Podcast # 20: Arabian Entropy
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am talking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book dealing with prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, this Podcast is another in the series “Signs of the Times”, and is titled “Arabian Entropy”. Hello Allan and welcome to the Podcast.
Thanks Scott. It’s great to chat to you again.
Scott: Allan, I notice that in recent Podcasts you have been focusing on Iran and their attempts to develop nuclear weapons. Why is that?
Well Scott, the reason I have been talking so much about Iran lately is because I believe that, according to Bible prophecy, they are the trigger for what is about to happen in the Middle East.
Scott: Why do you say that Allan?
Well let me just recap how we got onto the subject of Iran in the first place.
You will remember that in my earlier Podcast entitled “The Invasion of Israel”, I pointed out that according to the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, there would be an attack on Israel during the end times leading up to the return of the Christ.
This attack would be undertaken by a coalition of Islamic nations, and would include countries like Persia, Ethiopia and Libya. Because Ezekiel specifically singled out Persia, or to give it its modern name Iran, I indicated that it is to Iran that we should look if we are to understand the true measure of our times.
In that Podcast, I outlined the different countries that would be involved, and explained why they would choose to undertake a land invasion of Israel, rather than an indiscriminate attack on Israeli territory by means of aircraft, missiles and rockets.
Scott: So Allan, are you saying that various Arab nations, together with Iran, are planning a land invasion of Israel?
Well Scott, up until a few years ago, I would have said that the possibility of such a thing happening was extremely remote. But over the course of the last two years there have been dramatic changes throughout the Arab world.
We are now witnessing a process of change that I have chosen to call “Arabian Entropy”. And I am convinced that, as a result of these changes, the process that is under way in the Middle East will soon lead to the exact scenario predicted by Ezekiel.
It may seem strange to use a word like “entropy” in this context, but the association does seem to me to be singularly apt. Entropy is of course a scientific term referring to a process of change from order to disorder. In fact one of ways that entropy can be defined is “a steady deterioration of a system or society”.
It is evident that this deterioration of Arab society, which has been growing steadily in country after country throughout the Islamic world, began some two and a half years ago with the events that have come to be described as the “Arab Spring”.
When a young Tunisian street vendor set himself ablaze in December 2010, in a protest against police corruption and oppression, he started a chain of events that has shaken the entire Arab world to its core.
Prior to this event, all the countries of North Africa and the Middle East were ruled by leaders who had been entrenched in power for the better part of a generation.
Yet since that time, the Governments of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen have all been overthrown, and insurrection has broken out in countries like Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq and Morocco. Even Western backed countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Bahrain have not been immune from these protests.
And of course, during the last two years a civil war has broken out in Syria that now threatens to destabilize the entire region, as well as draw in the major powers of the East and West in a potential conflagration.
This convulsion of change has not made any of the Arab countries involved demonstrably stronger or more united, but has instead fragmented them into opposing factions that now have the motivation and the ability to settle their differences at the point of a gun.
Another significant change that has taken place within each of these countries has been the move towards a more militant Islamic style of government, which has tended to be fundamentalist, autocratic and repressive. And of course none of this bodes well for future peace in the region.
So we now find ourselves in a far more dangerous world than before, and one in which extremists everywhere have become empowered to pursue their ideological aims, and to do so with ever increasing amounts of firepower.
So Scott, there are two things that have become apparent over the last few years as a result of this growing Arabian entropy. The first is that all of the countries that have been affected by these changes have become more volatile, and therefore more unpredictable in terms of their future course of actions.
And the second significant change in the Middle East today is that these countries have become significantly more hostile towards Israel which has, as a result, become more isolated throughout the region.
Scott: So Allan, what role do you think Iran will play in the future?
Well Scott, the reason why Iran began their romance with nuclear weapons in the first place was out of fear. They were afraid that the United States would invade their own country in the same way that they had previously invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
Iran reasoned that if they could develop nuclear weapons, this would provide them with a powerful deterrent against outside aggression. And as we have seen recently in the case of North Korea, the success of having a nuclear threat as a deterrent has been validated.
And notwithstanding the recent election of Hassan Rossani as the new President of Iran, there is little reason to suppose that there will be any change in Iran’s policy regarding the development of nuclear weapons, especially as Rossani has already gone on record to stress that there will be no change under his watch.
In any event, Iranian nuclear policy is and always has been the sole decision of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. So what this means is that Iran will continue to enrich uranium until they have accumulated sufficient fissile material to detonate a nuclear device.
And as I have mentioned previously, when President Obama visited Israel recently, he announced that the United States would never allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. The reason being that this would spark nuclear proliferation throughout the region, involving countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.
So as you can see Scott, if Iran continues to pursue its nuclear dream, and the United States insists that it will deny them the fruition of that dream, then both countries are on a collision course that can only end in conflict. It is just a matter of when.
Scott: And do you think that Israel will also attack Iran?
That’s a good question Scott. In recent discussions on the subject of Iran, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel reserves the right to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
And when asked whether Israel had received the “green light” from the United States to initiate a military strike against Iran, Netanyahu’s response was: “Israel’s right to defend its existence is not subject to a traffic light”.
In fact a number of people close to him have remarked that stopping Iran from getting an atom bomb has now become Netanyahu’s main mission in life. And this should come as no surprise to anybody, for he has been saying the same thing himself ever since he was elected Premier.
Of course it is still an open question as to whether Israel actually has the capability to knock out Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities, even if it wanted to. We know that back in 2009 the US supplied Israel with 55 bunker-busting bombs.
But these bombs were 5,000 pound Laser guided bombs that were designed to be fired from F-15 fighter jets, and it is doubtful whether these bombs could penetrate the Iranian underground facilities at Fordow outside the city of Qom.
The US has since developed larger bunker-busting bombs, including the recently tested 30,000 pound version called M.O.P. (Massive-Ordinance-Penetrator) which could certainly do the job.
However, the only aircraft capable of carrying a bomb of this size that possesses the stealth qualities necessary to avoid Iranian defensive surface to air missiles, are the American B-2 bombers based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
But ultimately Scott, I don’t think it matters much whether Israel is involved or not. If the Iranian nuclear facilities are attacked, whether by the U.S. or Israel, or both, there is little doubt that Israel will be the country that will bear the brunt of Arab fury.
And the reason for this will not necessarily be for their involvement in an attack on Iran, but because of their perceived intransigence in their negotiations over the future of Palestine.
Scott: How does Palestine fit in with all this?
To answer that Scott, we really need to go back in time to the end of the 19th century. Because there had been widespread persecution of the Jews throughout Europe at that time, there was a feeling among the international community that a homeland should be set aside for the Jewish people.
At the end of the first World War, when the British conquered Syria, a new state was established that was given the name of Palestine. In 1922, under a mandate issued by the League of Nations, the British were formally given the authority to govern the region.
This British Mandate, as it was called at the time, continued up to the end of the second World War, when the British Government announced that it wanted to terminate this mandate.
So in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution dividing the land of Palestine into two states. One state was to be reserved for the Jews, with the other state to be set aside for the Arabs, while the city of Jerusalem was to be under the direct control of the United Nations.
The unfortunate part about this arrangement was that the population of Jews and Arabs at that time were intermingled together throughout the land, and there were no clear lines of demarcation between the two states.
This was clearly an unworkable arrangement, and it is hardly surprising that a civil war broke out immediately. The outcome of that war was that the Jews took over most of the territory, leaving the Arabs to settle in two areas where they continue to live today, namely the West Bank of the Jordan river and the Gaza strip.
And in the meantime, as a result of subsequent wars, more and more Israeli settlements have been built in the areas originally set aside for the Arabs. Not only that, but the Israeli army fought for control of the city of Jerusalem in 1967, and Jerusalem is now the declared capital of Israel.
So the net result of the last 65 years has been that while the Jews now have a land of their own, including their own capital city in Jerusalem, the Arabs have little to show. They have no state of their own with borders that have been recognised by the world community, nor do they have an official capital city.
Palestinians not only continue to live in the same two widely separated areas, Gaza and the West Bank, but in their day-to-day lives they find themselves dominated to a large extent by the state of Israel in what they can and cannot do.
So what we have here Scott is a social, political and economic cauldron that grows ever more critical, and is waiting to explode.
Scott: So what are the United Nations doing about this?
Well here’s the rub Scott. The United Nations aren’t really doing anything about it at all at this time. Although they were responsible for the original Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, they have pretty much left it up to the Jews and the Arabs to sort out who lives where.
And here’s the fundamental problem that stands in the way of a solution. The West Bank is dominated by the political faction of Fatah, and is currently ruled by the leader of the Palestine National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
The Gaza strip meanwhile is under the control of Hamas, which overthrew the Fatah forces in 2007. Since Hamas refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the state of Israel, the United States, Canada and the European Union have branded Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
So in recent years, all attempts to negotiate some sort of agreement between the Palestinians and the Jews have ended in failure. But the differences between these two sides go much deeper than that, since both of them lay claim to Jerusalem as the sole capital of their respective states. And two into one doesn’t go.
At present, the American Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to get both sides to the bargaining table, but so far with little success. The Palestinians insist that their state must be based on pre-1967 borders, while the Israelis are equally insistent that these preconditions make a return to negotiations impossible .
Then there is the testy matter of Jewish housing. The Palestinians say that Israel must first stop all construction of new houses on land that it wants for a future state, while Israel says that this issue can only be resolved through face to face negotiations – a catch 22 situation.
The danger of this impasse Scott, is that if the Arabs are blocked at every turn in their efforts to negotiaite a Palestinian state, they are bound to look for other ways of doing so. And one doesn’t have to be an Old Testament prophet to figure out what they might decide to do next.
So there you have it Scott. The situation in the Middle East boils down to this. Over the last two years the entire region has become more militant and more volatile, as a result of the process I have called Arabian Entropy.
Then there is Iran’s obsession with acquiring nuclear weapons, contrasted with Israeli and United States insistence that they will never be allowed to do so, under threat of a military attack which now seems inevitable.
And when such an attack does take place, it will unleash an enormous backlash, not just against the United States, but against Israel in particular. Islamic nations everywhere will unite against the Jews.
Then add to this mix the growing sense of Arab futility that they will ever be able to negotiate a Palestinian state with the Israelis, and you have an perilous situation that only needs a spark to explode into war.
So Scott, will the Arabs come to launch a land invasion of Israel as the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel has predicted? You can almost see the dominoes lining up as we speak.
And just a reminder for those people who would like to read my book, it can be reached here
Scott: Thanks Allan. You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. Do join us for our next Podcast in our series called “Signs of the Times”.
