by Michael G. Mickey
(10-6-09)

Mohammed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, at a joint press conference recently held alongside Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Director Ali-Akbar Salehi, identified what he believes to be the most serious threat to the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, in light of the IAEA being the United Nations' so-called "nuclear watchdog", ElBaradei identified that threat --- as the embattled nation of Israel. And why? Because Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons capability that it has never shared with the Israel-hating United Nations.

Simply insane, isn't it?

No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you.

Israel's nuclear capability is considered a greater threat by the United Nations than state sponsor of terrorism and Axis of Evil member Iran's covert nuclear weapons program.

Forget Iran's mad mullahs and its Mahdi-watching president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has openly spoken of Israel being wiped from the face of the earth while repeatedly lying to the international community for years concerning Iran's ever-progressing nuclear weapons program! The really big threat to the Middle East is Israel, not what a nutjob like Ahmadinejad and friends are going to do once Iran has nuclear weapons!

That the IAEA would reach this conclusion and state it openly, especially at this moment when Iran may be at the very door of posing an existential threat to the United States, at the very least, is close to insane, isn't it? And yet this has literally taken place as reported by Israel National News, among other sources.

Why do I say that Iran's nuclear weapons program may pose an existential threat to the United States and not Israel, Europe, China or Russia? Because, looking through the lens of bible prophecy, we know Iran, nuclear weapons or no nuclear weapons, isn't going to destroy Israel. Quite the contrary, when the Gog-Magog event prophesied to occur in Ezekiel 38-39 takes place, Iran and a host of others, including Russia, are going to take a shot at wiping Israel out but fail miserably.

Similarly, through bible prophecy we know that the revived Roman empire, the European Union, is going to remain militarily viable until the return of Christ at Armageddon. The same is true of China, it would seem, based on Revelation 16:12's vision of the kings of the east marching across a dried-up Euphrates River on their way to Armageddon. The United States of America, however? We don't have anything close to a guarantee, scripturally speaking, that the might of the U.S. military is going to be a factor of any significance in the last of the last days, which is frightening to an extent in light of the naivete' the IAEA is presently demonstrating in relation to the Iranian nuclear threat which, I might add, is being supplemented by the naivete' of the Obama administration on the same front, a prime example of the latter documented in an article by The Wall Street Journal which the following is an excerpt from:

President Obama wants a unified front against Iran, and to that end he stood together with Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown in Pittsburgh on Friday morning to reveal the news about Tehran's secret facility to build bomb-grade fuel. But now we hear that the French and British leaders were quietly seething on stage, annoyed by America's handling of the announcement.

Both countries wanted to confront Iran a day earlier at the United Nations. Mr. Obama was, after all, chairing a Security Council session devoted to nonproliferation. The latest evidence of Iran's illegal moves toward acquiring a nuclear weapon was in hand. With the world's leaders gathered in New York, the timing and venue would be a dramatic way to rally international opinion.

President Sarkozy in particular pushed hard. He had been "frustrated" for months about Mr. Obama's reluctance to confront Iran, a senior French government official told us, and saw an opportunity to change momentum. But the Administration told the French that it didn't want to "spoil the image of success" for Mr. Obama's debut at the U.N. and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons, according to the Paris daily Le Monde. So the Iran bombshell was pushed back a day to Pittsburgh, where the G-20 were meeting to discuss economic policy.

Le Monde's diplomatic correspondent, Natalie Nougayrède, reports that a draft of Mr. Sarkozy's speech to the Security Council Thursday included a section on Iran's latest deception. Forced to scrap that bit, the French President let his frustration show with undiplomatic gusto in his formal remarks, laying into what he called the "dream" of disarmament. The address takes on added meaning now that we know the backroom discussions.

"We are right to talk about the future," Mr. Sarkozy said, referring to the U.S. resolution on strengthening arms control treaties. "But the present comes before the future, and the present includes two major nuclear crises," i.e., Iran and North Korea. "We live in the real world, not in a virtual one." No prize for guessing into which world the Frenchman puts Mr. Obama.

Readers, it is pretty frightening to hear that the French president and British Prime Minister were seething mad at President Obama at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh because his administration's greatest concern, at a moment when the three of them could have confronted Iran while Ahmadinejad was in New York with them at the United Nations mere hours earlier, was to avoid spoiling Obama's "image of success" in his U.N. debut.

One would think that any logical leader of a nation referred to as "The Great Satan" by a rogue nation seeking nuclear weapons would worry far less about his image than the fate of the nation he leads, not to mention the safety of his allies, but I digress.

Conclusions

When I look at the world through my eyes and hear with my ears, both of mortal flesh, that a respected international "nuclear watchdog" has tagged Israel as the single greatest threat to the Middle East, even greater than a state sponsor of terrorism covertly and deceptively working to obtain nuclear weapons, my mind screams: "This is utter insanity! Are you people nuts?"

On the other hand, when I look at the world through the lens of bible prophecy and the Holy Spirit helps me put things in proper perspective? All of the above makes perfect sense.

The world holding unwarranted animosity toward Israel? Check!

The leader of a powerful nation once faithful to Israel being so vain as to place his image above doing what is right for Israel, his own people and the world? Check!

Iran, biblical Persia, taking a posture that is raising global tensions, creating conditions favorable for the prophesied battle of Gog-Magog to occur, seeking weapons of mass destruction that will assuredly bring the world closer to the Tribulation Period? Check!

I could go on and on which is why I can be found, most days of the year, pecking away on the keyboard of my computer, doing everything within the capability of my human flesh to sound the alert that Jesus Christ is coming soon, fully realizing that everything is going to be okay in the end, at least for those of us who love the Lord. May He come quickly!