“I am Yahweh; that is My Name! I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)
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The Washington Post—The US is on a collision course with Iran in the Middle East:
President Trump’s assertive new strategy toward Iran is already colliding with the reality of Tehran’s vastly expanded influence in the Middle East as a result of the Islamic State war.
The launch of the strategy signaled an important shift in U.S. Middle East policy away from an almost exclusive focus on fighting the Islamic State to an effort that also pushes back against years of Iranian expansion in the region.
But the strategy offers no specifics for how to confront Iran’s pervasive presence on the ground in Iraq, Syria and beyond, raising questions about how easy it will be to push back against Iranian influence without triggering new conflicts.
The difficulty of changing tack on what has amounted in recent years to a tacit alliance with Iran in Iraq for the purpose of fighting the Islamic State was evident this week in a sharp rebuke by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s call for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to “go home.”
The militias are “part of the Iraqi institutions,” Abadi responded in a statement. “The Hashd al-Shaabi should be encouraged because they are the hope of the country and the region,” he said, referring to the coalition of militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
One of Iraq’s most powerful militia leaders went further, saying in a tweet that it is the Americans who should go home.
“Your armed forces have to prepare from this point immediately and without any delay to leave our homeland Iraq after the end of the excuse of the ISIS presence,” said Qais al-Khazali, who heads the Iran-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia and was imprisoned for two years by U.S. forces for his role in organizing an attack that killed five U.S. soldiers in 2006. ISIS is another name for the Islamic State.
The rising tensions risk a return to the era of proxy wars that prevailed in the middle of the last decade, when Iranian-backed militias blew up American troops and U.S. and Iranian allies kidnapped one another’s operatives on the streets of Baghdad — or even in the 1980s, when Americans were driven out of Beirut by suicide bombings and the kidnapping of dozens of Western hostages by a group allied to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement.
The tensions also risk complicating the final stages of the war against the Islamic State, which has now been mostly confined to a desert stretch of highly strategic territory spanning the border between Syria and Iraq.
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SnyderTalk Comment:
For once, the Washington Post is correct. The U.S. is on a collision course with Iran in the Middle East. We’ve been on a collision course with Iran since 1979.
For almost 40 years, we have pretended that the inevitable can be avoided. Obama’s deal with Iran that permits the mullahs in Tehran to develop nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them to other continents was the last straw. Iran is on the verge of having everything she needs to blackmail us into submission.
President Trump did not create this problem. His job is to deal with it.
Those responsible for creating the problem include Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Each one of them failed to act, and the problem grew. Finally, the problem has festered, and we have no choice except to deal with it.
Instead of criticizing President Trump for doing what he must do, we need to pray that he will do the right thing.
I’m growing increasingly less sanguine each day. The divisions in our country are great. Every issue, including issues of right and wrong, is presented with a political spin.
Right and wrong are not about politics. The sooner we learn that fact, the better. You can rest assured that we will learn it.
At some point, it will become obvious to everyone that Israel’s survival is a stake. Iranian leaders have vowed to “wipe Israel off the map”. They are serious. Our job is to prevent that from happening.
Israel will survive and thrive. Yahweh will make sure of it, but He will hold us responsible if we take sides against Him. That’s true for every country in the world.
We don’t want to take sides with Yahweh’s enemies.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
