The headline was riveting: "Revealed: Israel Plans Nuclear Strike On Iran." This top-featured article appeared in the London Sunday Times Online, on January 7, 2007. Writers Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter clearly claimed to have inside information, allowing them to access classified Israeli plans:
"Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
"Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear ‘bunker-busters,' according to several Israeli military sources.
"The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.
"Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open ‘tunnels' into the targets. ‘Mini-nukes' would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.
"‘As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,' said one of the sources."
According to the article, at least three targets would be involved in that mission. First on the list is the city of Natanz, where thousands of Zippe-type gas centrifuges are in continuous operation. These units separate fissionable uranium gasses, dividing U-238 from the weapons grade U-235. The latter is then collected in amounts sufficient to make a bomb.
The second target is Isfahan, where another conversion plant stores the separated gas in massive quantities, until it can be converted to enriched, fissionable uranium.
Third-ranked is Arak, where high-tech heavy water reactors are in full-time production.
The article includes many details, including the fact that the Israeli Air Force has already flown practice missions for the trip, which has a one-way distance of about a thousand miles.
As would be expected, Israel quickly denied the report. On the same day as the Times story, Haaretz News Service quoted Mark Regev, a spokesman from Israel's Foreign Ministry, who said that, "Israel wanted the issue of Iran's nuclear program resolved through diplomacy.
"The focus of the Israeli activity today is to give full support to diplomatic actions and the expeditious and full implementation of Security Council resolution 1737. If diplomacy succeeds, the problem can be solved peaceably."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office had no comment. It must be remembered that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He has demanded that this must be done in the near future.
Iran, Creator of Chaos
In fact, Ahmadinejad has set a date: March 21, 2007. This is the date of the Spring Equinox, when the Sun at its zenith is observed directly above the equator.
Iran's leadership is now flushed with the pride, and the perception that they have scored a number of military and diplomatic victories. For Iran, the year 2006 witnessed an increasing presence on the world stage. Iran's president continues a worldwide publicity campaign based upon the fervent belief that the Islamic world has now come to the historic moment when it will reach its ascendancy, becoming a global power. This will happen, he believes, because the Mahdi, their long-awaited messianic leader, will return to rule the world.
All this would amount to just so much propaganda if it weren't for one thing. The mullahs of Iran believe that it is their duty to create turmoil and pandemonium. This, they say, will actually accelerate the Mahdi's coming. We first began to focus on this fact over a year ago. Now, it has come to worldwide attention. Actually, the Shiite Muslims are zealous in their desire that everyone should hear about the object of their fervor. They are trying everything they can to make sure that their hopes, dreams and aggressive intentions are well known.
A news release by WorldNetDaily on December 31, 2006, included the remarkable statement, distributed by an Iranian state website, to the effect that the Mahdi (accompanied by none other than Jesus!), could make himself public at the date of the Spring Equinox:
"Imam Mahdi (may God hasten his reappearance) will appear all of a sudden on the world scene with a voice from the skies announcing his reappearance at the holy Ka'aba in Mecca." The internet program was entitled, "The World Toward Illumination." Its apocalyptic imagery of Islamic armies marching upon Jerusalem is a bloodthirsty spectacle:
"The Mahdi's farsightedness and firmness in the face of mischievous elements will strike awe. After his uprising from Mecca all of Arabia will be submit [sic] to him and then other parts of the world as he marches upon Iraq and established [sic] his seat of global government in the city of Kufa.
"Then the Imam will send 10 thousand of his forces to the east and west to uproot the oppressors. At this time God will facilitate things for him and lands will come under his control one after the other …
"After his appearance the Imam would remain in Mecca for some time, and then go to Medina … a descendant of the Prophet's archenemy Abu Sofyan, will seize Syria and attack Iraq and the Hejaz with the ferocity of a beast … finally Imam Mahdi sends troops who will kill the Sofyani in Beit ol-Moqaddas (Jerusalem), the Islamic holy city in Palestine that is currently under occupation of the Zionists."
Mystical Superstition
As we reported a year ago, the leading lights in the Islamic revolution have a powerful conviction that they are surrounded by a strong aura of spiritual power. Some have professed the belief that Osama bin Laden is the Mahdi. And although Ahmadinejad has never claimed messiahship, others are convinced that he is the one who will bring about the Mahdi's emergence.
In late 2005, many global news bureaus reported that Ayatollah Amoli swore that he saw Ahmadinejad surrounded by a supernatural light, as he spoke before the United Nations General Assembly. A Radio Free Europe report (dated November 29, 2005) told of the Ayatollah saying to him, "…in the name of God, I saw that you became surrounded by a light until the end of the speech."
Ahmadinejad unabashedly agreed, saying, "I felt it myself, too. I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27 or 28 minutes all the leaders did not blink."
He added, "I am not exaggerating when I say they did not blink; it's not an exaggeration, because I was looking. They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."
The following quote from Showdown with Nuclear Iran by Michael Evans clarifies their general belief about their president:
"Ahmadinejad's chief spiritual advisor is Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, known as ‘the Crocodile' for his rugged facial features and his hard-line orthodox religious views. During the presidential election, Yazdi told believers that Ahmadinejad was the ‘chosen' of the Mahdi. Because Ahmadinejad is the person designated to prepare the way for the Twelfth Imam's second coming Yazdi told followers they had a duty to vote for him.
"Yazdi heads the Imam Khomeini Research and Learning Center in Qom, site of the sacred Jamkaran well, down which the Twelfth Imam supposedly disappeared as a child centuries ago. At the well there is a green ‘post office box' to permit devout Shi'ites to write prayer requests on small pieces of paper and to ‘mail' them to the Mahdi" (p. 58).
This is the mystical atmosphere among the leaders of today's Islamic revolutionaries. They are convinced that they are possessed of a supernatural power; that they are unstoppable. They have pledged to bring forth the Imam Mahdi, and believe that they can do this by fomenting chaos. The more they can disrupt any effort toward general peace, the more successful they feel. This, for them, is true religion.
As Mark Hitchcock has written, "Ahmadinejad is a Shiite Muslim who is deeply committed to an Islamic Messianic Figure known as the Mahdi (Arabic for ‘rightly-guided one') or sometimes referred to as the Hidden Imam. He has a presidential obsession with what is known in Islam as Mahdaviat. This is a technical religious term that means ‘a belief in and efforts to prepare for the Mahdi.'
"As mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad persuaded the city council to build a grand avenue in the city to prepare for the coming of the Mahdi, the key figure in Islamic eschatology. When he came to power as president, one of the initial acts of his government was to donate $17 million to the Jamkaran mosque, which is a popular pilgrimage site where Muslim devotees come to drop messages in a well where they believe the Hidden Imam is hiding." (Iran: The Coming Crisis, pp. 75,76).
As we have come to understand it, Mahdaviat is simply the Islamic expression for the creation of chaos, out of which the Mahdi is supposed to appear. In the light of this belief, diplomatic initiatives seem ludicrous. Radical Islamists would simply regard them as grist for their mill of bedlam and general commotion. And beneath it all is their burning desire to see Israel reduced to smoldering rubble.
The Name of Jesus
The degree to which Islamics have co-opted biblical ideas is truly astonishing. They have "borrowed" the battle of Gog and Magog from Ezekiel's prophecy. They have lifted bits and pieces of the Apocalypse from the book of the Revelation. They have also picked up the beast - the Antichrist - and twisted him to their prophetic purpose. There seems to be no end to the way they warp prophecy, even to the taking of Jerusalem as their holy city.
Worst of all, however, is the way they despoil the name of Jesus. They believe that Jesus will accompany the great Mahdi upon his return … as one of his servants!
Yet, from its earliest days, Christianity has lived by one conviction - that Jesus is the one and only Creator, born in human flesh. As Peter told the Sanhedrin:
"This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:11,12).
There is no room for equivocation in this statement. For Islamic authorities to claim that Jesus is subservient to the Mahdi reveals their astonishing ignorance of biblical history.
Ahmadinejad brazenly used Jesus for his own political purposes in a statement recorded in the December 19th WorldNetDaily: "I wish all the Christians a very happy new year and I wish to ask them a question as well.
"My one question for the Christians is: What would Jesus do if he were present in the world today? What would [He] do before some of the oppressive powers of the world who are in fact residing in Christian countries? Which powers would [He] revive and which of them would he destroy?
"If Jesus were present today, who would be facing [Him] and who would be following [Him]?"
"Ahmadinejad then made a connection between Jesus and the Imam Mahdi, believed by Shiites to have disappeared as a child in A.D. 941. When the Mahdi returns, they contend, he will reign on earth for seven years before bringing about a final judgment and the end of the world.
"All I want to say is that the age of hardship, threat and spite will come to an end someday and, God willing, Jesus would return to the world along with the emergence of the descendant of … Islam's holy prophet, Imam Mahdi, and wipe away every tinge of oppression, pain and agony from the face of the world."
Such hubris is characteristic of contemporary Islam. Though it has many factions, all of them convey the general sense that their belief is on the verge of majority control. Their Mahdi directly competes with our Lord Jesus. Compromise with such a system is impossible, since it is their foregone conclusion that Mohammed, the Koran and Islamic religious authority have superseded Judeo-Christian belief.
In his 2004 book, The Mahdi – Hijacked Messiah (pp. 61, 62, 67), author Ron Cantrell points out a number instances in which Jesus is shown as inferior to the coming Mahdi. His book presents a truly wicked catalog of moral assaults upon Christianity. They do great violence to the sanctity of God's only begotten Son. The following represent only a few of them:
"According to the Hadith [Islam's manual of religious history and practice] Jesus will return from heaven, battle the Antichrist, defeat him, then confess Islam, kill all swine, break all crosses, and establish a millennium of righteousness. Jesus will even marry and bear children:
"Allah's apostle said, ‘By Him in whose hands my soul is [Allah], son of Mary [Jesus] will shortly descend amongst you people [Muslims] as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the jizya [tax placed on non-Muslims]. Then there will be abundance …"
Jesus is also presented as Islamic: "It is reported from Abu Hurayra that the Prophet said: ‘What will be your reaction when the son of Mary descends and your Imam [Jesus] is among yourselves? Sahih muslim, bab muzul ‘isa, Vol. 2."
In another example, Jesus will go to Mecca as a follower of the Mahdi. "The Islamic Jesus will follow the Mahdi to Mecca where he will offer his prayers at the Ka'aba shrine, but not as the leader. He will pray in a place of secondary stature to the Mahdi: Abd Allah b. Umar mentioned the name of Mahdi in the presence of an Arab who said, Mahdi is Mu'awiya b. Abu Sufyan. Abd Allah said: ‘It is not as you say. Mahdi is a person behind whom Jesus will offer his prayers. Ibn Tawus, Kitab al-malahim wa al-fitan, p. 64."
These are among dozens, if not hundreds of other statements that one could cite. Another of Cantrell's quotes demonstrates the amazingly libelous, false and malicious statements about Jesus that characterize Islamic teaching. Here, we learn how (from the Islamic perspective) one gains access to heaven:
"The Prophet said, ‘If anyone testifies that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah alone who has no partners, and that Muhammad is his slave and his apostle, and that Jesus is Allah's slave and his apostle and his word which he bestowed on Mary and a spirit created by him, and that paradise is true, and hell is true, Allah will admit him into paradise with the deeds which he had done even if those deeds were few.' Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 4, Book 55, Number 644"
The Day of the Lord
Those who hope for the Mahdi share a single passion: They wish the complete and final annihilation of Israel … they want to kill every last descendant of all twelve tribes. We must never forget Ahmadinejad's infamous speech at the Islamic congress of October 26, 2005.
The theme of his speech was emblazoned upon the front of his lectern for all to see: "A World Without Zionism." Zionism … the revival of national and spiritual Israel … was the leading fact of the last century, and it will be of this one, as well.
Radical Islam would do well to listen to Joel, the earliest of Israel's writing prophets. He set the tone for the Lord's judgment of the nations. Seven times in Joel's prophecy, he shouts "Zion!" from the rooftops as a victory cry. The hope of Islam is absolutely futile.
Zion is Judah, Jerusalem and all Israel. Joel says it best: "So shall ye know that I am the LORD your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more" (Joel 3:17).