Billy Graham is pictured during a celebration for his 95th birthday in Asheville, North Carolina, in this November 7, 2013 handout photo provided by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (Reuters)

(Washington, D.C.) — Please join me in praying for Dr. Billy Graham, who at the age of 95, appears to fading and ready to go home to be with the Lord. Please also pray for his family and staff at this challenging and emotional time.

“Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham and president of his evangelistic association, gave an update on the minister’s health to The Christian Post this week, stating that while the elder Graham was not in any immediate danger, a simple cold could turn the tide,” reported the Christian Post. “Meanwhile, Will Graham, the elder evangelist’s grandson, has said he believes the 95-year-old Southern Baptist preacher was ready to ‘go home’ to be with the Lord.”

“He’s not doing real well,” Franklin Graham told The Christian Post on Thursday. “His vitals are good. It’s not like he’s in danger right this second. But if he got a cold right now, it could be deadly. So I just ask the people to pray that he gets his strength back. I’ve never seen him this weak in all my life, so I know he’d appreciate your prayers.”

“The BGEA president’s son, evangelist Will Graham, made similar remarks the day prior during a speaking engagement at a California church,” noted the Post.

“I saw my grandfather last week and he is not doing well,” Will Graham told Assist News Service. “He’s not suffering or anything. It’s just that old age has caught up to him and is sucking the life out of him.”

He added, “On November 7, he finished his race and up until that time, God had protected his health and gave him supernatural strength and now, the only thing left is for him to come home. God has removed his hand of protection and old age has set in.”

The Post added that when asked how supporters could pray for his grandfather, Will Graham did not sound very optimistic: “I don’t know how to answer that anymore. I wish He would give him strength, but I don’t think he needs strength anymore. It’s time to go home.”

The Dome of the Rock is seen in the background in Jerusalem’s Old on a snowy winter day on Friday, December 13, 2013. (Photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90/Times of Israel)

The biggest December snow and rain storm in the modern history of Israel and the Palestinian territories hit on Wednesday night. Now a storm three times worse is bearing down on the epicenter. For pictures of the storm, please click here.

I just landed back in Washington, D.C. this morning after nearly a week in Israel doing research for a new geopolitical novel I hope to begin writing in January. I flew out of Ben Gurion International Airport last night, and just in time. The airport closed for awhile after I left to prepare for the historic storm on its way.

For the many of the kids of Jerusalem, the storm has been much fun. Building snow men. Having snow ball fights. Sledding. Walking through and playing in the cold white stuff they rarely experience. 

For the adults, however, it has been a different story. Roads in and out of Jerusalem were shut down by authorities after many cars slid off the roads or couldn’t climb the heights without snow tires or chains. Many commuters who live in Jerusalem were stranded and had to stay with friends or in hotels. Tens of thousands of Israelis are without electricity. Many poor and needs — Jews and Arabs — have no heat, or have a difficult time affording enough heat. In the coastal and desert areas there was no snow, much intense, driving rains (which I experienced while still there) that caused flooding in some regions.

The first snow fall in a hundred years hit Cairo. Snow also hit parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Now the first Israeli death of the storm has been reported.

Please pray for the authorities as they work around the clock to help so many in need. Please pray that the homeless and needy (and refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan) are cared for with food and warm clothing and blankets and shelter. Please pray that people will turn to the Lord at this time for help, strength, wisdom and His great love and mercy.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)

Here’s the latest from the Israeli media:

“Tel Aviv and surrounding cities were experiencing hail, heavy rains and flooding on Friday night, while Jerusalem was in the midst of a snowstorm feared to be ‘three times worse’ than the snows that had hit Thursday and earlier Friday,” reported the Times of Israel. “Haifa was hit with its first snowfall in 22 years, according to officials, and much of the rest of the country was also grappling with stormy conditions expected to last into Saturday.”

“In what was described by Channel 2 as Israel’s ‘worst storm in decades,’ large portions of northern Israel were also hit by snow and heavy storms, as was much of the West Bank,” noted the Times. “Israel and the Palestinian Authority were working together to grapple with power outages and other aspects of the storm’s impact. Israel was also providing fuel and gas to Gaza, to keep the electricity on in the Strip, which was grappling with harsh weather conditions including flooding in some areas. In light of dangerous road conditions, police decided to keep both major major roads leading to Jerusalem (1 and 443) closed overnight.”

Other highlights from the Times:

• Israel Railways announced that it would operate two special trains on Shabbat from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and Haifa. The first train will depart at 11:00 a.m. Saturday and the second at 2 p.m. They will also make stops at Beit Shemesh, Lod, Netanya and Binyamina.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Friday night for security vehicles and jeeps that were being held at Latrun — some 16 miles (25 kilometers) from Jerusalem — into the capital, where they could help with expected rescue and evacuation efforts overnight. Evacuation of elderly residents was to be given top priority, according to the prime minister’s orders.
• The Ayalon Highway was closed for nearly two hours in the area of Tel Aviv over fears of flooding but was later reopened.
• Ben Gurion Airport halted operations for 40 minutes to undergo “advanced preparation” for the storm. Some 40 flights did manage to arrive in Israel before the start of Shabbat despite the inclement weather conditions, reported Israel Radio.

Yaakov Amidror stepped down last month as Israel’s National Security Advisor. He was — and remains — one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s most trusted advisors.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the New York Times published an op-ed by him. It was an important message to the U.S. and the Western world, but it may very well have been missed because of the holidays.

Here are critical excerpts. I commend the entire column to your attention.

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“Just after the signing ceremony in Geneva on Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran declared that the world had recognized his country’s ‘nuclear rights.’

He was right.

The agreement Iran reached with the so-called P5+1 — the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia, plus Germany — does not significantly roll back Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Iran made only cosmetic concessions to preserve its primary goal, which is to continue enriching uranium. The agreement represents a failure, not a triumph, of diplomacy. With North Korea, too, there were talks and ceremonies and agreements — but then there was the bomb. This is not an outcome Israel could accept with Iran.       

Harsh sanctions led Iran to the negotiating table. The easing of those sanctions will now send companies from around the world racing into Iran to do business, which will lead to the eventual collapse of the sanctions that supposedly remain.       

Might economic relief, reduced isolation and new goodwill lead to greater pressure on the Iranian regime to reach a fuller agreement later? I doubt it: As recently as last week, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denounced Israel as a “rabid dog,” a jab that Western leaders failed to condemn.       

The deal will only lead Iran to be more stubborn. Anyone who has conducted business or diplomatic negotiations knows that you don’t reduce the pressure on your opponent on the eve of negotiations. Yet that is essentially what happened in Geneva.       

Iran will not only get to keep its existing 18,000 centrifuges; it will also be allowed to continue developing the next generation of centrifuges, provided it does not install them in uranium-enrichment facilities. Which is to say: Its uranium-enrichment capability is no weaker.       

Under the deal Iran is supposed to convert its nearly 200 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity — a short step away from bomb-grade material — into material that cannot be used for a weapon. In practice, this concession is almost completely meaningless.       

The agreement does not require Iran to reduce its stockpile of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent, not even by one gram. Transforming unprocessed uranium into 3.5 percent-enriched uranium accounts for more than two-thirds of the time needed to transform unprocessed uranium into weapons-grade material. And given the thousands of centrifuges Iran has, the regime can enrich its stock of low-level uranium to weapons-grade quality in a matter of months. Iran already has enough of this material to make four bombs.

The Geneva deal, in short, did not address the nuclear threat at all. This was Iran’s great accomplishment. No wonder Mr. Rouhani boasted that the world had recognized Iran’s nuclear rights.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Order Damascus Countdown (last in the trilogy) – now available in paperback online and in bookstores nationwide
• Listen to Damascus Countdown as an audio book.
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative (second in the trilogy)
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam (first in the triology)
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net) – educating and mobilizing Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, and caring for the poor and needy with food and other humanitarian relief – and make a tax deductible contribution

Secretary Kerry poses for pictures for foreign ministers from Iran and the P5+1 on the finalization of an interim deal with Iran. But apparently the deal wasn’t actually finalized.

>> UPDATE: Iran on cusp of getting the bomb, ex intel chief says — Amos Yadlin says Tehran now a ‘nuclear threshold state’ and that it made critical advances before deal with West; Likud MK calls interim agreement ‘surrender’

>> UPDATE: Likud MK: Iran deal makes Israeli strike more likely — If temporary agreement turns permanent, Jerusalem might be forced to act, says Netanyahu confidant Tzachi Hanegbi

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ORIGINAL POST: (Washington, D.C.) — I commend to your attention a column today by Jeffrey Goldberg, a widely respected Mideast analyst. While I don’t always agree with him on policy matters, his six concerns about the Iran deal are right on point.Excerpts:

1). The deal isn’t done. Remember the photos from Geneva of smiling foreign ministers slapping backs and hugging in celebration of their epic achievement? Well, nothing was actually signed. The deal is not, as of this moment, even operational.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked a question last week about when the deal might actually take effect. “The next step here is a continuation of technical discussions at a working level so that we can essentially tee up the implementation of the agreement. So that would involve the P5+1 — a commission of the P5+1 experts working with the Iranians and the IAEA,” she said, referring to the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany and the International Atomic Energy Agency. “Obviously, once that’s — those technical discussions are worked through, I guess the clock would start.”

Focus on those last words for a second: “I guess the clock would start.” Do words like those make you worried, or is it just me? What this means is that Iran, at this moment, is still not compelled to freeze any of its nuclear program in place. I’m not sure why American negotiators would leave Geneva without having a fully implemented agreement. I understand that the technical hurdles to implementation are daunting. But equally daunting is the realization that the Iranians are going about their business as if they’ve promised nothing.

2.) Momentum for sanctions is waning. It’s true that the economic relief the Iranians will receive in this deal is modest, but it is also true that many nations, many companies and the Iranians themselves are seeing this agreement as the beginning of the end of the sanctions regime. Iran is already making a push to recapture its dominant role in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. U.S. officials believe they can hold the line on sanctions, but it is reasonable to assume that they will come under increasing pressure from countries such as South Korea, Japan, India and China, which could very easily convince themselves that Iran is preparing to act in a more responsible manner (after all, it replaced its snarling, Holocaust-denying president with a smiling, savvy president) and should be reopened for business.

3.) The (still unenforced) document agreed upon in Geneva promises Iran an eventual exit from nuclear monitoring. The final (theoretical) deal, the document states, will “have a specified long-term duration to be agreed upon,” after which the Iranian nuclear program “will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state” that is part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. From what I’m told, the U.S. hopes this eventual agreement, should it come to pass, would last 15 years; the Iranians hope to escape this burden in five. After the agreement loses its legal force, Iran could run however many centrifuges it chooses to run. This is not a comforting idea.

4.) The biggest concession to the Iranians might have already been made. Although it is the West’s position that it has not granted Iran the so-called right to enrich, the text of the interim agreement states that the permanent deal will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program with mutually agreed parameters.” Essentially, Barack Obama’s administration has already conceded, before the main round of negotiations, that Iran is going to end up with the right to enrich. Realists would argue that Iran will end up with that “right” no matter what, but it seems premature to cede the point now.

5.) The Geneva agreement only makes the most elliptical references to two indispensable components of any nuclear-weapons program. The entire agreement is focused on the fuel cycle, but there is no promise by Iran in this interim deal to abstain from pursuing work on ballistic missiles or on weaponization. A nuclear weapons program has three main components: the fuel, the warhead and the delivery system. Iran is free, in the coming six-month period of the interim deal, to do whatever it pleases on missiles and warhead development.

6.) The Iranians are so close to reaching the nuclear threshold anyway — defined here as the ability to make a dash to a bomb within one or two months from the moment the supreme leader decides he wants one — that freezing in place much of the nuclear program seems increasingly futile. When asked this week by al-Jazeera about the impact of sanctions, the very smart Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said, “When sanctions started Iran had less than 200 centrifuges. Today Iran has 19,000 centrifuges so the net product of the sanctions has been about 18,800 centrifuges that has been added to the Iran’s stock of centrifuges, so sanctions have utterly failed.”

Goldberg notes that “one of Israel’s most prominent experts on the Iranian nuclear program, a former military intelligence chief named Amos Yadlin, said this week that ‘Iran is on the verge of producing a bomb. It’s sad, but it’s a fact.’ Yadlin suggested that no one, and no agreement, can stop Iran from reaching the nuclear threshold. I fear he is right.”

(Washington, D.C.) — “A final deal with Iran could include a capacity for uranium enrichment, a White House spokesman said on Tuesday, seeking to clarify some of the terms of the interim deal signed between Tehran and world powers,” reports the Jerusalem Post, based on information from JTA and Reuters. “The United States does not recognize that Iran has a right to enrich, but ‘we are prepared to negotiate a strictly limited enrichment program in the end state,’ said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman with the White House National Security Council.”

“This is because the Iranians have indicated for the first time that they are prepared to accept ‘rigorous monitoring and limits on level, scope, capacity and stockpiles,’ she said in response to a query arising from a story first reported by the Washington Free Beacon,” noted the Post. “It has been reported for months that the Obama administration and Western powers were prepared to tolerate low level enrichment as part of a permanent deal; Meehan’s statements Tuesday were the first on-the-record confirmation. Israel opposes any permanent enrichment capacity, saying that at even low levels, the infrastructure required for such enrichment leaves Iran perilously close to the ability to manufacture a weapon.”

“If we can reach an understanding on all of these strict constraints, then we can have an arrangement that includes a very modest amount of enrichment that is tied to Iran’s actual needs and that eliminates any near-term breakout capability,” Meehan said. “If we can’t, then we’ll be right back to insisting on no enrichment.”

Later in the article, the Post noted that “the White House also said on Tuesday it opposes a fresh effort by some members of the US Senate to impose new sanctions against Iran, even if the new restrictions would not take effect for months. Some senators have been discussing the idea of imposing new sanctions on Iran that would kick in after six months or if Iran violated terms of an interim deal reached 10 days ago that attempts to contain its nuclear program.”

“If we pass sanctions now, even with a deferred trigger which has been discussed, the Iranians, and likely our international partners, will see us as having negotiated in bad faith,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

(Washington, D.C.) — Are Israeli Jews preparing to build the “Third Temple” in Jerusalem in fulfillment of End Times Bible prophecy? If so, who is behind such developments? How are Muslim leaders responding? Could such a move trigger an apocalyptic reaction by the Muslim world against Israel in an already volatile environment?

Such are the questions I’ve explored in fictionally in novels such as The Last Days and The Copper Scroll and Dead Heat. 

But now such questions are being raised in an intriguing article in the today’s edition of the Washington Post, of all places.

“A small but growing movement by Jewish activists demanding the right to pray at the site of their destroyed temple, in the heart of this disputed capital’s Old City, is creating a potentially explosive clash with the Muslim world, which considers the spot holy and bans Jews from public worship there,” opens the Post article.

Consider some of the extraordinary quotes that follow in the report:

• “The Temple Mount is ours, and it cannot be argued about or negotiated. . . . It must be open for prayer at every hour, to every Jew,” says Uri Ariel, Israel’s minister of construction and housing.
• “This place belongs to the Muslim people, and no others have the right to pray here,” says Sheik Azzam al-Khatib, “director of the Waqf, the Islamic trust that administers the site” who says “the mosque is a unifying symbol for the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims.”
• “If they [the Jews] try to take over the mosque, this will be the end of time,” Khatib warned. “This will create rage and anger not only in the West Bank but all over the Islamic world — and only God knows what will happen.”
• “Every citizen of Israel should have the right to pray at their holy sites without harassment or being attacked,” says Miri Regev , a Members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament). “If Jews want to go up to the Temple Mount to pray, they should have that right.”

“A frequent visitor to the site is Rabbi Chaim Richman, a director of the Temple Institute, whose mission is to prepare for the building of the Third Temple where the Dome of the Rock now stands,” reports the Post. “He says he envisions a new temple rising toward the clouds, with underground parking, Internet connectivity, radiant heating for the sanctified floors (the priests, in accordance with Jewish law, will be barefoot), and a return of burnt offerings and animal sacrifice. In April, Richman’s Temple Institute moved to a large, renovated space in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, overlooking the Western Wall. The project was funded by Henry Swieca, the billionaire American investor, and his wife, Estee.”

“Inside, researchers and artisans have created silver trumpets, wooden lyres and three-pronged forks that would turn over burnt offerings,” the Post noted. “They sewed a priest’s robe with a breastplate of golden thread and 12 precious stones, as described in the Bible and representing the 12 tribes of Israel. There is a golden menorah and an ark for the covenants. And there are architectural plans. Evidence, Muslim leaders say, that proves that the Jews have literal designs on the mount.”

“This is not incitement,” Richman said. “Our mission is to kindle the spark of desire for the time when Jews are a light unto the world, and Muslims will agree it is time to rebuild, and all nations of the world will come to the Jews and ask them to rebuild.”

To read the full article, please click here.

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• Follow Joel on Twitter — @joelcrosenberg
• Order Damascus Countdown (last in the trilogy) – now available in paperback online and in bookstores nationwide
• Listen to Damascus Countdown as an audio book.
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative (second in the trilogy)
• Order the paperback of The Twelfth Imam (first in the triology)
• Learn more about The Joshua Fund (www.joshuafund.net) – educating and mobilizing Christians to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, and caring for the poor and needy with food and other humanitarian relief – and make a tax deductible contribution

Israeli President Shimon Peres has been reaching out to Arab leaders.

(Washington, D.C.) — The international community’s feverish determination to cut a nuclear deal at all costs, a deal that would reduce economic sanctions and lessen global pressure on Iran — and in turn might inadvertently allow Tehran to soon build nuclear weapons after all — is dramatically reshuffling the geopolitical deck in the Middle East.

Most Arab and non-Shia Muslim states are deeply fearful of a nuclear-armed Persian state. They are also increasingly concerned that the U.S. is no longer a trustworthy ally to stop Iran. Thus, in a strange twist of events, they are privately reconsidering their long-held hostility towards Israel. Indeed, a growing number of Arab leaders and officials are viewing Israel as a potentially vital ally in their desire to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In recent weeks, I’ve shared with you reports from the region that the Saudis and Israelis are developing a tacit alliance against Iran. There have also been reports of an unlikely alliance developing between Israel and Azerbaijan against Iran.

Now comes an extraordinary report that Israeli President Shimon Peres recently addressed foreign ministers from 29 Arab countries to discuss common threats and national interests in the region, including the Iran issue.

“In an unprecedented event, President Shimon Peres spoke from his office in Jerusalem via satellite to 29 foreign ministers from Arabic and Muslim countries at the Gulf Security Conference in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago,” the Times of Israel reports.

“While Peres spoke, none of the attendees left the room and some even applauded his remarks,” the Times noted, based on an initial report from the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “Peres talked about how Israel can be a contributing factor in the Middle East and that there is an opportunity for dialogue between Israel and its neighbors about their common concerns, such as the fight against Islamic extremism and Iran’s nuclear program. Peres also presented his vision of global peace. “

“Peres, who was chosen by the summit’s organizer, the United Arab Emirates, to open the conference, was interviewed via satellite by UN Under Secretary-General Terje Rød-Larsen,” the Times noted. “As per the conditions for Peres’s appearance, the president and the foreign ministers only spoke through Larsen, and none of the content was leaked to the press. Among the countries represented were Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.”

To read the full story, please click here.

Pope Francis I and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet in Rome on December 2, 2013. (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Flash90/Times of Israel)

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Monday morning with Pope Francis at the Vatican and presented the pontiff with a copy of his late father’s book about the Spanish Inquisition,” reports the Times of Israel. “Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu, was an Israeli historian who died last year. A Zionist activist who opposed partitioning Palestine between Arabs and Jews, he was best known in academic circles for his research into the Catholic Church’s medieval inquisition against the Jews of Spain.”

“To his Holiness Pope Franciscus, a great shepherd of our common heritage,” the Israeli leader wrote on the inside cover of the book.

“Francis thanked him and presented Netanyahu with a small bronze plaque of St. Paul,” noted the Times. “The Vatican Press Office said the conversation touched on ‘complex political and social situation in the Middle East, with Particular reference to the reinstatement of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, expressing hope that a just and lasting solution respecting the rights of both parties may be reached as soon as possible.’ According to Ynet, Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife told the Holy See after the meeting, ‘We’re expecting you, we can’t wait.’ The paper quoted Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi saying that the Pope had yet to set a date to visit the Holy Land.”

The Times also reported that “later Monday, Netanyahu met with Italian Premier Enrico Letta and warned that Iran represented a threat to Europe and the entire world if it acquires nuclear weapons. Letta, for his part, announced that Italy had set aside funding to build a Holocaust museum in Ferrara, and invited Netanyahu to join him for the inauguration. The encounter was the prime minister’s first with the current pope, who has already met at the Vatican with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in October and with Israeli President Shimon Peres in April. Netanyahu met with the previous pope, Benedict XVI, in 2009, and with pope John Paul II in 1997. Citing an anonymous official Israeli source, CNN reported last week that the pope was scheduled to make his first visit to Israel in May. The Vatican has not confirmed that report. Six government ministers joined Netanyahu on the trip and were set to meet with Italian ministers.”