As readers know from my previous writings, Iran (“Persia”) is prophesied in Ezekiel 38-39 to be a part of the Gog-Magog alliance in the latter days, and it is a Shiite Moslem nation. Saudi Arabia and the Arab nations are Sunni Moslems and they are descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. The USA spent an immense amount of money and lost many soldiers and much equipment in the two wars it fought with Iraq in the Mideast. After occupying Iraq for years, the USA’s pull-out has now left Iraq on the verge of splitting into three nations, just as Yugoslavia split into many nations when it fell apart years ago.
This link offers a good analysis of what is happening in Iraq today. I have mentioned these trends in previous posts, but the danger of a three-way split in Iraq has never been greater. As the article notes, the current leader of Iraq, Al Maliki, is a Shiite Moslem and is regarded by Saudi Arabia as little more than an Iranian puppet. Sunni Moslem Turkey is also upset with the Iraqi leader’s treatment of Sunni Moslems in Iraq and is threatening to intervene in their behalf (much of Iraq used to be part of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire). The Sunnis and Shiites are very close to a divorce which could potentially touch off armed hostilities between the Sunni Arab Moslems and the Shiite Persian Moslems in the region. The leader of Iraq is also a backer of Syria’s embattled President Assad who is waging war against his own people to stay in power. This makes Iraq’s Shiite leader an ally of Russia and Iran which are also backing Assad. Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis would love to overthrow Assad and remove Syria from the Iranian camp.
The third portion of Iraq is the already semi-independent Kurdish region which has been friendly to the West and to the Israelis. The Kurds and the Turks have been mortal enemies for a long time, and an independent Kurdistan is one of Turkey’s worst fears. However, as I posted earlier, the Kurdish region sheltered and forcibly protected the Iraqi Vice-President (A Sunni Moslem) when the Iraqi Shiite leader tried to arrest him for what were most likely trumped-up charges. This Kurdish action won good will with the Sunni nations who are now protecting Iraq’s former Vice-President (who would likely become President of an independent Sunni “Western Iraq” if Iraq splits three ways). The Kurds’ protection of This Sunni Vice-President allows for the possibility that an independent Sunni “Western Iraq” would become allied with an independent Kurdistan against Iran and on the side of the Saudis and the other Sunnis Moslems. This could even lead to Turkey and the Kurds “burying the hatchet” and becoming allied against Iran under the auspices of Saudi help for this outcome (which would be hugely in the interests of Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni nations).
Behind the scenes, I think Israel is rooting for the Sunnis and the Kurds to make common cause with Israel against Iran. The Israelis, surrounded by hostile Hezbollah and Hamas, threatened by a hostile Syria and endangered by a possibly Islamist Egypt, are very ripe for a grand political settlement which would grant some kind of Palestinian “state” which would be closely supervised by the Saudis and Jordanians and which would make the Sunni Moslem nations, an independent Kurdistan and the Israelis all allies against Iran. This would greatly secure Israeli safety and such an arrangement would vastly secure the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, etc., who could come under the Israeli nuclear umbrella against Iran. The USA and the West would favor such an outcome. Russia, again led by the assertive Putin, and China would not favor it and will work to stop it from happening. If the USA had strong leadership, the USA would work hard to make such an outcome happen, but I can’t see the Saudis and the other Sunni leaders (furious at Obama for abandoning their Sunni ally, Mubarak of Egypt) ever truly trusting the USA as long as Obama is president. I can’t see the Israelis ever truly trusting Obama either. The antipathy between Obama and Netanyahu runs deep (as was learned from Obama’s open-mike scathing comments about Netanyahu to France’s soon-to-be ex-President Sarkozy). A mutual distrust of Obama is oddly another factor drawing the Saudis and Israelis toward each other. These nations and their allies may re-draw the map of the Mideast on their own in a way which neither the USA or Russia like.
The Arabs have a long history of shifting alliances and allegiances, a trait prophesied for the descendants of Ishmael in Genesis 16:10-12. The time-honored principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is well-known and often-practiced in the Mideast. The Saudis and the Israelis are accumulating a growing list of common enemies (Iran, the Al Maliki-led Shiite Iraq, Syria, and even President Obama—although they would never say that openly). This increases the odds of Israel and Saudi Arabia being pushed together as “friends.” Both the Israelis and the Arabs know that they share a common ancestor, the man named Abraham, so they have blood ties as well. The USA, the UK, many NATO nations and their allies have Abraham as their ancestor too via Jacob (although they are mostly clueless to this fact, as my books document). The Turks are descended from Abraham via Esau also named Edom in the Bible. One of Edom’s most prominent tribes was named Teman (Genesis 36:15 and 34), and the consonants of his name are T-M-N, the same consonants of Turkey’s old Ottoman Empire (TT-M-N). Another Edomite name is “Bozrah” (Genesis 36:33), and that name is found on the Iraqi city of Basrah (also called Basra). The Jordanians are descended from the old Ammonites of the Bible, and the name of their ancestor Ammon, is still on the Jordanian capital city, Amman. The Ammonites are not descended from Abraham, but are related to Abraham’s family of many nations via Abraham’s nephew, Lot.
It looks to me that a Divine hand is pushing all the sons of Abraham into one alliance in these end-times whether they realize it or not. Their enemies are listed as the Gog-Magog alliance in Ezekiel 38-39, and that alliance has already mostly taken shape.
Watch Iraq carefully. If it splits apart, the entire Mideast map of alliances may be re-drawn in a way which finally sets the stage for the prophesied alliances that will oppose each other in a final World War II (see my article, What Ezekiel 38-39 Reveals About a Future World War III [PDF]). Since God has already revealed a great deal of the future to us, you may as well see what he has to say in his biblical prophecies.
