the lazy who consume half truths (focus only on Ezekiel 38 or Psalm 83) and the vigilant who consumes the whole truth. Today the half-truthers look silly. There is one named Mark Hitchcock as well as Joel Rosenberg (these claim to be  ‘prophecy experts’) in 2011 Rosenberg claimed:

The next country Ezekiel mentions is “Beth Togarmah.” This is the Turkic-speaking peoples that spread out from Turkey across the Causasus, and across Central Asia. We can’t be certain precisely which modern nation states from this area will join the anti-Israel alliance, because these are almost all Muslim countries with close links to Russia

First of all, Russia links with Syria, a secular state and distances from Turkey, an Islamist state. To say “these are all Muslim” therefore they “will join Russia” is simply ludicrous. Turkey did not join Russia. It is actually the opposite; Turkey is at war with Russia.

With these so-called analysts, the game plans always changes every few years and the predictions are tweaked to fit the events on the ground after the fact. You will rarely if ever find them predict anything correctly.

Long ago it was Russia and Iran invading Israel. Turkey was secular and was not in the scheme of things. Then Turkey turns Islamist and as they saw Turkey rising, their game plan changed and it became a Russian-Iranian-Turksih alliance.

We said this will never be. Watch now how their flowcharts will soon change to drop Turkey or to drop Russia from their Ezekiel 38′ analysis. Almost all these analysts were dead wrong.

The Turks hate the Russians and the Russians will always hate the Turks. And now since we have a potential war between Russia and Turkey, these go back with a chalk in hand to re-draw a different flowchart for next year and no matter what they do, there flowcharts are found wanting.

It was from as far back as April 2014, we discounted a Russian Turkish alliance:

In our view, ahistoricals should have no voice in the Prophecy circles. For Putin to be this predicted “Gog,” Turkey must willingly submit to Russia. Russia and Turkey are two rivals who have warred against each other from time immemorial. For anyone who still doubts us that Putin can never be Gog, please read our 6 part series [here].

Today no one questions this, but only because they see it happening now on the ground and it is not because they were seeking to have a balanced foresight and spiritual intuition to examine the full truth. The half truth argues for centuries, salvation is by faith alone and is not by works. The full-truth says: salvation is by faith and by works that are infused by God. God does His work through us. So it is God’s works that save us even though these works were carried out by the sheep. Do man’s works save? No. This statement alone should shun away all the systematic theology. Christ too summed up the law and the prophets in one sentence to: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” With all your “strength” requires mental and physical work.

WHO WILL WIN THIS WAR RUSSIA OR TURKEY?
Many ask: will we have a potential conflict between Saudi Arabia and NATO-backed Turkey on one side and Russia and Iran on the other? To answer this question, one must first enter the mind of the last devil in the game: Turkey.

Contrary to what most people say, Turkey will not fight Iran but does not mind duking it out with Russia. Turkey is calculative and is more cunning than most western analysts perceive. It knows that American interests is against Russia, in that the U.S. and NATO since their support for the Arab Spring wants to dismantle Russia’s allies in the region, these do not want to keep any cold-war enemy behind.

So in reality, NATO and the U.S. stood more with the Islamists, more than Russia did.

This is why the whole crux of the matter is removing the Syrian regime, the last beacon for Russia in the Mediterranean. From that perspective Turkey is keeping NATO happy. Turkey is a nation that plays the game well with both the Muslim world as well as the western world. Turkey knows that the U.S. sees Russia’s interest in the Ukraine as a threat to Europe and by going against Russia Turkey shows that it serves U.S. and NATO interests and will gain their backing, especially that they are on the side of Ukraine. Ukraine and Turkey are both at odds with Moscow and a new military relationship has begun that could extend beyond tanks or artillery.

So the Turks and the Saudis know that the U.S. and NATO powers will take their side because protecting Europe from Russia by standing with the Ukraine is a fundamental U.S. interest. As a result Russia will be isolated. Even more problematic for Russia is that the U.S. is working out a new non-NATO Russian-resistance alliance, which will be the US, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (the Baltic states). These do not like Russia. Therefore, Russia is isolated in the game. Russia’s supply lines are also far from its basis in Syria and it will be difficult to resupply its forces in Syria. The Saudis also know that low-oil prices (which Saudi Arabia is intentionally manipulating) hits Russia’s pocket book where it cannot sustain a long protracted war in Syria.

Never underestimate Saudi Arabia. When it comes to Saudi Arabia, we should not kid ourselves, Saudi Arabia knows how to orchestrate strife by mustering revolutionary Muslims to answer the call of Jihad against Orthodox Russia. They did it in Afghanistan when Russia was under Communism which caused the defeat of Russia and they will do it again in Syria. Saudi Arabia is the eight legged mother spider who gave birth to the religion (Islam) to what was all the ancient empires combined: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece (Asia Minor), Roman-Byzantine (Asia Minor), Ottoman and neo-Ottoman in Asia Minor. She will eventually be eaten by her offspring.

IS SAUDI ARABIA AND TURKEY AFTER ISIS?
Is Turkey and Saudi Arabia now after ISIS? We all have seen it when Turkish warplanes directly began to supposedly target ISIS locations to all of the sudden switched plans and opened a second front, not on ISIS, but against the PKK Kurdish rebel sites that were fighting ISIS. Today all the shelling from Turkey is on the Kurds. Iran too does not want a Kurdistan and is why they have a more important goal to prevent a Kurdistan (ancient Media) than to protect Syria. Medo-Persia, the bear, in Daniel 7:5 was Kurdistan (Media) and Iran (Persia), which will re-arise in the end, but only “one side” will arise, Persia (Iran) while the other side, Media (Kurdistan) will not.  It is crucial to pay attention to the little hidden detail and only then can one unlock these prophecies.

Remember always, the key to unlocking the Middle East riddle is to understand global superpowers. As we said last year, ISIS is useful for the U.S. as well as for Russia and Turkey even as far as Japan which has major use for ISIS where ISIS is the excuse for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s re-interpretation of the Japanese constitution in regards to weapons allowing Japan to also play a stronger role in global affairs. ISIS is useful for the U.S., as an excuse to remove Bashar Al-Assad and for Russia as a reason to defend his Syrian ally Bashar Al-Assad and is why Putin bombs all the Islamists regardless.

PROGNOSTICATORS WERE WRONG ABOUT IRAN IN THE PAST AND NOW
While Saudi Arabia fears Iran the most, when it comes to Iran, most think that the nuclear issue is the main issue. Fact is that from the year 2000, the analysts expected that Iran would have these weapons within two years and that the U.S. will move in to destroy the reactors or that Israel will take them out as it did in Osairak in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s reign. From as far back then we have predicted that none of this will happen. The predictors on the secular level were just as bad as the Blood Moon prognosticators; each year passed, the due date moved by another year and nothing happened. What happened is that the predictions were constantly wrong. But this didn’t put off the predictors at all. Now we even see the United States quickly approach Iran with a common denominator in that they with Iran were combatting ISIS.

Prognosticators do not understand that building a deliverable nuclear weapon is not so easy. Today many predict that Turkey and Iran will have a showdown over Syria and we say that Iran will not come in for a showdown.

Prognosticators are two types. We have folks like George Friedman who is a secular analyst, a good one at that, and then we have the Evangelical prophetic prognosticators who are terrible. These examine everything from their theological bent and lack tremendous ability to understand the complexities of the Middle East. Prophecy and foresight is to have both, an understanding of the secular world as well as understanding the prophetic. It is no wonder why the Bible speaks much on “wisdom”.

In April 2014, we predicted that none of these scenarios will happen. Neither the U.S. or Israel or even Turkey will do anything about Iran. To Tehran Turkey is an essential partner in the Islamic awakening and it does not want a clash with it, even if it costs it secular Syria.

It is key to always keep in mind, the Middle East is broken down into two spheres: Islamists and secular nationalists. Any Iranian interference in Syria to thwart the Turkish-Saudi plan, will complicate the situation and will bring strong reaction from both spheres: the Sunni Islamists as well as the Arab nationalists. Iran cannot afford this. The so-called “Iran experts” and “Turkey experts” and all the U.S. government officials with its propaganda machine which for years were saying that Iran is growing increasingly unstable and will fold up and that Erdogan of Turkey was on his way out.

They were all wrong. The Bible says otherwise because God is the best Middle East analyst.

They see things from an economic prism that is void of the ideological dynamo, which is truly the mover and shaker in the region. Saudi Arabia and Turkey sees Russia’s presence in Syria as an Orthodox Christian presence. This is the case for Turkey and especially for Saudi Arabia. To these, it is sacrilege just as Russia’s existence in Afghanistan was sacrilege. In Afghanistan we saw the outcome, Russia lost. It will be the same in Syria.

IS THE DESTRUCTION OF DAMASCUS COMING FROM THIS WAR?
This is the most absurd claim, that Damascus will end soon. Indeed, Damascus will end, but not in the immediate sense. Many read half the truth. When Isaiah 17 says “Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins”, the other half of the truth says:

In that day people will look to their Make and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
They will not look to the altars, the work of their hands, and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles (Isaiah 17:7-8)

This scenario happens when Christ comes and not when Orthodox Russia is protecting Damascus. Therefore, Syria must first become totally Antichrist in which they will persecute Christians. This is not the case now with Bashar Al-Assad’s regime where the motto everywhere is uttered in Syrian media: “It is God and Bashar” and not “Allah and Muhammad”.

This is why Russia must lose Syria first.