Hamas intensifies efforts to launch terror attacks outside the Temple Walls: Revelation 11

Hamas intensifies efforts to launch West Bank terror attacks — report

Kan news says key Gaza recruiter has contacted dozens in past few months to try and enlist them to carry out assaults

By TOI staffToday, 2:53 am

The Hamas terror group has intensified efforts to carry out West Bank terror attacks, with guidance from the Gaza Strip, Kan news reported Saturday in an unsourced report.

The TV network said Abdallah Arar, a Hamas man released from Israeli prison in the 2011 exchange for the release of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit, had contacted some 60 West Bank Palestinians over the past six months to try to recruit them to carry out attacks.

The report said Arar contacted individuals online, on social media ad on the phone, and had managed to recruit several people to Hamas in recent months. It said Arar was seen as particularly talented at recruitment, and that he often provides the people he enlists with detailed instructions on how to find targets for attacks and build bombs.

Israel and Hamas engaged in 11 days of fighting in May, during which the terror group launched thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns, and Israel launched hundreds of retaliatory airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. In the days after the ceasefire was declared, senior Israeli defense officials said they were not sure how long the truce would last, describing it as unstable.

In the most recent round of fighting, Palestinian terror groups tied the rocket fire from Gaza to unrest in Jerusalem, connected to both clashes on the Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and the pending eviction of a number of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

A poll in June found a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas following the Gaza conflict, with around three-quarters viewing the Islamist terrorists as victors in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.

On Thursday, sources in Hamas told a Lebanese newspaper it would escalate the situation on the Gaza border if Israel does not allow the passage of Qatari funds into the Strip by the end of the week.

With Israel’s approval, Qatar has in recent years distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to enable Gaza’s Hamas rulers to pay for fuel for the Strip’s power plant, pay civil servants’ salaries, and provide aid to tens of thousands of impoverished families.Advertisement

An official familiar with the negotiations told The Times of Israel this month that Israel had notified Egyptian mediators that it will no longer allow the entrance of unmonitored Qatari cash into the Strip, as had previously been done.

In recent weeks, ministers in Israel’s high-level security cabinet were presented a new proposal that would enable aid to reach Gaza without enriching the terror organization. But no final decision has been reached yet.

Earlier this month it was reported that the United Nations has agreed to take responsibility for the disbursement of the Qatari funds.

Babylon the Great Completes Drill Outside the Temple Walls: Revelation 11

Israel, US complete ‘Juniper Falcon’ military drill

Juniper Falcon focused on scenarios that would see the deployment of US forces in Israel under fire during conflict.

US and Israeli troops have finished the week-long Juniper Falcon drill which tested the level of coordination between the two countries in the event of a ballistic missile threat against Israel.

Two US Air Force C-130J Super Hercules from the 37th Airlift Squadron landed in Israel last week with equipment and troops from US Air Forces in Europe and Air Force Africa Airmen and ended on Tuesday.

Juniper Falcon focused on scenarios that would see the deployment of US forces in Israel under fire during conflict and saw troops train in several locations across the country.

According to a statement released by EUCOM, the drill, “ serves as an opportunity for US military personnel and the IDF to exercise together and learn from one another” and “represents another step in the deliberate and strategic relationship between the US and Israel and contributes to overall regional stability.”

During the drill Lt.-Gen. Steven L. Basham, Deputy Commander of US Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa came to Israel and met with senior IDF officials including the head of the Operation’s Division Brig.-Gen. Oded Basiok, the Head of the IAF Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin and the Commander of the Air Defense Division Brig.-Gen. Gilad Biran.According to the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit, the officers discussed the fighting between Israel and Hamas in May and the conclusions the military came to following the fighting “with the aim of learning and deepening Israeli-American cooperation.”

The 11-day Operation Guardian of the Walls saw over 4,360 rockets and missiles fired into Israel from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, around 400 munitions daily – almost four times the daily average of rockets fired per day during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge and 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Of the 4,360 launches, some 1,100 of them heading towards populated areas were intercepted by the Iron Dome. A total of 12 civilians and one soldier were killed during the fighting. While most of the rockets, mortars, and missiles landed in open areas in southern Israel, 120 rockets were fired towards central Israel including Tel Aviv.

The IDF has said that while they struck dozens of Hamas targets, including weapons manufacturing plants and multi-barrel rocket launchers during the fighting, they were not able to destroy the group’s rocket arsenal.

Juniper Falcon “is in accordance with long-standing bilateral agreements between US European Command and the Israel Defense Forces,” EUCOM said in a statement, adding that it was a “long-planned event” that is “designed to test simulated emergency response procedures, ballistic missile defense and crisis response assistance in the defense of Israel.”

Washington and Israel have signed an agreement which would see the US come to assist Israel with missile defense in times of war and a week before the drill began the IDF released an updated intelligence assessment that said that the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group has an arsenal of between 130,000-150,000 rockets and missiles and could launch some 3,000 projectiles a day for at least a week should fighting break out.

The exercise was a continuation of a virtual air defense drill that took place in February with IDF troops operating in Israel and American troops in Germany where EUCOM is based.

Despite corona affecting the ability to hold in-person training, the IAF took part in close to 20 drills in the past year.

Don’t Forget About the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)

    

Don’t forget about earthquakes, feds tell city

Although New York’s modern skyscrapers are less likely to be damaged in an earthquake than shorter structures, a new study suggests the East Coast is more vulnerable than previously thought. The new findings will help alter building codes.

By Mark Fahey

July 18, 2014 10:03 a.m.

The U.S. Geological Survey had good and bad news for New Yorkers on Thursday. In releasing its latest set of seismic maps the agency said earthquakes are a slightly lower hazard for New York City’s skyscrapers than previously thought, but on the other hand noted that the East Coast may be able to produce larger, more dangerous earthquakes than previous assessments have indicated.

The 2014 maps were created with input from hundreds of experts from across the country and are based on much stronger data than the 2008 maps, said Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project. The bottom line for the nation’s largest city is that the area is at a slightly lower risk for the types of slow-shaking earthquakes that are especially damaging to tall spires of which New York has more than most places, but the city is still at high risk due to its population density and aging structures, said Mr. Petersen.

“Many of the overall patterns are the same in this map as in previous maps,” said Mr. Petersen. “There are large uncertainties in seismic hazards in the eastern United States. [New York City] has a lot of exposure and some vulnerability, but people forget about earthquakes because you don’t see damage from ground shaking happening very often.”

Just because they’re infrequent doesn’t mean that large and potentially disastrous earthquakes can’t occur in the area. The new maps put the largest expected magnitude at 8, significantly higher than the 2008 peak of 7.7 on a logarithmic scale.The scientific understanding of East Coast earthquakes has expanded in recent years thanks to a magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Virginia in 2011 that was felt by tens of millions of people across the eastern U.S. New data compiled by the nuclear power industry has also helped experts understand quakes.

“The update shows New York at an intermediate level,” said Arthur Lerner-Lam, deputy director of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “You have to combine that with the exposure of buildings and people and the fragility of buildings and people. In terms of safety and economics, New York has a substantial risk.”

Oddly enough, it’s not the modern tall towers that are most at risk. Those buildings become like inverted pendulums in the high frequency shakes that are more common on the East Coast than in the West. But the city’s old eight- and 10-story masonry structures could suffer in a large quake, said Mr. Lerner-Lam. Engineers use maps like those released on Thursday to evaluate the minimum structural requirements at building sites, he said. The risk of an earthquake has to be determined over the building’s life span, not year-to-year.

“If a structure is going to exist for 100 years, frankly, it’s more than likely it’s going to see an earthquake over that time,” said Mr. Lerner-Lam. “You have to design for that event.”

The new USGS maps will feed into the city’s building-code review process, said a spokesman for the New York City Department of Buildings. Design provisions based on the maps are incorporated into a standard by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which is then adopted by the International Building Code and local jurisdictions like New York City. New York’s current provisions are based on the 2010 standards, but a new edition based on the just-released 2014 maps is due around 2016, he said.

“The standards for seismic safety in building codes are directly based upon USGS assessments of potential ground shaking from earthquakes, and have been for years,” said Jim Harris, a member and former chair of the Provisions Update Committee of the Building Seismic Safety Council, in a statement.

The seismic hazard model also feeds into risk assessment and insurance policies, according to Nilesh Shome, senior director of Risk Management Solutions, the largest insurance modeler in the industry. The new maps will help the insurance industry as a whole price earthquake insurance and manage catastrophic risk, said Mr. Shome. The industry collects more than $2.5 billion in premiums for earthquake insurance each year and underwrites more than $10 trillion in building risk, he said.

“People forget about history, that earthquakes have occurred in these regions in the past, and that they will occur in the future,” said Mr. Petersen. “They don’t occur very often, but the consequences and the costs can be high.”

UK Space Command ‘ready for nuclear war’: Revelation 16

Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston warned that the UK needs to be prepared at the launch of the new UK Space Command (Image: Royal Air Force)

Russia and China pose ‘daily threat’ as UK Space Command ‘ready for war’

Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston warned that the UK needs to be prepared as he claimed that future wars will be “won or lost” in space. China and Russia are seen as the main threats

Tim Hanlon

Britain faces “daily threats” in space from Russia and China who are gathering intelligence that could be used in a future war, said a military boss at the launch of a UK Space Command.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston warned that the UK needs to be prepared with future conflicts “won or lost” in space.

He claimed that Russia and China were both involved in “questionable” activity like flying their satellites too close on a day by day basis, and the UK needs to protect its interests in space.

The £1.4billion Space Command HQ is aimed at preventing attacks 60 miles above Earth, with Russia and China considered the main threats, and it is another layer to the UK Armed Forces.

The Air chief told The Telegraph: “A future conflict may not start in space, but I’m in no doubt that it will come very quickly to space, and it may well be won or lost in space.

The Ministry of Defence has said that attacks on UK property could have a massive impact on defence and the overall economy

“If we don’t think, and prepare for that today, then we won’t be ready when the time comes.”

Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, head of Britain’s Strategic Command, also pointed out the importance of satellites and their “critical capabilities” for the military as well as for people’s everyday life.

The Ministry of Defence has said that attacks on UK property could have a massive impact on defence and the overall economy.

It comes following a Pentagon report earlier this month which said that the chance that nuclear weapons will be used in a regional or global conflict have increased.

The 67-page report, titled “Joint Nuclear Operations” says that while the US has tried to “reduce the number and salience of nuclear weapons, others, including Russia and China, have moved in the opposite direction

The Ominous Chinese Nuclear Horn: Daniel 7

 

Opinion: More missile silos have been found in China. That’s an ominous sign.

Editorial Board

In previous years, China insisted that its posture was “minimum deterrence.” It possessed about 200 nuclear warheads, far fewer than the thousands maintained by the United States and Russia. China eschewed keeping missiles on launch-ready alert like the United States and Russia. By all accounts, China poured resources into modernizing conventional or nonnuclear forces. Before the latest disclosures, China had about 100 land-based ICBMsdivided among 20 or so silos, with the rest on mobile launchers.

But China’s nuclear ambitions are rising. Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists discovered the new missile silo field with satellite imagery from Planet Labs. They found identical domed structures sitting atop silos under construction as were evident at Yumen and at Jilantai, a training site at Inner Mongolia. All told, they say, China now has 250 silos under construction, “the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever.” They add, “The number of new Chinese silos under construction exceeds the number of silo-based ICBMs operated by Russia, and constitutes more than half of the size of the entire US ICBM force.” China’s effort is “the most extensive” since U.S. and Soviet missile silo construction during the Cold War, they note.

When the first new field appeared, speculation arose that China might be playing a shell game, moving a few missiles among many silos. But the discovery of a second field throws this theory into doubt. The second field is unsettling evidence of a major Chinese nuclear weapons expansion, which Adm. Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command, warned of in testimony to Congress in April.

China already is aiming at creating a land-sea-air triad like those of Russia and the United States, and soon it will have the capability of multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. Adm. Richard said China has “moved a portion of its nuclear force to a Launch on Warning (LOW) posture and [is] adopting a limited ‘high alert duty’ strategy.”

An unanswered question is what China thinks it will gain by vaulting to a nuclear posture closer to that of the United States and Russia. The response by the United States and the West is either more nuclear weapons — a new arms race — or nuclear arms control, in which China has not shown much interest. The new missile silos are an ominous sign of a growing challenge, made even more vexing by the other tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The Asian Nuclear Race: Daniel 7

A missile race is heating up all across Asia

• The apparent growth of China’s ICBM force has received international attention in recent weeks.
• That growth is only one facet of China’s rapid and ongoing military expansion.
• That expansion worries China’s neighbors, which are now expanding their own missile arsenals.

Recent reports based on satellite imagery show that China is building as many as 230 new silos to hold intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads as far away as the US.

The construction may indicate a massive expansion of those capabilities and would be the latest chapter in China’s meteoric military growth, which, along with Beijing’s aggressive actions in places like the South China Sea, has already sparked a different kind of missile race.

Countries in the Indo-Pacific region are acquiring or expanding their own arsenals of long-range missiles, largely with China in mind. Those missiles are conventionally armed but also have offensive capability.

“In response to China’s past and recent rapid expansion of missile capabilities, there is indeed a missile race ongoing in the Indo-Pacific,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific Security chair at the Hudson Institute think tank.

Those countries — Cronin cited South Korea and “the Quad” of India, Japan, Australia, and the US — see the threat China poses differently, but the cumulative effect is clear. “It’s a full acceleration of a missile race, frankly,” Cronin told Insider.

China’s military, particularly its navy and air force, is now one of the largest in the world and is developing the capability to conduct and sustain long-range operations.

The missiles that China is fielding, particularly the DF-21 and DF-26, also erode the physical buffer that countries like Australia and the US have long seen as an advantage.

“The tyranny of distance is no longer quite as tyrannical. It’s not so distant either,” Cronin said. “So all of these countries have to start filling in their own offensive capabilities.”

US allies in the region, particularly Japan and South Korea, were long able to rely on the US military for their defense, but uncertainty over the US’s commitment has prompted them to bolster and diversify their own firepower.

“The US has, over time, both demonstrated a great ability to defend allies but also occasional lapses to follow-through,” Cronin said. “It’s entirely possible that these countries don’t want to rely exclusively on the US. They want to hedge their bets.”

Worried about Chinese activity in its waters, Japan is increasing the range of its Type 12 anti-ship cruise missiles from about 200 km to 900 km, with the eventual goal of 1,000 km. Tokyo is also putting Type 12s and anti-aircraft batteries in the Ryukyu Islands, which sit between Japan and Taiwan.

Japan has plans for two hypersonic weapons: the Hypersonic Cruise Missile and the Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile. The HVGP is expected to have a range of about 500 km and a warhead designed to penetrate the decks of aircraft carriers. Tokyo hopes to deploy it by 2026.

Japan has indicated that it wants long-range missiles that can be fired from its aircraft and ships, and its recently published defense white paperspecifically mentions the procurement of stand-off missiles as a priority.

Australia is pursuing a military buildupas it moves into what Prime Minister Scott Morrison last year called “a new and less benign strategic area” amid competition in the region. Morrison said Australia will expand its plans to acquire long-range maritime and land strike capabilities.

Canberra is buying 200 Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles from the US and is investing $1 billion to build guided missiles domestically. That investment includes a ship-launched version of the LRASM and hypersonic weapons that will be developed in consultation with the US.

India, too, is continuing to develop its own missile arsenal to counter China.

It is acquiring new long-range anti-aircraft and cruise missiles, developingnew submarine-launched ballistic missiles for its new Arihant-classnuclear-powered ballistic-missile subs, and working on a hypersonic variant of its Brahmos cruise missile. India is also increasing the range of the Brahmos again, this time from 400 km to 800 km.

In July, South Korea successfully testeda sub-launched ballistic missile for the first time, firing it from an underwear barge. The missile, believed to be a Hyunmoo-2B, is reported to have a range of 500 km and will likely be fitted on future Dosan Ahn Chang Ho-classsubmarines.

Following the US’s recent agreement to lift restrictions that limited South Korea’s missiles to a range of 800 km, Seoul can now build longer-range missiles.

This missile proliferation isn’t limited to the major Indo-Pacific powers.

India is looking to export the Brahmos to other countries in the region, including the Philippines and Vietnam, both of which have maritime disputes with China.

Iran reaffirms they have a Nuke: Daniel 8:4

Iran warns it can enrich uranium to nuclear weapons grade

July 15, 2021 00:55

JEDDAH: Iran claimed on Wednesday that it had the ability to enrich fissile uranium to 90 percent purity  — the level required to build the core of a nuclear weapon.

“Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization can enrich uranium by 20 percent and 60 percent and if … our reactors need it, it can enrich uranium to 90 percent purity,” President Hassan Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting in Tehran.

The outgoing president, who leaves office next month, also blamed hard-liners in the ruling theocracy for the failure so far to negotiate a revived Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

“They took away the opportunity to reach an agreement from this government. We deeply regret missing this opportunity,” Rouhani said. “We are very sorry that nearly six months of opportunity has been lost.”

The JCPOA collapsed in 2018 when the US pulled out and President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

Tehran responded by incrementally breaching its obligations under the terms of the deal, increasing its stocks of enriched uranium and levels of enrichment, which the agreement caps at 3.67 percent.

Indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington aimed at reviving the deal have been taking place in Vienna, where the sixth round of talks adjourned on June 20.

No resumption has yet been scheduled, and Iranian and Western officials have said significant gaps remain to be resolved.

Iranian officials said Ebrahim Raisi, the incoming president, planned to adopt “a harder line” in the talks, and the next round of talks might not take place until late September or early October.

Members of Iran’s nuclear team could be replaced with hard-line officials, but top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi would stay “at least for a while,” they said.

One official said Raisi planned to show “less flexibility and demand more concessions” from Washington, such as keeping a chain of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in place and insisting on the removal of US sanctions related to human rights and terrorism.