The novel is now available in hardcover, audio and e-book formats.

UPDATED: I’m excited to announce that Damascus Countdown releases nationwide today in hardcover, audio, and e-book formats.

Below, I share a few thoughts about the novel and its relation to the geopolitical events currently unfolding in the Middle East today. But first let me share three wonderful endorsements I’ve received in recent days from three good friends — Rick Santorum, the former presidential candidate, a true ally of Israel, and a leading expert on Iran and Syria issues from his days in the U.S. Senate; Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s leading radio host with some 20 million listeners, also a great ally of Israel, and someone who I’ll always be grateful for helping to launch my career as a novelist with his support of my first book, The Last Jihad; and Steve Forbes, the editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, global economic thinker and U.S. presidential candidate whom I had the honor of working for as a senior advisor.

“Damascus Countdown will be the most chilling, pulse-pounding thriller you read this year. It will be banned and burned in Tehran and Damascus, but it should be required reading in Washington and Jerusalem. Joel Rosenberg is a good friend and a great writer and he is spot on. Nothing threatens our national security more than the mullahs of Iran and the tyrants in Syria building and deploying weapons of mass annihilation, and an American President who doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stop them in time. I’ve warned about this for years. Now Joel paints an eerie, terrifying, page-turning picture of a worst-case scenario coming to pass. You have to read this book, and then pray it never happens.”

— Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate

“Joel, thanks so much for sending me a signed copy of Damascus Countdown. Loved getting it. I’d actually already pre-ordered it for my iPad! Just started it and it’s fantastic – intense action, blistering pace, and freaking eerie how close it is to real events in the Mideast, especially with Iran so close to the Bomb and Syria melting down! You’re damn good, Joel. Exceptionally good! You always keeps me riveted, my friend. Keep up the great work!”

— Rush Limbaugh, radio host and #1 New York Times best-selling author

“If there were a Forbes 400 list of great current novelists, Joel Rosenberg would be among the top ten.  More than a decade ago we kicked off one of his masterpieces, The Last Jihad, at a book party at the Forbes Media headquarters. Today millions see what we saw then, one of the most entertaining and intriguing authors of international political thrillers in the country. No wonder Joel has sold nearly three million copies – his novels are un-put-downable including his new one, Damascus Countdown!”

— Steve Forbes, editor in chief of Forbes magazine and former presidential candidate.

A few thoughts about the novel: A terrible darkness is settling over the Middle East, and with each day that passes the likelihood of a major war in the Middle East in 2013 that could involve Israel, Iran, and Syria appears to grow. I’m praying earnestly for peace, and I’m grateful that a regional war hasn’t exploded in recent years, even though there have been numerous signs that it might. Still, the eyes of the world are riveted on the epicenter. We’re currently witnessing the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians by the bloodthirsty regime in Damascus. The U.S. and Israeli  governments are warning the regime in Damascus not to use chemical and  biological weapons. At the same time, the ayatollahs in Iran are continuing to  pursue nuclear weapons. They’re preaching that the end of days has come and that the so-called Islamic messiah known as the Twelfth Imam will be revealed soon to  rule the earth. What’s more, Egypt is now being ruled by a radical Muslim  dictator. That’s the current reality.

What my novels do is ask what everyone is asking: What if all hell breaks  loose? What if these dark trends spin out of control? What would it look like if Israel does, in fact, launch a massive preemptive military strike against Iran?  What would the blowback look like as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas retaliate with tens of thousands of missiles raining down on Israel? What this novel also does is ask, Is it possible that such a horrific war could inadvertently set into motion End Times Bible prophecies, such as the prophecies in Isaiah and Jeremiah that indicate the city  of Damascus will one day be utterly and completely wiped off the face of the  earth?

Fiction is an interesting art form. Sometimes novels can capture people’s hearts and their imagination in a way that non-fiction books cannot do. Sometimes they can get people to think about “What If?” scenarios — worst-case scenarios — and see how they might play out if our leaders don’t act wisely and decisively in real time. My first novel was released in November 2002. I could not have guessed at the time I would still have the joy of writing books a decade later, and that we would have nearly three million copies in print. But I’m deeply grateful to each and every reader, both here in the U.S. and Canada and around the world, who have found the books both entertaining and thought-provoking. May God bless you and your family.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Order Damascus Countdown — now available in bookstores nationwide
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., right, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington on Monday. (credit: New York Times photo and caption)

The White House made sure today the optics of their outreach to the American Israel Public Affairs policy conference was warmer and more friendly and more pro-Israel than at any time in the past four years. Vice President Joe Biden literally hugged Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on stage before some 13,000 pro-Israel activists. And in his speech, Biden sought to hug the State of Israel, as well.

The President, however, did not speak to the delegates. Nor were new initiatives were proposed to strengthen Israeli security, even as U.S. military funds are likely to be cut for Israel due to the sequester. Biden talked about Iran, but he did not offer new or tougher or more convincing language that the administration is truly committed to using a military option if sanctions don’t work. Instead, everyone who loves Israel knows the President chose Chuck Hagel of all people to be his Secretary of Defense. We are hearing rumors the President wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to propose painful, sweeping concessions to the Palestinians when he visits Israel later this month. This is why there is very real concern that the Obama administration is not to be trusted when it comes to its relationship with the Jewish state.

>> Full text of Biden speech.

>> Obama not bluffing over Iran military threat, Biden tells AIPAC (The UK Guardian)

“Vice President Biden sought Monday to play down years of tension between the Obama administration and the Israeli government over how best to pursue peace with the Palestinians, focusing his remarks to a powerful Israel-advocacy group on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” reports the Washington Post. “Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest and traditionally most hawkish of the pro-Israel lobbying organizations, Biden reassured the audience, which included Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, that Obama is ‘not bluffing’ when he threatens military action to keep Iran from achieving nuclear-weapons capability.”

Biden said the “window is closing” for diplomacy to work, but added, “We believe there is still time and space to achieve the outcome.”

“Let me make clear what that commitment is: It is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” said Biden. “Period. End of discussion. Prevent — not contain —prevent….Big nations can’t bluff. And presidents of the United States cannot and do not bluff. And President Barack Obama is not bluffing.”

The New York Times reported Biden’s comment that “no president has done as much to physically secure the state of Israel as President Barack Obama.”

The Times noted, however, that “there was some quiet grumbling among participants about the president’s choice of former Senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary. Mr. Hagel had been fiercely criticized by some Jewish groups for comments he made about the influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups. But AIPAC did not take a public position on Mr. Hagel’s candidacy.” The Times also noted that “in his last appearance before the group, soon after he took office in 2009, Mr. Biden warned that ‘you’re not going to like this,’ before declaring that the Obama administration wanted Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank, as a way to jump-start peace talks with the Palestinians.” This time Biden steered clear of mentioning settlements or pressuring Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

>> Netanyahu: Iran closer to nuclear ‘red line’

Speaking via satellite to some 13,000 pro-Israel activists at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. today, Israeli Prime Minister outlined the top three items on the agenda for President Obama’s upcoming trip to Israel. He warned that diplomacy has failed to stop Iran’s pursuit of The Bomb, and he called for a credible military threat because the time to act is running out.

“The President and I agreed to focus our discussions on three main issues,” Netanyahu said. “First, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons; Second, the deteriorating situation in Syria; And third, the need to find a responsible way to advance the peace with the Palestinians.”

Here is the full text. Here are key excerpts:

IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT — “Now, on the first point: Iran has made it clear that it will continue to defy the will of the international community. Time after time, the world’s leading powers have tabled diplomatic proposals to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue peacefully. But I have to tell you the truth. Diplomacy has not worked. Iran ignores all these offers. It is Running out the clock. It has used negotiations, including the most recent ones, to buy time to press ahead with its nuclear program. Thus far, the sanctions have not stopped the nuclear program either. The sanctions have hit the Iranian economy hard. That is true. But Iran’s leaders just grit their teeth and move forward. Iran enriches more and more uranium; It installs faster and faster centrifuges; It’s still not crossed the red line I drew at the United Nations last September. But Iran is getting closer to that line, and it’s putting itself in a position to cross that line very quickly once it decides to do so….To prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, we cannot allow Iran to cross that red line. We have to stop its nuclear enrichment program before it’s too late. And I have to tell you, and with the clarity of my brain: words alone will not stop Iran; Sanctions alone will not stop Iran. Sanctions must be coupled with a clear and credible military threat if diplomacy and sanctions fail.”

IMPLOSION OF SYRIA — “The second issue I intend to discuss with President Obama is the situation in Syria.  Over the last two years, over 70,000 Syrians have been killed.
Hundreds of thousands have been wounded and maimed. Millions have been forced to flee their homes. Besides this humanitarian crisis of great tragedy, Syria could soon become a strategic crisis. One of monumental proportions. Syria is a very poor country, but it has chemical weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, and many other of the world’s most deadly and sophisticated arms. As the Syrian regime collapses, the danger of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups is very real. Terror groups such as Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are trying to seize these weapons as we speak. They are like hyenas feeding off a carcass — and the carcass is not even dead yet. These terror groups are committed to Israel’s destruction. They have repeatedly attacked the United States. They are global terrorist organizations that can perpetrate terror attacks anywhere in the world. We’ve just seen that, in Cyprus, in Bulgaria, everywhere. This is why we have a common interest in preventing them from obtaining these deadly weapons.”

PEACE WITH THE PALESTINIANS — “The third issue I intend to discuss with President Obama is our common quest for peace. Israel seeks a peace with our Palestinian neighbors – a peace that will end our conflict once and for all. That peace must be grounded in reality; and it must be grounded in security. Israel withdrew from Lebanon; We withdrew from Gaza; We gave up territory. We got terror. We cannot allow that to happen a third time. Israel is prepared for a meaningful compromise. But as Israel’s Prime Minister, I will never compromise on our security. We must work together to find a realistic path forward – And I think that path has to be a measured step-by-step process in which we work to advance to a verifiable, durable and defensible peace. It has to be defensible, because in the Middle East, especially in this Middle East, a peace you cannot defend will not hold for five minutes.”

>> Full text of the speech Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave to AIPAC.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

You might think the troubles in the Middle East were bad enough — the threat of nuclear weapons, civil wars, insurrections, political intrigue, religious violence. But this year, in an interesting Biblical twist, Egypt is experiencing a plague of locusts. And no, I’m not making this up. 

“As if we hadn’t already seen enough Biblical events this year, a plague of over 30 million locusts swarmed over Egypt’s cities and farms just three weeks before Passover begins,” reports The Atlantic magazine. “But put your apocalyptic fears to rest. This happens every year as part of the locusts’ natural migration pattern, though this year’s swarm is especially large. That doesn’t mean Egyptians aren’t freaked the heck out by millions of nasty bugs buzzing through the air at all hours of day and night, possibly descending upon the agriculture fields where they’re known to destroy entire crops, just like in the actual Passover story.”

Other reports are popping up on CBS News  and MSNBC, and in the Times of Israel, Haaretz, and other publications in the Middle East.

“The crops are so far safe, Egyptian officials assured the public,” The Atlantic reports. “As the plague made its way from the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia at the end of last week and this weekend, though, Egyptian Agricultural Minister Salah Abdel Moamen explained the situation to the country in a calmly worded statement. ‘The current inspection teams at areas targeted by locusts did not witness swarms damaging a single inch of crop,’ said Moamen. He added that the locusts are ‘sexually immature and do not depend on plants for energy since they mainly rely on fat stores.'”

“That said, these plages can be unpredictable,” notes The Atlantic. “Egyptian officials didn’t expect the plague to pass by the country’s capital, until Sunday when the locusts unexpectedly arrived in Cairo. The government denied reports that the locusts had started devastating crops as well as a report from United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) that the Ministry of Agriculture cleared 11,000 hectares of land in an attempt to save the harvest. When they get hungry, a one-ton hoard of locusts can eat the same amount of food in one day as 2,500 humans, according to the UN. Egypt knows this too. Less than a decade ago, a plague of locusts nearly 40 miles wide swept over Egypt damaging crops at the majority of the country’s farms. That’s a picture of it, to the right.”

“U.S. President Barack Obama has demanded a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank,” says a report in the World Tribune. “Israeli sources said Obama, scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s visit. The sources said the Israeli plan would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.”

“Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source told the Tribune. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

“The sources said Obama’s demand has sparked concern in the office of the Israeli prime minister.”

Is it true? It certainly feels true. It fits with the President’s approach over the past four years to pressure Netanyahu to make unwise concessions to a Palestinian leadership that can’t even stop Hamas in Gaza from firing thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars at Israeli civilians.

Just last week, Secretary of State Kerry told us the President just wants to “listen” on his visit to Israel, not push his own plan. “We’re not going to go and sort of plunk a plan down and tell everybody what they have to do,” Kerry said in Germany. “I want to consult and the president wants to listen.”

That could be interpreted in two ways. One, this visit doesn’t have a hidden agenda, and dealing with Iran is truly the main topic. Or two, the President isn’t going to impose a plan but to force Netanyahu to give him a plan that will give away far more land and security that Netanyahu and the Israel do or should feel comfortable with.

Peace? Yes. Autonomy for the Palestinian people who deserve the right to run their own daily lives, free from Israeli interference? Absolutely. But under no circumstances should Netanyahu allow himself to be bullied into dividing Jerusalem or creating a sovereign Palestinian state that could endanger the very existence of the Jewish state.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

In The Tehran Initiative and Damascus Countdown, I imagine a scenario in which Iran already has nuclear warheads and Israel is forced to take action.

>> Dennis Ross, former senior advisor to President Obama on Iran issues, tells AIPAC: Bibi, Obama Mulling when Force against Iran is Inevitable

The biggest threat to U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East is the possibility that our President has miscalculated and that Iran already has nuclear weapons and is now expanding its arsenal while the mullahs fool the world into thinking they’re not quite there yet. Now a national security expert is suggesting that this might, in fact, be the case.

“During Secretary of State John Kerry’s listening tour of the Middle East, one troubling regional issue might go unspoken: the possibility that Iran already has nuclear weapons capability,” writes James Robbins, a national security expert with the American Foreign Policy Council. “That will certainly change when President Obama lands next month in Israel,  where the issue is at the top of the agenda. The emergence of an Iranian atomic bomb would represent a U.S. foreign policy failure of historic proportions. It is not the kind of crisis that Kerry would like to face in his first month on the job or that Obama would like to shape his second term.”

>> Report: North Korean test may mean Iran has a nuclear missile warhead

“So far, the case that Iran already has the bomb is largely circumstantial,” notes Robbins, but his attention is being drawn — as mine as been — to the connection between Iran and North Korea. “Shortly after North Korea announced this month that it had successfully carried out its third underground nuclear test, Saudi Arabian news media reported that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, a leading Iranian nuclear scientist, was on hand for the blast. This should come as no surprise. Iran and North Korea have long cooperated on nuclear and ballistic missile technologies.  Iran’s ballistic missiles are based on North Korean designs, and the two countries have long exchanged  defense scientists and engineers. Perhaps more important, the RAND Corporation reports that the third North Korean nuclear test appears to many experts to be fundamentally different from its previous two efforts. North Korea’s first tests used plutonium to trigger the nuclear explosion. This one, according to some atmospheric tests, likely used highly enriched uranium, exactly the form of nuclear weapon pursued by Iran. The question is whether the weapon North Korea tested  this month was its own, Iran’s or a joint project. A senior U.S. official told The New York Times, ‘It’s very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.’ It would be foolish for Iran to test a nuclear weapon on its own soil. Nuclear weapons cannot be detonated in secret; they leave unique seismic markers that can be traced back to their source. An in-country test would simply confirm the existence of a program that  for years Iran has denied.”

“Days after North Korea’s nuclear test, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated that his country did not want to build atomic weapons, but that if it ‘intended to possess nuclear weapons, no power could stop us.’ This strange construction — saying the Islamic Republic does not desire nuclear weapons but there was no way to prevent it from having them — might have been the first in a series of diplomatic signals intending to inform the United States that, with North Korea’s help, the game is already over and Iran has won.”

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

Israeli Ambassador Oren asks AIPAC conference, Imagine if Iran had that nuclear weapon. What is the price of inaction?”

>> UPDATE: Barak: When We Say All Options Are on the Table, We Mean It

>> VIDEO: Fascinating interview with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren by Susan Page of USA Today

The annual Policy Conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee kicked off Sunday morning in Washington, D.C.. Some 13,000 pro-Israel activists are on hand, and the #1 issue on their mind is “the Iran endgame.” The plot in the Middle East is thickening. The question is: How does this story end?

It’s the right question, and one I plan to discuss extensively as I kick off a media tour for the release of Damascus Countdown on Tuesday.

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren told the AIPAC delegates that there is a small window for diplomacy to still work, but it is closing. “Imagine if Iran had that nuclear weapon. What is the price of inaction?” he asked.

“It’s time to go to an endgame,” Ambassador Dennis Ross, who used to serve as President Obama’s senior advisor on Iran policy, told the conference delegates. “Iranians have been playing the rope-a-dope strategy….If the Iranians don’t respond, then maybe the position of the P5+1 has to be […] alright, we are beginning to lose patience.”

“I worry about what I see in the papers,” said Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush. “It appears to me we are negotiating with ourselves. We see no concessions with Iran….The goal of sanctions is to prevent them from getting closer to a nuclear weapons capability, and we are failing to do that.”

Could this lead to an endgame that means war in 2013? Some Mideast experts believe so.

“With these contradictory factors pushing and pulling at each other on Capitol Hill, can anyone conclude with full confidence that 2013 will be a decisive year with Iran?” asks the Times of Israel. “Indeed, many leading voices on the issue, including both Ross and Abrams themselves, have previously stated that 2013 will indeed find either the US or Israel attacking Iran military, should diplomacy fail.”

Other experts, however, are coming to the exact opposite view.

“The notion that they are somehow inexorably drawing towards military action is wrongheaded,” said Aaron David Miller, a former adviser on Middle East issues to six secretaries of state between 1988 and 2003, in an interview on Saturday with the Times of Israel. “This will be the year of no decision.”

“This is due to three key factors, Miller argues: Israel’s awareness of the risks of a strike, Iran’s own determination to avoid a military strike, and President Obama’s wariness of potential complications arising from war with Iran,” notes the Times. “Miller, a leading Middle East expert in Washington, said in an interview on Sunday: ‘Even though I suspect [President] Obama is prepared to act because he does not want to be the first US president to preside over Iran crossing the nuclear threshold, that decision will be a long one.’ When combined with Israel’s reticence and Iran’s ‘Tom and Jerry game’ on negotiations, ‘These three self-reinforcing realities [… ] will combine to make much of 2013 a year of indecision when it comes to the question of peace or war.'”

Ambassador Oren called for more outreach by Jewish, pro-Israel leaders to churches, including to Black and Latino Christians.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, interviewed by the Sunday Times of London.

For almost four decades, the Israeli-Syrian border has been Israel’s quietest border, a Jewish publication recently noted. Now, however, tensions are mounting rapidly and the prospect of a serious conflagration there is growing steadily.

“Bashar Assad vowed that Syria would retaliate against Israel for an airstrike on a weapons convoy in the Damascus area last month, which foreign news outlets attributed to the IDF,” reports Ynet News.

In my forthcoming novel, Damascus Countdown, Syria gets drawn in to a catastrophic war against Israel after a series of Israeli airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Fortunately, that’s fiction and we’re not there yet. But the trendlines in the Middle East look ominous at the moment.

• Netanyahu is urging Israeli political leaders to unite and form a new, broad-based coalition government in light of the very serious threats posed by Iran and Syria.
• Iran is accelerating its efforts to enrich uranium — and make plutonium — to build nuclear warheads.
• Syria is imploding and Israeli officials are preparing for the possibility of hostilities on their northeastern border.
• After a five month hiatus, an Israeli preemptive strike is once again being contemplated in Jerusalem.
• President Obama is preparing for a possible trip to Israel and the Middle East to keep a war from happening.
• But in Damascus, the Syrian President is warning that despite the implosion of his country, he is considering turning his military’s focus on Israel.
• What’s more, Assad refuses to say what he is doing with his country’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

“Assad told the British newspaper Saturday night that Syria had always retaliated for Israeli actions, ‘but we retaliated in our own way, and only the Israelis know what we mean,'” reported Ynet. “In late January the Syrian army announced that ‘Israeli planes attacked a military research center in Damascus district.’ Other reports said the airstrike targeted a convoy carrying advanced SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles to Lebanon. A week later Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during a security conference in Munich, ‘What happened in Syria several days ago… that’s proof that when we say something we mean it. We say that we don’t think it should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon.'”

“During the interview, Assad refused to address reports that Syria was moving its chemical weapons stockpiles for fear they will be seized by rebel forces. He also denied reports that Russia, Hezbollah and Iran had sent soldiers to Syria, saying: ‘Russia has been very constructive, Iran has been very supportive and Hezbollah’s role is to defend Lebanon, not Syria. In the interview, the Syrian president warned of grave consequences if the West armed the rebels, directly or indirectly. ‘You know the crime is not only about the victim and the criminal but also the accomplice providing support, whether it is moral or logistical support,’ he said. ‘Syria lies at the fault line geographically, politically, socially and ideologically. So playing with this fault line will have serious repercussions all over the Middle East. Any intervention will not make things better. It will only make them worse. Europe and the United States and others are going to pay the price sooner or later with the instability in this region. They do not foresee it.'”

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam
• Come to Israel with Joel and The Joshua Fund this summer for a tour and the 2013 Epicenter Conference
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund, and make a tax deductible contribution

As we prepare to launch Damascus Countdown on Tuesday, I’m excited to announce that Tyndale has just launched a completely redesigned and updated author website, www.joelrosenberg.com. It’s cleaner, easier to navigate and contains lots of new material.

Some of the new features I hope you’ll find helpful:

* An archive of video and audio of speeches and interviews I’ve done over the years on Iran, Syria, Israel, Russia and other epicenter-related topics — and we’ll be adding more soon.

* A sampling of interviews I’ve done and articles I’ve written about my books and the geopolitical issues informing the books, with more to come.

* Information on how you and your family can register for my upcoming tour to Israel this summer and the 2013 Epicenter Conference, plus links to the video of all the messages given at the last several Epicenter Conferences.

* My personal notes on a range of key Bible prophecies, including Ezekiel 38-39 (War of Gog and Magog), Isaiah 19 and the destruction of Damascus, and an analysis of the power and purpose of prophecy.

I hope you’ll take a look and let me know what you think. Send me a note on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg. Or post a comment on our “Epicenter Team” page on Facebook. Thanks so much.

“President Barack Obama will cancel his planned visit to Israeli next month if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unable to form a coalition by March 16,” reports Haaretz. “After the Israeli elections on January 22, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was tasked with forming Israel’s new governing coalition….Obama’s visit was expected to take place after the new Israeli government was formed, with the assumption that this would happen by mid-March. A likely date for the visit was set at March 21, although according to a senior Israeli official, the visit would may be postponed until after Passover if the coalition-building process is delayed.”

Meanwhile, “having used up his allotted four-week period to form a coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned to President Shimon Peres Saturday evening and obtained a 14-day extension that he hopes will yet enable him to form a majority government,” reported the Times of Israel. “Peres granted the prime minister an extra two weeks, allowing him through March 16 to assemble a coalition. No further extension is legally permitted.”