Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hatnua party leader Tzipi Livni during a joint press conference announcing their coalition deal, Jerusalem, Tuesday, February 19, 2013 (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

“Israel is extending its hand once more for peace with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at a press conference while announcing that former foreign minister Tzipi Livni had joined his coalition and will lead the Israeli peace negotiating team,” reports the Jerusalem Post.

“I  am hoping for a peace deal based on two states for two people, as per the parameters I outlined during my speech at Bar Ilan University,”  said Netanyahu during the press conference. “Today Israel extends its hand once more for peace. We want a peace process, and we hope that it will yield results.”

“We must set aside our disagreements and join forces for the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “The State of  Israel now needs a large national unity government. Today we’re making  the first step towards this end.”

“Speaking after him, Livni echoed the prime minister’s sentiments, focusing largely on her role as a future peace negotiator,” noted the Post. “‘Two-and-a-half months ago we established Hatnua with the intention of fighting for a peace deal,’ she said. Though she also mentioned the issues of burden of service and commodity prices, Livni said ‘Iran, Syria, the Palestinians are not less pressing than these domestic issues.'”

The Times of Israel reported that “at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, amid stalled coalition discussions, Livni signed an agreement with Likud-Beytenu under which her party will join the coalition, where she will serve as justice minister. Livni will also head the Israeli government’s negotiation team with the Palestinians, an area in which she will be subordinate only to the prime minister….Livni has been harshly critical of Netanyahu’s policies over the years, particularly on the international diplomacy front. She led the opposition as Kadima head for much of Netanyahu’s previous term as prime minister and sought to establish a joint front with other center-left parties before the elections to thwart his reelection….Reports surfaced Tuesday indicating that Livni, whose Hatnua party won six seats in January’s elections, had accepted the proposal from Netanyahu.”

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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Nazareth, May 14, 2009. Photo: REUTERS/Osservatore Roman

“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu thanked outgoing Pope Benedict on Monday for his efforts to shore up often troubled relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews, including with his 2009 visit to the Holy Land,” reports Reuters and The Jerusalem Post. “That trip, in which the German-born Benedict paid respects at Israel’s main Holocaust memorial, was seen by many Jews as atoning for his lifting of the excommunication of a bishop who questioned the scale of the Nazi genocide.

“On other occasions he visited the Auschwitz death camp and the Cologne synagogue,” reports Reuters. “The pontiff, who will abdicate on February 28, also changed a Latin prayer for Good Friday services by traditionalist Catholics in 2008, deleting a reference to Jews and their ‘blindness’ but still calling for them to accept Jesus.”

Netanyahu sent the following letter to Pope Benedict XVI:

“Your Holiness,

On behalf of the people of Israel, I want to thank you for all you have done as Pope to strengthen relations between Christians and Jews and between the Vatican and the Jewish State. I thank you also for courageously defending Judeo-Christian values and the roots of our common civilization during your time as pontiff. I have no doubt that these values, which were so essential to building the modern world, are no less critical to securing a future of security, prosperity and peace.

Your historic visit to Israel in 2009 offered a rare opportunity to give expression to the new relations between our faiths. I remember fondly our meeting, in which you referred to Judaism as Christianity’s elder brother and in which you reaffirmed your commitment to a cooperative future between Christians and Jews.

I thank you for your leadership during these very turbulent times, and wish you long life, health and happiness.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Board of Governors of The Jewish Agency for Israel (photo credit: Dave Bender, Jewish Agency for Israel/Times of Israel)

>> Full text of Netanyahu speech to the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors

“The nuclear test carried out by North Korea last week proves that economic sanctions alone cannot stop a rogue regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, warning that leaders should apply the lessons of Pyongang to Tehran,” reports the Times of Israel. “Netanyahu told the Board of Governors of The Jewish Agency for Israel in Jerusalem that sanctions would only work on Iran’s nuclear program if they were coupled with a robust military threat, repeating a popular refrain and perhaps offering a preview of what he will tell US President Barack Obama during a visit next month.”

“Only sanctions combined with a robust, credible military threat might stop Iran,” Netanyahu said, according to the Times, warning that “an Iranian nuclear weapon would transform the Middle East into a tinderbox, changing the world as we know it.”

“We need to seek a realistic peace process with the Palestinians, one which guarantees peace and security,” Netanyahu also said. “I don’t want to waste another four years negotiating about the negotiations. I place no preconditions for negotiations. I wish this were true for the Palestinians. The visit of President Obama is an opportunity to reset this.”

“The Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency comprises organizations from around the world,” notes the Times. “It meets three times a year to hold strategic discussions about issues affecting the Jewish world and Israeli society and to formulate Jewish Agency policy.”

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Iran continues to strenuously deny it wants nuclear weapons or is actively pursuing them. Yet the evidence continues to say the exact opposite. Now there are new and credible reports that Iran is working closely with North Korea to join develop The Bomb, and that the recent North Korean nuclear weapons test was done in close coordination with Iran, even with Iranian nuclear officials present to observe the test.

“Iran’s leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, is believed to have travelled to North Korea to observe its third nuclear test last week, according to western intelligence sources,” reports the Sunday Times of London.

“Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi has ventured outside Iran rarely, if at all, since several Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated in attacks blamed by  Tehran on the Israeli intelligence service Mossad,” reports the Times. “He is in charge of developing a warhead small enough to fit on to one of the ballistic missiles developed by Iran from North Korean prototypes, the  sources said. His trip may have been worth the risk because North Korea’s triumphant announcement of the blast hinted that it was a compact, powerful device.”

In my novels, The Twelfth Imam and The Tehran Initiative, I paint a fictional account of Iran buying missiles and nuke plans from North Korea, and poring over data from North Korean nuclear bomb tests to assist and accelerate their own development of The Bomb. However, there is a growing stream of hard reporting and expert analysis that this is not fiction, that Iran and North Korea are, in fact, working very closely on ballistic missile development and on the development of nuclear weapons. 

“No country is more interested in the results of the North’s nuclear program, or the Western reaction, than Iran, which is pursuing its own uranium enrichment program,” the New York Times reported on February 11. “The two countries have long cooperated on missile technology, and many intelligence officials believe they share nuclear knowledge as well, though so far there is no hard evidence. The Iranians are also pursuing uranium enrichment, and one senior American official said two weeks ago that ‘it’s very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.’ Some believe that the country may have been planning two simultaneous tests, but it could take time to sort out the data.”

Consider a handful of related stories:

• Iran, North Korea sign agreement on scientific, academic, technological cooperation — The Islamic Republic of Iran and North Korea on Saturday signed a document on expansion of mutual cooperation in scientific, academic and technological know-how between the two countries. (Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA)
• Iranian officials ‘observed North Korean rocket launch’ — A dozen officials from Iran’s controversial ballistic missiles programme were present in North Korea last week to witness the failed rocket launch, according to reports. (UK Telegraph)
• “Very possible” that the North Koreans are testing nuclear bombs for Iran, says U.S. official.
• Analysis: Pyongyang nuke test may also be Iranian — Expert warns Tehran may be bypassing int’l inspections via North Korea, says Iranian scientists may have been present at test. (Jerusalem Post)
• Analysis: Why Iran Already Has the Bomb — If North Korea has the bomb, as this week’s nuclear test indicated, then for all practical purposes, so does Iran. (The Tablet)
• Iranians in North Korea? (Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dr. Lewis also founded and maintains the leading blog on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, ArmsControlWonk.com.)

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Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a fervent believer that the End of Days is at hand and the Islamic messiah known as the Twelfth Imam (or Imam al-Mahdi, or the “Promised One” is coming to conquer and rule the world imminently — began using Twitter on March 31, 2009. So far, he’s sent out a little over 9,000 Tweets.

I recently began following his Tweets to see what he was saying and how he was using social media. I’m glad I did.

On Saturday, the Iranian leader made news on a sensitive subject, saying that if Iran wanted nuclear weapons that “no power could have prevented us.”

“We believe in the elimination of nuclear weapons,” Khamenei Tweeted in both Farsi and English. “We don’t want to build nuclear weapons.”

But then he immediately sent another Tweet that said, “If we did not believe in the elimination of nuclear weapons and wanted to have one, no power could have prevented us.”

In yet another Tweet on Saturday, he wrote: “US [nuclear] talk proposals are propaganda” which he does not take seriously.

The central question world leaders must decide is whether Khamenei is telling the truth. Does he really believe in the eliminating nuclear weapons? Does he really oppose Iran building nuclear weapons? If so, why has Iran for years been breaking international law and defying numerous UN Security Council resolutions in pursuit of uranium enrichment and nuclear bomb technology?

On Valentine’s Day, Khamenei Tweeted a very blunt and direct statement: “I am not a diplomat. I am a revolutionary. I speak openly and honestly.”

It’s certainly true he is not a diplomat — he continually rejects American and UN offers to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this conflict. He’s certainly a revolutionary — he’s trying to export the Iranian Revolution throughout the Middle East and is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Does he always speak only and honestly? No. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn’t. In this case, he’s succeeding in making headlines around the world with a lie that he doesn’t believe in building nuclear weapons. But in that package of lies, he’s also signaling something he truly does believe, that  if Iran wanted The Bomb, it could get one. Khamenei believes this deeply. What’s more, I believe the evidence is unmistakeable: he does want The Bomb and he’s headlong in pursuit of it while trying to obfuscate his goals and intentions in the court of public opinion.

Several major international news outlets reported on Khamemei’s comments, including the Associated Press, Agence France Presse, and Reuters.

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Former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab.

With the implosion of the Assad regime in full swing, the countdown to the fall of Damascus is on, and Iran is moving quickly to fill the vacuum. Now Riad Hijab — the former Prime Minister of Syria who defected from his senior position in Damascus last August — says that Iran’s military and intelligence forces are “actively running” the nation of Syria.

“Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime,” Hijab told an Arabic media outlet. “Who runs the country isn’t Bashar Assad but Kassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s al-Quds Brigades [within the Revolutionary Guards].”

Evidence is mounting that Iran and Hezbollah, its Radical Shia terrorist organization, are moving military forces into the country so that if and when the Assad regime finally falls, Iran can fully and quickly seize and consolidate full control. Back in August, when I reported on this blog that Hijab had defected, I also quoted a press repors indicating that “Iran is sending thousands of fighters to help the Bashar Assad regime in it’s ongoing conflict with rebel forces, according to a Syrian opposition leader. Col. Abdul-Jabbar Mohammed Aqidi, the commander of rebel forces in Aleppo province, was quoted in Al Arabiya on Saturday saying that 3,000 Iranians had already passed through Damascus International Airport in the last week.”

“Hijab’s comments come less than a week after a Washington Post article claimed Iran and Hezbollah were ‘building a network of militias‘ in Syria to protect their interests when Assad falls,” notes a story today in the Times of Israel. “The militias are fighting alongside the regime, sources told the newspaper, but also preparing for a day-after scenario in which Assad is gone. A senior Obama administration official put the number of Iranian mercenaries in Syria at 50,000. Also on Friday, activists said some 150 rebels and government troops have been killed in fierce fighting for control of the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo and a major military air base nearby.”

Meanwhile, “After nearly two years of fighting, the death toll in Syria has reached some 90,000 people, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday,” according to AP and the Times of Israel.

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Is the Obama administration preparing to cut military aid to Israel?

UPDATE: Iran could use U.N. talks as cover to build bomb, UN chief says

UPDATE: World powers discussing easing sanctions on Iran

On the eve of his upcoming trip to Israel — and the President’s trip to the epicenter in March — Secretary of State John Kerry is sending a disturbing message: U.S. military assistance to Israel may soon be cut.

With tensions mounting between Israel and Iran, and with Syria imploding, now would be the wrong time to undermine Israeli national security and create new doubts in the region about the solidity of the U.S.-Israel alliance. Nevertheless, Kerry is warning that the Obama administration is looking at a “$300 million cut from foreign military financing accounts, which could result in cuts to assistance to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan,” according to a report by Foreign Policy magazine.

Is this a warning to Congress, or Netanyahu, or both?

The context of Kerry’s message is a warning to Congress about the effects of not soon striking a deal to avoid automatic, across-the-board federal spending cuts, known in Washington as “sequestration.” The Administration is saying to Congress: Give us the deal the President wants, or people are going to be hurt, including Israel.

At this same time, however, Kerry’s message could also be interpreted a subtle shot across the bow of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Give us what the President wants, or we may find ourselves “forced” to cut military funding for vital programs, like the Iron Dome and/or other missile defense projects.

The President has made his position clear in recent years: 1) he wants Israel to divide Jerusalem and allow the Palestinians to make East Jerusalem their capital; 2) he wants Israel to make sweeping territorial and security concessions to create a sovereign and contiguous Palestinian state in the 1967 borders; and 3) he wants Israel to promise not to launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program but rather let the world powers deal with it.

Thus far, Netanyahu has not said yes to any of these three demands. Is the Administration now considering using U.S. aid to Israel as leverage to achieve its goals (while simultaneously trying to blame the potential cuts on the Republicans in the House)?

“At the beginning of March, across-the-board cuts to all discretionary spending accounts will go into effect, based on the 2011 Budget Control Act and the failure of the ‘supercommittee’ to agree upon discretionary budget cuts in 2012,” notes Foreign Policy’s blog, The Cable. “Congressional appropriators are planning to reorganize those cuts when the continuing resolution that has been temporarily funding the government expires at the end of March, a GOP Congressman told The Cable. ‘Sequestration would force the Department and USAID to make across-the-board reductions of $2.6 billion to fiscal 2013 funding levels under the continuing resolution,” Kerry wrote in a letter to Sen. Barbara Milkuski (D-MD) on Feb. 11. Cuts of this magnitude would seriously impair our ability to execute our vital missions of national security, diplomacy, and development.’ Kerry also said that sequestration would hurt the State Department’s efforts to ramp up security for diplomats abroad, despite that Congress already approved State’s request to devote an additional $1 billion to that effort. ‘These cuts would severely impair our efforts to enhance the security of U.S. government facilities overseas and ensure the safety of the thousands of U.S. diplomats serving the American people abroad,’ Kerry wrote.”

The next few weeks will prove quite interesting in U.S.-Israel relations, to say the least.

 >> What does the future of Israel hold? Come with me and The Joshua Fund on a “Prayer & Vision Trip” to the Holy Land and to the 2013 Epicenter Conference this summer. For more details, and/or to register, please click here.

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“After nearly two years of fighting, the death toll in Syria has reached some 90,000 people, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday,” according to AP and the Times of Israel. “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.”

As we’ve discussed in recent months, the implosion of Damascus is going from bad to worse. The West has no answers. Iran and Russia are making things worse. The Assad government is tottering on the edge. Chemical and biological weapons caches are sitting there, in danger of being used or stolen. It’s difficult in such an environment not to think something more catastrophic is coming. The fall of Damascus may not be far off. I look forward to discussing all this in more detail when Damascus Countdown releases next month, and when President Obama heads to the region. In the meantime, let’s not give up hope. Let’s keep praying for peace and that this evil scourge should end soon.

>> Pre-order my forthcoming international geopolitical thriller, Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a meeting in 2005.

Regulars readers of this blog — and books like The Ezekiel Option and Epicenter — know that I’ve been writing about a growing and troublesome alliance between Russia and Iran since 2005. Given that history, I thought it would be important to bring this New York Post article to your attention today. The headline is, “Why Iran is falling into Russia’s arms,” and it’s written by Amir Taheri.

Taheri is an Iranian dissident and former editor-in-chief of an Iranian newspaper whom I find quite insightful about Iranian foreign and domestic policy and political intrigues. He was one of the first international journalists to  notice and begin reporting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s obsession with eschatology. After reading Taheri’s work, I began to study more closely Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements on the subject and began studying more carefully the substance of Shia End Times theology and its impact on Iranian foreign policy. While he was ahead of the curve on Ahmadinejad’s eschatology, Taheri is a little behind the curve on noticing the alliance forming between Russia and Iran. and its implications. Still, the good news is that he has focused on important new developments in recent weeks and is on to the story now.

Students of Bible prophecy will find all this particularly interesting. After all, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel wrote 2,500 years ago that a dictator (Gog) from the territory we now call Russia (Magog) would form an alliance in the “last days” with Persia (what we now call Iran) and a group of other Middle Eastern countries. The goal of the alliance will be to threaten and then attack a prosperous and secure Israel in the years following Israel’s prophetic rebirth. Such an event has never happened in human history, but a growing number of Jewish and Christian Bible scholars and teachers believe geopolitical trends suggest the fulfillment of the “War of Gog and Magog” prophecy might not be so far off.

For now, I commend Taheri’s column to your attention.

Key excerpts:

• “A strategic partnership”: So Iran and Russia describe the series of security, economic and cultural agreements they’ve signed together in the past few weeks.
• Iran’s Foreign Minister Ai-Akbar Salehi arrived in Moscow this week to co-chair the first annual session of the “partnership” with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Days earlier, a group of officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard arrived in the Russian capital for a crash course in crowd control and civil unrest. They’re expected to return to Iran by May and be “operational” in time for the June presidential election. Iranian authorities are nervous about expected unrest during the elections, and so have called on Russia to help prevent an Iranian version of the “Arab Spring.” But Russia made its support conditional on signing a security treaty with Iran; Tehran complied last month.
• The agreement represents a break with an old principle in Iran’s defense and security doctrines. Russia has been a source of fear and fascination for its Iranian neighbors since the 18th century. Several wars of varying magnitude proved Russia to be a threat, as successive czars dreamed of winning control of a port on the Indian Ocean — which meant annexing or dominating Iran.
• In Iranian political folklore, Russia has long been depicted as a bear whose embrace, even if friendly, could smother you….Even after the fall of the shah and of the USSR, the Iranian tradition of keeping the Russian bear at arm’s length continued under the Khomeinist regime. It’s clear that a different fear has moved Tehran to abandon that tradition.
• The new security pact provides for cooperation in intelligence gathering and the fight “against terrorism, people-trafficking, and drug-smuggling.” But it more significant is that it commits Russia to training and equipping Iranian security forces to deal with civil unrest….
• There are other signs of change in Moscow-Tehran relations. Last week, Iran played host to Russian warships visiting Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz in what looks like the opening gambit for a Russian naval presence in the strategic waterway….
• Days after the Irano-Russian pact was signed, Putin announced that he had terminated security cooperation with the United States on the fight against drug trafficking, people-smuggling and piracy.
• Observers in Tehran say the change in relations is caused by several factors. Both regimes are involved in the Syrian civil war on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Both believe that the “Arab Spring” is the result of “plots” hatched by Washington under the Bush administration. Both fear that the “velvet revolution” recipe for regime change could be used against them. And both Moscow and Tehran regard what they see as an US strategic retreat under President Obama as an opportunity. They think that, with the United States out, no other power has the capacity to check their regional ambitions.

Important related recent headlines:

• Iran hopes to build second nuclear reactor with Russian help
• Iran, Russia sign deals to boost trade
• Iran wants space ties with Russia: Minister
• Independent Iran, strong Russia could complement each other
• US takes aim at Iran and Russia over Syria

>> What does the future of Israel hold? Come with me and The Joshua Fund on a “Prayer & Vision Trip” to the Holy Land and to the 2013 Epicenter Conference this summer. For more details, and/or to register, please click here.

• Pre-order Damascus Countdown, which releases March 5th
• Order the paperback of The Tehran Initiative
• To support The Joshua Fund, please visit www.joshuafund.net