Monthly Archives: March 2013

I’ll be on Fox News on Sunday to discuss tensions between Israel, Iran & Syria.

March 10, 2013 By in Epicenter

Fox-logoUPDATED: The host is Shannon Bream. The time is expected to be around 1:15pm eastern. The topic will be Damascus Countdown, the Iran and Syria threats, and the President’s upcoming trip to Israel and the Middle East. Hope you can join us live, or set your DVR. Thanks.

“The danger of Syria’s impending implosion”: 5 ways the collapse of Syria might be more dangerous than most people realize.

March 8, 2013 By in Epicenter

dailycaller-logoHere is the column I wrote on the unfolding disaster in Syria. It was published today by The Daily Caller:

(Washington, D.C.) — The nation of Syria is collapsing into a bloody, chaotic, nearly genocidal civil war. The days of the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad are numbered. It is not a matter of if Assad will fall, but when. The countdown is underway.

Few Americans will be sad to see Assad go. The cruel tyrant deserves to be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity, and the people of Syria desperately need to be set free. Still, few realize just how dangerous the implosion of Syria really will be.

First, in desperation, Assad could use his stockpiles of WMDs against his own people. “Syria’s Baathist dictatorship developed and stockpiled a lethal arsenal of chemical weapons including blister agents such as mustard gas and even more dangerous nerve agents (VX and Sarin),” notes Dr. Steven Bucci, a Mideast foreign policy expert with The Heritage Foundation. “These chemical munitions can be delivered by artillery, rocket launchers, Scud ballistic missiles, and aircraft. … U.S. officials believe that there are at least 50 chemical weapon production and storage facilities inside Syria.”

Washington is deeply concerned that Assad could use such weapons to….

[To read the rest of the column, please click here]

Joel C. Rosenberg, a former aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a New York Times best-selling author with nearly 3 million copies of his books in print. His latest novel is “Damascus Countdown.”

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Like a scene ripped from “Dead Heat,” North Korea threatens nuclear strike on U.S.

March 8, 2013 By in Epicenter

NK-flag2>> Note: I’ll be on the Fox News Channel on Sunday with Shannon Bream to discuss Israel, Iran, Syria and “Damascus Countdown”

Readers of this blog may recall that in 2008, I published a thriller called, Dead Heat. The premise: a lunatic running North Korea launches a preemptive nuclear strike at four American cities (New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Seattle). Now in the latest installment of “life is stranger than fiction,” the lunatic leader of North Korea really is threatening a preemptive nuclear strike on the U.S. Consider the latest headlines:

This is dangerous in its own right. But it’s also dangerous because of the growing body of evidence that suggests North Korea and Iran are working hand-in-glove on building nuclear warheads together. North Korea clearly already has operational nuclear warheads, and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. That makes Pyongyang a serious threat to the national security of South Korea, Japan, the U.S. and our other Asian allies. But if Pyongyang is, in fact, helping the mullahs in Tehran build their own arsenal of nukes, then this poses a clear and present danger to Israel, too. It suggests war in the Middle East may be coming soon as Israeli leaders may soon feel they have to launch its own preemptive strike on Iran to neutralize the Iranian threat before it can fully materialize. This, of course, is the premise of The Tehran Initiative and Damascus Countdown — what would such a strike look like? What would the blowback look like? And might Iran be able to draw Syria into the war to annihilate Israel?

Let me be clear: I’m not saying definitively there will be a war in the Mideast in 2013. Indeed, I’m praying earnestly for peace, and I encourage you to do so, too. But after six months of relative calm on the Israel-Iran front, things are clearly heating up again. True, we have seen in the past that tensions can spike, and then wane. Leaders in the region do their saber-rattling, and then quiet down. But we cannot rule out the possibility that this time is different. I’ll continue to keep you posted as best I can.

FLASHBACK:

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Israeli Dep. Foreign Minister & fmr Delta Force commander endorse Rosenberg books, “can’t wait to read this new one, Damascus Countdown”

March 8, 2013 By in Epicenter

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The timing of the release of Damascus Countdown this week has been interesting as the media is filled with stories about U.S.-Israeli relations, the Iranian nuclear threat, the bloody chaos in Syria, and the growing prospect of an Israeli preemptive strike and another war in the epicenter. As such, in the midst of radio and TV interviews this week, I’ve been staying in touch with several key Middle East experts, including a former CIA Director and two current Members of the House Intelligence Committee, to keep up with fast-moving developments and provide what I hope is careful, thoughtful analysis. I’m currently drafting several op-eds based on these discussions, and will post these once they are published.

This morning, I’m grateful to be able to announce the endorsement of two good friends and renowned diplomatic and military experts. I first met Danny Ayalon when he was the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Over the last four years, he has served with distinction as Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister and we’ve become good friends during this time. He spoke at the 2011 Epicenter Conference in Jerusalem and gave a really fascinating and helpful presentation on the state of affairs in the Middle East. Three-star U.S. General Jerry Boykin and I became friends when he was serving as a senior official in the Pentagon. Since retiring from the Army, he, too, has been an excellent speaker at several of our Epicenter Conferences. Their insights have always proven very useful to me, and I’m deeply grateful for their support for my books.

“I’ve loved reading Joel Rosenberg’s books in the past — Epicenter especially comes to mind — and I can’t wait to read this new one, Damascus Countdown. Joel is a stalwart and faithful friend of the State of Israel. He’s a good personal friend. And he’s a great writer. He understands the grave dangers posed by Iran and Syria, and he’s been a bold and courageous voice for true peace and security in the Middle East. If you haven’t read his work yet, I hope you will.”

— Danny Ayalon, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister

“Joel Rosenberg is the most knowledgeable and well-rounded author in America today regarding the realities of current events in the Mideast, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf. In fact, Joel is a true authority on the geopolitics and history of those regions, and speaks extensively about the serious threats that the Radical elements of Islam present to America and our close ally, Israel….Joel has an incredible ability to write both fiction and non-fiction in a way that the reader senses that they are part of the plot and often, on the front line. If you want to get a better understanding of what is unfolding in the ‘epicenter’ of today’s world, let Joel take you on an incredible and exciting journey.”

— Lt.-General (ret.) Jerry Boykin, former commander of Delta Force and former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence

>> Fmr. Director of CIA — and fmr. CIA operative in Iran — endorse Damascus Countdown

>> Damascus Countdown releases nationwide. Santorum, Limbaugh & Forbes endorse

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How has the Obama administration’s tone on Iran changed in the last 96 hours? Video of my interview with CBN News.

March 7, 2013 By in Epicenter
Discussing Mideast trends on CBN News.

Discussing Mideast trends on CBN News.

“Author Joel Rosenberg has a knack for writing fiction that is chillingly close to reality, and he’s done it again in Damascus Countdown, the third and final installment of his Twelfth Imam series,” reports CBN News. “Rosenberg’s novels are entertaining, but he also has a track record of being quite prophetic in his fiction.”

“In Damascus Countdown, Israel has successfully launched a first strike on Iran, taking out all of their nuclear sites and six of their nuclear warheads,” CBN notes. “The result prompts the Twelfth Imam to order a full-scale retaliation. The fictional U.S. President William Jackson threatens to support a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Jewish state for unprovoked and unwarranted acts of aggression. How close is this fictional account to a real-world scenario? Rosenberg was on ‘The 700 Club,’ Thursday, March 7, to talk about his latest book and just how possible it is that things can play out in similar fashion in reality.”

It was an interesting conversation — running about 12 minutes — and we covered a lot of ground. Here are some of the issues we discussed:

  • Why is the Tel Aviv-to-Tehran corridor the most dangerous corridor on the planet right now?
  • How has the Obama administration’s tone on Iran changed significantly in the last 96 hours? [I wrote about this on the blog the other day, but discussed it further on CBN]
  • Is President Obama going to Israel in a few weeks to “re-set” U.S.-Israel relations in a more positive way, or to apply new pressure on Israel to make unwise and potentially dangerous decisions?
  • How close is Iran to the “red-line” on nuclear weapons and how much longer can Israel wait before making the kind of preemptive strike on Iran as described in Damascus Countdown?
  • What does Bible prophecy say about the future of Iran?
  • What does Bible prophecy say about the future of Damascus?
  • Why are so many Iranian Muslims leaving Shia Islam and becoming followers of Jesus Christ?

To watch the video of the interview, please click here.

“Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster,” says UN. One million refugees & 90,000 dead. Is the worst yet to come?

March 6, 2013 By in Epicenter

We are watching the implosion of Syria. A horrible situation is steadily deteriorating, and the worst may be yet to come. Assad could decide to use chemical and biological weapons to defeat the rebels. The Assad regime could collapse and the anarchy could intensify. Iran and Hezbollah could seize control of the country. Al Qaeda or another Radical Muslim group could seize control. A war with Israel could erupt. A war between Israel and Iran could erupt, with Syria actively siding with Iran, or with Syria caught in the crossfire. Damascus Countdown is one worst case scenario. Clearly, there are others.

“The number of Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict has reached a million,” the BBC reports, citing UN officials. “The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said the number of people seeking haven in neighbouring countries had jumped since the beginning of the year. Half of the refugees were children, the UN said, most of them under 11 and often traumatised by their experiences. The largest numbers of refugees were seeking shelter in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. The figure includes registered refugees and newer arrivals awaiting registration.”

“Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement, warning that the international humanitarian response capacity was “dangerously stretched.” He added: “This tragedy has to be stopped,” he added.

“The millionth refugee recorded by UNHCR was a 19-year-old mother of two called Bushra,” noted the BBC. “‘Our situation is so bad, everything is so expensive, we can’t find any work… The situation is so bad, I live with 20 other people in one room,’ Bushra told reporters in the Lebanese city of Tripoli.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry recently said that after nearly two years of fighting, the death toll in Syria has reached some 90,000 people. “I had occasion … to speak this morning with the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia. The first thing he mentioned to me was in his estimate perhaps as many as 90,000 people have been killed in Syria,” said Kerry.

“The figure is well beyond that quoted by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, who said Tuesday the number of people killed in Syria’s civil war is probably approaching 70,000,” noted AP. “She told the UN Security Council that there have probably been almost 10,000 new deaths in recent weeks.”

Please pray for the people of Syria, including the Christians who are persecuted there.

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Fmr. Director of CIA — and fmr. CIA operative in Iran — endorse Damascus Countdown

March 6, 2013 By in Epicenter

damascuscountdown-smallIt has been a pleasure in recent years to get to know and become friends with two men who have served our country with great distinction at the Central Intelligence Agency.

One is Porter Goss, who served as an undercover agent for the CIA, then in Congress as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and finally served as President George W. Bush’s Director of Central Intelligence.

The other is Reza Kahlili, who was born in Iran, became an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, was repulsed by the evil he saw in the Khomenei regime, and decided to become a double agent for the CIA to spy on the Iranian regime. He eventually became a U.S. citizen and wrote a fascinating book about his experiences. [By the way, I should note here that I did not know Reza Kahlili when I began writing this novel series. Thus, it is pure coincidence that my main character in this series is “David Shirazi,” an Iranian who becomes an undercover agent for  the CIA and whose alias is “Reza Tabrizi.” Truth is stranger than fiction.

They have spent countless hours letting me ask them many questions about Iran, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and other challenging countries and issues in the Middle East. In fact, on Monday, I interviewed Porter and hope to be able to transcribe that interview and publish it soon.

In the meantime, I’m deeply honored to receive endorsements from both of these fine men upon the release of Damascus Countdown. 

“Whenever I see a new Joel Rosenberg book coming out, I know I need to clear time on my calendar. His penetrating knowledge of all things Mid-eastern — coupled with his intuitive knack for high stakes intrigue — demand attention. I’ve read them all, and been richly rewarded. I’m especially looking forward to Damascus Countdown.”

— Porter Goss, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

“Joel Rosenberg is one of the most knowledgeable people writing about the Middle East that I’ve had the honor to meet.  He has a particularly clear understanding of what is going on in today’s Iran and Syria and the grave threat these two countries pose to the rest of the world.  His is an important voice in a sea of misdirected and erroneous information that distorts the truth about the realities of these countries’ intentions.”

— Reza Kahlili, former CIA operative in Iran and best-selling author of A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran

>> PREVIOUS POST: Damascus Countdown releases nationwide. Santorum, Limbaugh & Forbes endorse.

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Significant change in tone: U.S. officials concede war with Iran may be unavoidable. Countdown to Israeli action?

March 6, 2013 By in Epicenter

As I begin day two of the media tour for Damascus Countdown, I’m seeing a significant change in tone in the comments of senior U.S. officials — past and present — concerning Iran. Officials who have long been hesitant about the use of military force against Iran are now reluctantly suggesting it may not be possible to avoid war after all.

Listen carefully to the comments of current leaders such as Vice President Biden, Secretary Kerry, and the Commander of CENTCOM — as well as to icon of U.S. national security policy such as Henry Kissinger — and to former senior White House advisors such as Dennis Ross and Elliot Abrams, and this is what you will hear:

  • The nuclear crisis with Iran is coming to a head.
  • Diplomacy and sanctions have not succeeded and may have run their course.
  • The Iranians are not making concessions.
  • Instead, Tehran is accelerating its nuclear efforts and is dangerously close to building nuclear warheads.
  • North Korea just tested a nuclear warhead with Iranian nuclear officials present, and the two countries may be working hand in glove to get Iran ready to build and deploy The Bomb.
  • President Obama still does not want the U.S. to take the lead on a military operation — naming Chuck Hagel as SecDef underscored this point.
  • Israel, however, believes Iran is getting dangerously close now to the very nuclear “red line” that Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of at the U.N. last fall.
  • Netanyahu will soon have a new government enabling him to take action if necessary.
  • Netanyahu is likely to appoint Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon as Defense Minister — Ya’alon is a former IDF chief of staff, has been intimately involved in getting Israel ready for a possible war; Ya’alon has been hesitant about force, preferring covert means, but my sense is he is becoming resolved that force may be inevitable.
  • A top former Israeli military official said publicly this week that a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would a “one night operation.”
  • President Obama is heading to the Middle East soon, and is signalling that Iran and Syria are his top two issues to discuss with Israeli and Arab leaders.
  • The question is whether Mr. Obama still intends to pressure Israel not to strike Iran, or will give Israel the “green light.”

Consider these stories in recent days:

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Centcom commander: Sanctions not working. Believes Iran can be dissuaded. But not considering role Shia eschatology playing in Tehran’s calculus.

March 5, 2013 By in Epicenter
James Mattis (photo credit: CC-BY U.S. Naval War College/Flickr, Times of Israel)

James Mattis (photo credit: CC-BY U.S. Naval War College/Flickr, Times of Israel)

>> BREAKING NEWS: Hugo Chavez — ally of Iran and Syria — has died.

General James Mattis, the commander of Centcom, told Congress today that sanctions on Iran are not working and said the U.S. needed to “have other options ready.” He also said Iran could be convinced to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons by “a purely cost-benefit ratio.”

Short version: I agree sanctions are not working. I do not agree the current Iranian leadership can be dissuaded by a “purely cost-benefit ratio.”

I have deep respect for General Mattis as a military leader. Thus, I would encourage him to consider the role eschatology is playing in Tehran’s calculus. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad and their inner circle of advisors are not being driven by normal geopolitical and economic calculus, but rather by a Shia Islamic End Times theology. They believe the End of Days is at hand. They believe their messiah known as the Twelfth Imam or the “Mahdi” is coming soon. They believe that the way to hasten the coming of the Mahdi is to annihilate Israel (which they call the “Little Satan”) and America (which they call the “Great Satan.”) I wrote about this in detail in my non-fiction book, Inside The Revolution. And I factor this thinking into my current novel series, including The Twelfth Imam, The Tehran Initiative, and Damascus Countdown to consider how it could play out in real life. Such eschatology requires Iran’s leaders to acquire nuclear weaponry and the means to deliver it in order to please Allah and their coming messiah and king. As a result, the international is unlikely to convince them to disobey their most-deeply held religious beliefs through diplomacy or sanctions. A credible military threat might work, but we’re nearly out of time. Actual military action may soon be the only option. No one wants a war. I don’t. But we don’t want to have a genocidal cult to obtain and use nuclear weapons.

“Sanctions are not preventing Iran’s nuclear progress, the US Army commander in the Middle East told Congress on Tuesday,” reports the Times of Israel. “A simple ‘No, sir’ was General James Mattis’s response when asked whether ‘the current diplomatic and economic efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear capability’ were working. ‘I think we have to continue sanctions, but have other options ready,’ said Mattis, of the Central Command, to the Armed Services Committee during an official hearing.”

“Mattis said Iran could be convinced to alter its course by ‘a purely cost-benefit ratio,’ but at the moment, he noted, the ‘nuclear industry continues’ apace, despite sanctions,” reports the Times. “‘Between economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and encouragement of behavior that does not cost them such a degree of political support that they end up losing power, there may yet be a way to bring them to their senses,’ the general stated. Such means to bring Iran ‘to its knees,’ Mattis commented in response to another question, did not necessarily entail ‘open conflict,’ but a military operation is ‘one of the options that I have to have prepared for the president.’ Mattis’s statements came in the wake of a fresh effort on the part of the West to curb Iran’s nuclear program via diplomatic means, and echoed comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.”

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Hagel hugs Barak. But deep divisions are real and serious. So what did the two discuss?

March 5, 2013 By in Epicenter
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, right, embraces Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as he arrives at the Pentagon, March 5, 2013. DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo (Official DOD photo)

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, right, embraces Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as he arrives at the Pentagon, March 5, 2013. DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

Another day, another hug.

On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden gave Ehud Barak a bear hug on stage at the AIPAC conference. Today, newly-installed U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with outgoing Israeli Defense Minister at the Pentagon and also gave him a bear hug. This was Hagel’s first meeting with a foreign counterpart. The symbolism of meeting with an Israeli was important given Hagel’s troubling approach towards the Jewish state, and the President’s.

For despite all the hugging and the smiles, the painful truth is this: there is a deep divide between U.S. and Israeli policy on how to handle the big two issues of the moment — the Iranian nuclear threat and the implosion of Syria.

It is such serious divisions between an American administration and an Israeli government over how to handle Iran and Syria that lie at the heart of my new novel, Damascus Countdown. What if an American President and his national security team miscalculate ? What if Iran actually gets a small arsenal of nuclear warheads? What if an Israeli Prime Minister launches a massive preemptive strike against Iran despite intense pressure from the White House not to do so? What if Iran and her allies — including Syria — launch an all out war of annihilation against Israel, and the U.S. is not there to back up Israel? How would such a scenario play out? What are some of the worst case scenarios?

These tensions, however, are not fiction. They are all too real. President Obama says repeatedly that “all options are on the table” when it comes to preventing Iran from getting The Bomb. But he appointed a SecDef who is adamantly opposed to using military force against Iran. That hardly makes for a “credible” military threat. At the same time, the President continues to apply pressure in numerous ways against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from military action. He is not entirely dissimilar to the fictional President in my novel.

Barak, on the other hand, has worked for years with Netanyahu to come up with a serious, solid, operational military plan to neutralize the Iranian threat. Barak and Netanyahu have been arch political rivals for years. But they have worked together closely and well for the last four years because the existential threat posed by Iran is so real. Barak will be stepping down as soon as Netanyahu forms a new government. But this week it fell to Barak to attempt to persuade Hagel to take the mullahs in Tehran and their nuclear weapons ambitions far more seriously than he has so far, and to back Israel if Netanyahu feels he has no other choice and has to order airstrikes. It also fell to Barak to try to persuade Hagel to realize just how dangerous it will be if Assad uses chemical and biological weapons against his own people in Syria, or if those weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of Iran, Hezbollah, al Qaeda or other Radical groups operating inside the no man’s land that is now modern day Syria.

What exactly was said behind closed doors? Was Barak successful? It’s too soon to say. We will likely know more soon as the media report leaks. We’ll learn more still in a few weeks when the President travels to Israel and the Middle East and is more public about his views. Is Obama going to “re-set” U.S.-Israel relations in a more positive way? Or is he going to apply even stronger pressure on Netanyahu to make dangerous, unwise concessions?

In related news, a panel discussion at the AIPAC conference on Monday “hinted at wide gaps between Israel and the US on how to coordinate the two countries’ strategies on Iran,” reports the Times of Israel.

“’We all share the same data, the same intelligence. We are also on the same page on the strategic goal to prevent Iran from being nuclear,’ the former head of IDF Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin told some 13,000 participants at the AIPAC policy conference. ‘But between the floor and the ceiling of the problem, there are doors and windows where we’re not in the same place. We should be much closer on how to prevent Iran to go nuclear.'”

According to the Times, Senator John McCain, a fellow panelist at the conference, responded, “It’s vitally important that in Tehran they understand that there’s no space between the US and Israel. They believe right now that there is space between the two countries.”

“Yadlin, who today heads the INSS think tank at Tel Aviv University, hinted that the Iranian regime’s sense of the gap between Israel and the US may be justified. ‘The time is running out in 2013,’ he said. The difference between the United States and Israel on the question could be summed up by Three T’s,’ Yadlin said, ‘a different trauma, a different trigger, and maybe not enough trust.’….We, the Israelis, come [to the issue] with the Holocaust. We are six million Israeli Jews listening to [Iran’s President] Ahmadinejad calling for Israel’s destruction. You come with a different trauma, Iraq. You don’t want another war, understandably.'”

But, Yadlin added, “This is not a war, this is a one-night operation, and we should speak about it.”

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