Antichrist’s Men Hold American’s Hostage (Revelation 13:18)

Officials Name Top Suspects in Iraq Abductions of Americans

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSJAN. 21, 2016, 5:48 A.M. E.S.T.

BAGHDAD — Two powerful Shiite militias are top suspects in the abduction of three Americans last weekend in a southern neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, an Iraqi police commander and a Western security official in Baghdad said Thursday.

The Americans were abducted in Dora, a mixed neighborhood that is home to both Shiites and Sunnis, on Saturday. It was the latest in a series of brazen high-profile kidnappings undermining confidence in the Iraqi government’s ability to control state-sanctioned Shiite militias, which have grown in strength as Iraqi security forces battle the Islamic State group.

Two Shiite militias — Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Saraya al-Salam — were likely behind the attack, the Iraqi and Western official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“Nobody can do anything in that neighborhood without the approval of those militias,” the police commander said. The Western security official confirmed that Iraqi and U.S. intelligence assessments had narrowed down the suspects to those the two groups.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

One of the militias named as a suspect is backed by Iran, a key ally of Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi’s government.

Al-Abadi said on Thursday that he doubts that there is an Iranian link to the kidnapping, adding “we don’t know if they have been kidnapped… they just went missing.”

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has confirmed that several Americans are missing and said they are working with Iraqi authorities to locate them.

Speaking at Davos, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that he was working with Iraq on the issue. He said he had also been in touch with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to request help. He said Zarif had replied that he would do what he can, but that he had no “immediate knowledge whatsoever” about the incident.

Baghdad authorities said the three Americans were kidnapped from a “suspicious apartment” without elaborating, and have provided no other details. There has been no claim of responsibility.

The identities of the three were not made public and the two officials — the Iraqi commander and the Western official — did not elaborate on the investigation that is underway.

Another Iraqi intelligence official told the AP this week that from the Dora neighborhood the Americans were taken to Sadr City, a vast and densely populated Shiite district to the east, and there “all communication ceased.”

Lt. Gen. Abdul-Ghani al-Asadi, commander of Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces, told AP that his men are aiding in the search effort, which he said is focusing on “certain areas” of the capital Baghdad. He declined to give a more specific location.

Following the dramatic collapse of the Iraqi security forces in the summer of 2014, Shiite militias filled the vacuum, growing more powerful militarily than the country’s own security forces. They are some of the most effective anti-IS forces on the ground in Iraq, and also run security in many Baghdad neighborhoods.

The Iraqi government-allied militias are now officially sanctioned and known as Popular Mobilization Committees.

But many trace their roots to the armed groups that battled U.S. troops after the 2003 invasion and kidnapped and killed Sunnis at the height of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting in 2006 and 2007. In the fight against IS, human rights groups have accused them of abuses targeting Sunni civilians, charges denied by militia leaders.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Iranian-backed and one of the most powerful Shiite militias operating in Iraq, has repeatedly spoken out against the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq in the fight against IS. Saraya al-Salam is run by Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whose Mahdi militia often battled with US forces between 2003 and 2011.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has struggled to balance the power and popularity of the Shiite militias with the government’s dependence on the U.S.-led coalition’s contributions to the fight against the Islamic State.

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Davos, Switzerland contributed to this report.

Obama and America are Seen as Weak (Ezekiel 17)

Iranian Cleric: U.S. Is Weak, Powerless Against Revolutionary Guard

Getty Images

by Adelle Nazarian17 Jan 2016

Days away from implementation day of the nuclear deal with Iran, Friday prayers in Mashhad took direct aim at the United States by using the recent hostage situation in the Persian Gulf as a propaganda tool to suggest the U.S. is weak and powerless against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

During his sermon, hardline Iranian cleric Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Alamolhoda said that for the last 37 years, the U.S. has been like a “barking dog” lacking the strength to enter their nation. Using the recent incident in the Persian Gulf, near Farsi Island, where the IRGC’s Navy took 10 American sailors hostage, he said the captives were so frightened and intimidated by the faces of the IRGC Naval forces that their hands “involuntarily went over their heads” in a show of surrender as their boats were approached by the Iranian militants. The sermon was reported on by the state-run Fars News Agency. 

The IRGC is Iran’s most powerful political force and operates under the guidance of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Despite an alert to Iran that the U.S. Navy was deploying one of its vessels as part of a search and rescue effort for 10 sailors who allegedly veered off course, the IRGC still went ahead and took those sailors captive, in a confrontation that had the potential to escalate into an act of war.

CNN reports that the American sailors who were taken hostage were told to “act happy” by their captors while they were being taped. Meanwhile, several headlines coming out of Iran sought to show the IRGC’s strength over the U.S. One in particular, coming out of a publication called Hemayat, had a headline reading “The Apology of the Americans Under the Shadow and Strength of the IRGC.” It explained that the Americans were released into international waters after promising to never make the same mistake again and apologizing to their nation under the supervision of the naval forces of the IRGC.

Friday’s sermon in Mashhad fell on the anniversary of the birth of the Shah Hazrat Abdul Hassani, an Islamic scholar who was the great grandson of Imam Hassan al-Mujtaba, the second holy Imam in Shi’ite Islam. Hassani’s story tells the lesson of perseverance in the face of struggle. It was also around the anniversary of the death of Nawab Safavi, a radical cleric who was responsible for founding an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group (Fadayan-e-Islam) whose members assassinated Iranian politicians affiliated with Iran’s last Shah.

Ayatollah Alamolhoda invoked the memory of both men and used them as role models to glorify martyrdom, presenting them as having a similar purpose in their lives’ missions and as being both the subject and source of God’s wishes for them.

In 2009, Alamolhoda said the opponents of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were supporters of Satan. “Enemies of the leader, according to the Quran, belong to the party of Satan. Our war in the world is war against the opponents of the rule of the supreme leader,” he said making a direct reference to the West and specifically the United States. Since 1979, the Islamic Regime of Iran has sought to export its own version of a Shi’te Islamic caliphate through the continuation of its revolution. 

How Obama Got Checked By the Chessmaster

Here’s how Iran totally out-negotiated Obama a month ago on nuclear warhead testing…

Posted by soopermexican on Jan 16, 2016

So the seeds for today’s prisoner exchange seemed to have been sowed a month ago when the U.S. were considering sanctions to punish Iran for testing ballistics missiles that could deliver a nuclear warhead.Guess what – we gave in.

From Reuters:

The day before the Obama administration was due to slap new sanctions on Iran late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry the move could derail a prisoner deal the two sides had been negotiating in secret for months.

Kerry and other top aides to President Barack Obama, who was vacationing in Hawaii, convened a series of conference calls and concluded they could not risk losing the chance to free Americans held by Tehran.

At the last minute, the Obama administration officials decided to delay a package of limited and targeted sanctions intended to penalize Iran for recent test-firings of a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

This account of previously unreported internal deliberations was provided by two people with knowledge of the matter.

A third official said Obama had approved the decision to delay the sanctions.

Those unilateral U.S. sanctions are expected to be imposed quickly now after Iran freed five Americans, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, on Saturday. Eight Iranians accused in the United States of sanctions violations were having charges dropped or sentences commuted on Saturday under the complex prisoner deal, according to court filings and sources familiar with the cases.

The moves came as broader U.S. and international sanctions were set to be lifted after verification that it had met commitments to curb its nuclear program.

But Kerry’s decision not to call Iran’s bluff in December shows how months of clandestine negotiations to free Rezaian and other Americans became deeply intertwined with the final push to implement the nuclear deal, despite the official U.S. line that those efforts were separate.

Well that’s just great.

This proves what we’ve heard over and over – Obama has continuously caved to Iran just for the sake of getting a deal no matter how bad it is for the world and for America.