Antichrist Demands Blood and Oil (Rev 13:18)

Protesters display a huge Iraqi flag during a demonstration at Tahrir Square in central Baghdad in early August 2015. Reuters/Ahmed Saad

Iraq Protest Tensions Escalate As Crude Oil Prices Drop Following China’s ‘Black Monday’

By Erin Banco @ErinBanco e.banco@ibtimes.com
on August 25 2015 4:03 PM EDT

In Iraq’s southern city of Najaf, people in local restaurants, sitting in 120-degree heat, switched on their televisions. They’d heard there was going to be another call to protest in the streets this week, except this time the message came from Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. The man who rallied Shiite fighters against American forces during the Iraq War called on the people to rally in the capital Friday to demand basic services, marking the first time a major political leader has spurred locals to join the protests that have swept the country recently.

“We announce to all people and to the Sadrists in particular the need to participate in protests this Friday in Baghdad,” Sadr said through a televised speech by spokesman Salah al-Obeidi in the holy city of Najaf. “The Sadrist participants should merge with the other protesters in a single, national Iraqi crucible.”

Multiple protests have taken place in Baghdad in the past few weeks over corruption in the central government, ongoing electricity cuts and lack of other basic resources like water. Since then, Prime Minister Hader al-Abadi has implemented corruption reforms, including sacking key members of his cabinet as well as other top officials, but so far none of his reforms have targeted economic issues. The Iraqi economy, which receives almost 90 percent of its revenue from oil, is vulnerable following Monday’s Chinese stock market drop, which sent oil prices down to $42 a barrel, 6 percent less than last week and less than half what it was last year.

The dropping oil prices and major cutbacks in exports have only increased the cost-saving electricity outages in the country, not to mention tensions among locals. The annual growth rate for electricity demand is anywhere from 4 percent to 8 percent across the Middle East and North Africa, according to World Bank estimates, but it stands at about 25 percent in parts of Iraq amid the ongoing shortages.
In July, Iraq exported 96.2 million barrels of crude, breaking previous records and generating revenues of $5.31 billion in oil, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. But this month, Iraq’s oil exports have fallen by 250,000 barrels per day, according to estimates from the Iraqi Energy Network, a research and policy institute in Baghdad. Low oil prices and a drop in exports lead to a decline in monthly revenues.

Analysts say the falling oil prices — partly from the U.S. fracking boom — and the consequences of the drop, could have been predicted by the Iraqi government, but existing policies prevented Baghdad from implementing mechanisms to protect its currency and its deficit from growing.

“From 2010 until now, the shale industry has boomed significantly in America. This has basically made the U.S. less dependent on crude in Iraq,” said Luay al-Khatteeb, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institute, a think tank in Doha, and expert on Iraqi oil, adding that the American shale industry has cut revenues for Iraq significantly in the past year. “But there was a bad policy implemented by the Saddam regime where public spending would continue to increase under the assumption that oil prices would continue to rise and would stay around 100 dollars a barrel.”

The introduction of the Islamic State group in lands that hold large oil reserves has further complicated matters for the oil sector in Iraq. Oil consumers living in areas dominated by, or even loosely controlled by, the Islamic State group are having to pay almost double the normal amount for a gallon of gas (usually sold by merchants on the side of the road in rural areas) because the Sunni militant group has siphoned off millions of barrels of oil from the national grid.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish government has been struggling to limit the damage and theft from the Ceyhan pipeline in Southeast Turkey as bombardments targeting the Kurdish militant group known as the Kurdistan Worker’s Party continue in northern Iraq. The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline stopped production in March because of the uptick in ISIS attacks on it, with the halt costing Iraq about $1.5 billion a month. An explosion in July also cost the pipeline $250 million. In total, the Kurdish government has suffered $501 million in losses over the past seven weeks, the Iraqi Energy Network said in a recent report.

Now, because of the economic hurdles, the Iraqi government’s $102.5 billion 2015 budget is running at a deficit of about $21.4 billion, and the continued threat from ISIS will put more pressure on the budget.

In January Iraq’s parliament passed a budget of $105 billion, which constituted a 16 percent cut in spending, according to a report by The Economist. The budget also attempts to raise revenue by introducing a sales tax on mobile and Internet top-up cards, airline tickets, vehicles, alcohol and cigarettes. Despite these maneuvers, the budget still projects a large deficit.

As a result of low funds, Baghdad is having a difficult time paying oil companies such as Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Lukeoil that operate in the country’s southern oil fields. The oil companies are paid a fixed dollar fee for production, so with the drop in oil prices, the amount of crude needed to pay the companies has roughly doubled, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil.

Although Abadi has yet to introduce any reforms to fix the electricity issue in the country, the Iraqi parliament on Tuesday threatened the electricity minister with a vote of no confidence if he does not appear within four days to be questioned over the persistent power crisis.

Sadr’s call to Iraqis has already gained momentum, especially on social media, where people in the southern part of the country say they are ready to attend the protests Friday. Thousands of people protested when Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for demonstrators earlier this month. The same number of people, if not more, are expected to show up in Baghdad Friday.

Iran And The Destruction Of Israel (Dan 8:3)

Iranian Officials Ratchet Up Genocidal Anti-Israel Rhetoric After Nuclear Deal

WEDNESDAY, 26 AUGUST 2015 05:50 BY: STEVEN EMERSON

A video shows the Revolutionary Guard Corps massing on a hill overlooking Jerusalem.
A conference of religious scholars features speaker after speaker calling Israel’s annihilation inevitable and promising that a “new phase” in that effort is about to begin.

While some in the United States and among its Western allies may hope that a nuclear weapons deal with Iran might steer the Islamic Republic in a new, more responsible direction, hardliners draw new lines and issue new threats.

On Monday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei took to social media to attack the United States and Israel. “We spare no opportunity to support anyone #FightingTheZionists,” wrote the ayatollah, whose regime supplies Hizballah and Hamas with rockets and other weapons of terror.

Perhaps more chilling is an animated video from the Islamic Revolution Design House, a media outfit associated with Iranian hardliners. It shows a soldier preparing for battle. He puts on a Revolutionary Guard patch, and then a Qassam Brigades headband, followed by a ski mask and a Palestinian scarf around his neck, while arming himself with a machine gun and a pistol. As he puts on a helmet, we see him looking over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, home of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque. The image pulls back, showing the soldier amid a sea of conquering troops.

A concluding message invokes Ayatollah Khomeini’s threat that Israel must be wiped off the map and promises that day is coming soon.

A conference held in Beirut late last month reinforced that message over and over again. The General Assembly of Islamic Resistance Ulema (Scholars) held its first gathering under the banner “Unity for Palestine.” The weekend meeting included fiery rhetoric from an Iranian ayatollah and Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

“Annihilation of the Zionist regime is a sure thing and Quranic pledge,” Ayatollah Mohsen Araki told the assembly. Araki is secretary general of the World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, emphasizing the importance of unifying “Muslims in countering the regime of Zionism and the arrogant World.”

Many of the speeches were uploaded to YouTube and translated by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Nasrallah called Israel a “cancerous tumor” and said “It is only a matter of time” before it is defeated.
“We believe with certainty that Israel, this cancerous tumor, is headed for extinction, and that Palestine and Jerusalem will be returned to their people. It is only a matter of time and [this outcome] is linked to the will, action, jihad, and sacrifices of the Ummah, according to the principle: If you achieve victory for Allah, Allah will lead you to achieve victory.” Nasrallah said it was Allah’s will for Muslims to achieve “final victory over the Zionist scheme” and urged the assembly not to waste the opportunity.

“The day in which we will all pray in Jerusalem, Inshallah (God willing) is inevitably coming Inshallah. All of these calamities, conspiracies, and crises are merely trials to strengthen and make fit all those who believe in this project and in this path to enable them to be worthy of the coming victory. Some people may gain victory but then waste it.

Allah Almighty wants our Ummah (nation) in its final victory over the Zionist project and in restoring Palestine and Jerusalem to be worthy of this huge historic victory and to be worthy of preserving this victory and not to lose it as many victories have been lost.”

Muhammad Hasan Zamani, a former Iranian cultural counselor in Egypt who runs the Department of International Islamic Madrasas for the General Assembly of Islamic Resistance Ulema, maintained the theme, insisting there is no peaceful resolution that would end in Iran’s acceptance of a Jewish state.

“Israel must be erased from the map of the world. These are the golden words Imam Khomeini (may God have mercy on him) uttered. Why do we assert the obligation of erasing Israel from the world, and not speak of erasing America and other unjust countries from the world? We in Iran say slogans in marches, Death to Israel, Death to America, Death to the English, and so forth and so on.”

Iran considers America the “greater Satan,” Zamani went on to say, but the Islamic Republic respects other governments which were chosen by their people. By contrast, he claimed Israel is not legitimate: “I say that the example of the rule of the Zionists is the example of thieves who attack a house and occupy the house and the people of the house defend their house.”

Sheikh Abdel Halim Qadhi, a professor at Zahidan University, explained that the conflict is inherently about religion. “[T]he Holy Quran makes it know that Jews are the enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and their holy places and rites,” he said.

“Jihad is the most powerful and only way to liberate Palestine and defend Jerusalem,” he added, saying “God loves those who fight in his way.”

In a final statement from conference attendees, the group emphasized “the first and most important obligation is to unite the Umma to liberate the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque” in Jerusalem, reported Al-Manar, a Lebanese news outlet considered close to Iran’s proxy Hizballah. The group also said “resistance” was the way “to achieve victory in Lebanon and Palestine, despite the unlimited support received by the Zionist enemy and continuing inaction of the countries in the region.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, published a 416-page book earlier this month outlining the destruction of Israel, referring to the Jewish state as an ally of “The American Great Satan.”

The book features a long-term strategy that entails terrorizing Israel in a war of attrition that would lead to Jews leaving Israel for other countries.

Supporters of the nuclear deal say it’s a fantasy to expect a better outcome should Congress override President Obama’s expected veto of a vote to defeat the agreement. The combined statements of Iran and its supporting clerics makes clear, however, that the true fantasy is any expectation Iran will turn away from terror as a result of its engagement with world powers.

The Sixth Seal Is Overdue (Revelation 6:12)

  
Is New Jersey overdue for major earthquake?
Devin Loring, @DevinLoring
17 hours ago

One of the most noticeable earthquakes in New Jersey measured a 5.30 on the Richter scale — a moderate quake – and was felt throughout Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

But that was in 1783, before colossal bridges connected New Jersey and New York, and cities were pre-skyscraper and modern infrastructure.

What would happen if New Jersey was rocked by a strong, or even moderate, earthquake today?
New Jersey may well soon find out. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said 10 years ago that we’re due for at least a moderate earthquake.

“The region is not really well prepared for any level of shaking,” said Vadim Levin, an associate professor in the earth and planetary sciences department at Rutgers University. “The population density is so extremely high. … Look at earthquake-related disasters. They don’t link to the large size of earthquakes, but the confluence of how close they are to people.”

There are earthquakes in Jersey?

It has been over 200 years since New Jersey experienced that historic quake in 1783, and almost 100 years since Asbury Park experienced a quake – in 1927 – that toppled chimneys and knocked items off shelves

That means New Jersey is overdue for an earthquake, at least according to a brochure published by the NJDEP, in 2005.

The agency’s data indicates that intense quakes are likely to happen in New Jersey every 100 years or less.

“Long overdue for how long, that’s the question,” said Levin. “Once in ten generations is very difficult to study. That’s the biggest challenge (because) we live inside a stable plate.”

A “stable plate,” describes New Jersey’s tectonics. Here, the Earth’s crust “fits together and doesn’t deform very much,” Levin said.

Despite the stability of New Jersey’s crust, earthquakes are felt throughout New Jersey frequently.
In fact, earlier this month, a light earthquake was very noticeable to residents in and around Morristown. It was felt as far south as Jackson, and as far north as Suffern, New York.

The big one

Researchers don’t really understand why earthquakes happen on the East Coast, especially because in New Jersey, small earthquakes happen over a diffuse area and do not form an easily identifiable zone of action, Levin said.

“What makes us slightly more nervous these days is the recent Virginia earthquake,” Levin said. “That event was rather large, there was serious damage, and of course, no prior history of such events recorded.”

In 2011, the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia was felt from Georgia to Maine, in Michigan and Illinois, and in Canada according to the United States Geological Survey.

“That (2011 earthquake) damaged a nuclear power plant — not severely, only to the extent that it had to shut down operations,” said Arthur Lerner-Lam, deputy director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

It points out the issue of fragility on our infrastructure,” Lerner-Lam said. “The resiliency or vulnerability of our bridges, tunnels, power lines, pipelines, is a very important feature of the overall vulnerability of the metropolitan region.”

What makes East Coast quakes all the more unpredictable is that quakes here differ from those on the West Coast, where they are more frequent. Because the earth on the East Coast has different properties than the west, shakes from quakes are transmitted farther here than they are in California, Levin said.

Getting protection

Standard homeowner, renter, and business insurance policies typically do not cover earthquake damage, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Only 7 percent of homeowners that responded to an Institute survey in 2014 said they had earthquake insurance.

Only about 2 percent of homeowners in the Northeast have earthquake coverage, the survey revealed.
Levin said he declines to have earthquake coverage, saying hurricanes and flooding are a much greater risk in New Jersey.

“If an event is extremely unlikely, how much money is worth investing in safeguarding from it?” Levin said.

Although there is no reliable way to predict a major earthquake, let’s just say experts don’t think whole cities will crumble or be consumed by the ocean, as depicted by Hollywood.

“I’m planning to take my class to see ‘San Andreas.’ Oh my God, that’s such overkill,” Levin said.
Devin Loring; 732-463-4053; dloring@gannettnj.co

The Sixth Seal And The Shmittah (Rev 6:12)

  
Shmittah, Blood Moons and the Messiah Collide in Today’s Stock Market Crash

By Rivkah Lambert Adler August 24, 2015 , 9:30 am

The Internet is on fire with stories about the rocking of the world economy. With global markets in a financial meltdown, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 1,000 points at the opening bell Monday. Feeling the effects of the crisis, Israeli investors are bracing for their own losses as the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange saw its worst earnings in four years over the weekend.

China’s devaluation of its currency, the yuan, has signaled to international investors that the country is no more a financial powerhouse. In a global economy, however, all these events are, of course, connected.

Taken together, four recent and upcoming events make a compelling case for imminent and dramatic messianic advancement. The four events are the end of the Shmittah year on September 13, the shaking of the world economies last week, numerical hints that abound in Bible Codes and the final Blood Moon of the current tetrad on September 28.

In the name of Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl, the former Chief Rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem, author Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf told Breaking Israel News that, since the end of Biblical prophecy, God speaks to us in headlines. Apisdorf said the same idea, that God speaks through historical events, is echoed by Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, an important 20th century rabbi, Talmudic scholar, and Jewish philosopher.

Where do we find hints of God’s Hand in recent economic news? As previously reported by Breaking Israel News, there is a well established pattern of connection between the end of a Shmittah cycle and a downturn in the US economy. This has happened at or near the end of the last seven Shmittah cycles.

End Times author Rabbi Pinchas Winston spoke about this connection with Breaking Israel News. “Why should the end of a Shmittah cycle affect the economies of the world? Even today, when the keeping of Shmittah is rabbinical in nature, it still transmits a Torah message, and that is that God runs the world and provides everything in Creation with its livelihood,” he explained.

“The fact that billions of people do not believe this or think about it does not change the fact, and what better time to make the point than as the Shmittah year comes to an end? It has occurred over the millennia with uncanny consistency, and one need look back only a few decades to see how true this is, and to know that bracing oneself for financial upheaval this September is a word to the wise and financially prudent.”

In July 2015, Jeff Berwick, a Canadian entrepreneur and financial analyst, released a video about the connection between the Shmittah and Jubilee cycles and the global economy. On Friday, he wrote an article questioning whether the Shmittah effect began a few weeks early.

Three weeks ahead of the end of the Shmittah cycle, Wall Street just experienced a very difficult week, the worst in years. The Dow fell more than 1,000 points. Some say it’s just a normal market correction. End of Days blogger Tomer Devorah has a different way of understanding the numbers.
In the system of gematria, where every Hebrew letter has a numerical value, the numerical value of the word Mashiach (Messiah) is 358. On Thursday, August 20, the US stock market fell 358 points. The next day, Friday, August 21, the US stock market fell another 530 points. Together, 530 and 358 equals 888.

This is significant because the number 8 represents God, who is above nature. As Tomer Devorah writes “The number 8 is also connected to the revelation of Mashiach (messiah)!” She explains that the number 7 is associated with completeness in nature – the seven days of Creation, the seven days of the week, the seven colors of the rainbow, etc. The number 8 is above nature. The Messianic era is also represented by the number 8 because, during that time, our souls will transcend nature and will experience a higher level of understanding God.

Antichrist Followers Protest Against Iraqi Government (Rev 13:18)

Sadr calls on Iraqis to pour into streets against corruption

By RÛDAW yesterday at 11:06

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Shiite firebrand leader Moqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to stage a massive demonstration against official corruption this week, urging authorities to heed public demands for clean government.

“Muqtada al-Sadr calls on the followers of his party and the people of Iraq to pour into streets to fight corruption and punish the corrupt on Friday,” said a statement read in a televised speech by spokesman Salah al-Obeidi in the holy city of Najaf.

“Sadr has urged the government to hear the people’s demands,” he said.
“We announce to all people, and to the Sadrists in particular, the need to participate in protests this Friday in Baghdad,” Obeidi said. “The Sadrist participants should merge with the other protesters in a single, national Iraqi crucible.”

Obaidi said that demonstrators should refrain from accusing individuals and focus instead on calling for improvements in basic services such as electricity, water and education.

Protesters in Baghdad took to the streets about a month ago, demanding the government fight corruption and punish officials guilty of graft.

Following the protests, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced a series of cost-cutting reforms, slashing deputy positions in the presidency and premiership as well as in government. He also reduced the excessive number of official bodyguards.

Man Refuses To Save The Oil And The Wine (Rev 6:6)

  
From Venezuela to Iraq to Russia, Oil Price Drops Raise Fears of Unrest

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and RICK GLADSTONE
AUGUST 24, 2015

Oil, the lifeblood of many countries that produce and sell it, appears to be rapidly turning into an ever-cheaper economic curse.

A year ago, the international price per barrel of oil was about $103. By Monday, the price was about $42, roughly 6 percent lower than on Friday.

In oil-endowed Iraq, where an Islamic State insurgency and fractious sectarian politics are growing threats, a new source of instability erupted this month with violent protests over the government’s failure to provide reliable electricity and explain what has been done with all the promised petroleum money. In Russia, a leading oil producer, consumers are now paying far more for imports, largely because of their currency’s plummeting value. In Nigeria and Venezuela, which rely almost completely on oil exports, fears of unrest and economic instability are building. In Ecuador, where oil revenue has fallen by nearly half since last year, tens of thousands of demonstrators pour into the streets every week, angered by the government’s economic policies.

Even in wealthy Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family spends oil money lavishly to preserve its legitimacy, the government has been burning through roughly $10 billion a month in foreign exchange holdings to help pay expenses, and it is borrowing in the financial markets for the first time since 2007. Other Arab countries in the Persian Gulf that are dependent on oil exports, including Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, are facing fiscal deficits for the first time in two decades.
While the price has been declining for months, forecasts have always been hedged with the assumption that oil would eventually stabilize or at least not stay low for long. But new anxieties about frailties in China, the world’s most voracious consumer of energy, have raised fears that the price of oil, now 30 percent lower than it was just a few months ago, could remain depressed far longer than even the most pessimistic projections, and do even deeper damage to oil exporters.
“The pain is very hard for these countries,” said René G. Ortiz, former secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and former energy minister of Ecuador. “These countries dreamed that these low prices would be very temporary.”

Mr. Ortiz estimated that all major oil exporting countries had lost a total of $1 trillion in oil sales because of the price decline over the last year.

“The apparent weakness in the Chinese economy is radiating out into the world,” said Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of IHS, a leading provider of market information, and the author of two seminal books on the history of the oil industry, “The Prize” and “The Quest.”

“An awful lot of producers who enjoyed good times were more dependent on Chinese economic growth than they recognized,” Mr. Yergin said. “This is an oil shock.”

Although the price drop has most directly hurt oil exporters, it also may signal a new period of global economic fragility that could hurt all countries — an anxiety that already has been evident in the gyrating stock markets.

The price drop also has become an indirect element in the course of Syria’s civil war and other points of global tension. Countries that once could use their oil wealth as leverage, like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, may no longer have as much influence, some political analysts said. Iran, which once asserted it could withstand the antinuclear embargo of its oil by the West, appeared to have rethought that calculation in reaching an agreement on its nuclear activities last month.

Of course, lower oil prices confer economic benefits, too. The average American household, for instance, buys 1,200 gallons of gasoline every year. And gasoline, on average, has sold for most of this year by roughly a dollar a gallon less than in 2014.

But even while lower oil prices stimulate economies of consuming countries, a protracted decline carries many unanticipated consequences — starting with the economic weakness in developing countries that buy increasing amounts of goods from the United States and others in the industrialized world.

A supply glut has been evident for some time, driven partly by a vast increase in Saudi production and a growing energy self-sufficiency in the United States, which was once heavily reliant on Middle East oil.

Saudi Arabia not only is producing a record amount, but also is increasing the number of rigs drilling for future production. And its Gulf allies, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, are following suit. Even with the turmoil wrought by the Islamic State, Iraq’s production has jumped nearly 20 percent since the beginning of the year.

The surge in production may seem counterintuitive, since lower prices can cause self-inflicted economic wounds and potentially incite more political and social trouble. But all the exporters in the Middle East are struggling with each other to protect Asian markets, now that the United States is using much less of their oil.

The Gulf states, said Sadad I. Al-Husseini, former executive vice president of the Saudi Aramco oil company, “don’t want to take on the role of oil price regulators because the market is far too big and too political for them to manage it.”

Had these producers curtailed their production late last year, he said, “a flood of new oil supplies from the U.S., Canada, the deep offshore and other basins would have continued to undermine the oil markets, and prices would have collapsed to where they are now in any case.”

The global glut is likely to worsen if the nuclear deal with Iran is approved, potentially releasing as much as one million more barrels onto the 94-million-barrel-a-day global market in a year or so.
Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, has made no secret about his country’s intentions. “We will be raising our oil production at any cost, and we have no other alternative,” he was quoted Sunday in Iran’s state-run news media as saying.

The big change in recent years has been the surge of United States oil production, adding more than four million barrels a day to global supplies. But in recent months the oversupply has been driven primarily by the Saudis, who have flooded the market in what economists regard as a deliberate attempt to drive down the price so that other high-cost producers can no longer compete — most notably the Americans.

Still, production in the United States has not declined as much as foreseen by the Saudis, who thought the price of oil would stabilize at about $50 a barrel. Now it may be headed to $30, the lowest level since the 2008 global economic recession.

The Saudis, the most important member of OPEC, have resisted calls by other members to reduce output. The result is that nearly all OPEC members, who together control much less of the global market than they once did, are pumping more oil.

“We are witnessing competition between member states over market share, and most of these countries are dependent on oil as a primary source of income,” said Luay Al-Khatteeb, a nonresident fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Doha Center. If prices do not recover to the $60 a barrel level, he said, “and countries in the Arab region continue to rely on oil revenue heavily, we could see decades of decline.”

David L. Goldwyn, who was the State Department special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs in the first Obama administration, said that if the Brent global oil benchmark price stays below $45 a barrel, that is “a red flag for stability issues across the oil producing world.”
“The hemorrhaging of government budgets reliant on oil will force dramatic cuts in spending or dangerous increases in borrowing, if not both,” Mr. Goldwyn said. “The countries without significant foreign exchange reserves are most at risk, and they include Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Venezuela and Iraq. The countries which need to sustain investment to maintain political legitimacy need to be worried, and that’s Brazil, Russia and even Iran.”

Meghan L. O’Sullivan, director of the Geopolitics of Energy program at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said she was most immediately concerned about the impact of extended low oil prices on Iraq.
“Not only is fighting ISIS an expensive endeavor, but many of the political deals that need to be done to keep different groups supportive of the Iraqi government require money to sustain,” she said.
But Ms. O’Sullivan expressed a longer-term worry about possible miscalculations by Saudi Arabia, on both the duration and magnitude of the oil price drop.

“With a burgeoning population looking for jobs, education and health care every day,” she said, “the expensive social contract between the royal family and Saudi citizens will get more difficult, and eventually impossible, to sustain if oil prices do not recover.”

The Iran Deal Is Too Late (Daniel 8:4)

MILITARY EXPERTS: IRAN ALREADY HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Contend evidence available as Congress debates Obama deal

NEW YORK – Amid debate over President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, two retired military officers contend their accumulation of evidence from open and intelligence sources shows Tehran already has a nuclear-weapons capability.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Dennis B. Haney assert that since 1979, a cabal of nations has aided and abetted Iran in its efforts to develop a robust nuclear program under the guise of generating a nuclear-energy system.

And they believe the White House is fully aware.

In an interview, Vallely told WND that President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and chief White House adviser Valerie Jarrett “are treading on treason under the U.S. Constitution for aiding and abetting Iran, a known enemy of the United States, while throwing Israel, a longtime U.S. ally, to the wolves.”

They charge the cabal is mainly comprised of Russia, China and North Korea, which have worked behind the scenes in collaboration with Iran to put all the parts in place.

Jerome Corsi’s and Michael Evans’ “Showdown with Nuclear Iran” uncovers the apocalyptic beliefs of Iran’s Islamic leaders that help fuel the drive to acquire nuclear weapons

The assistance includes providing the material needed to make a bomb. Vallely and Haney believe Iran can make a bomb now, and a “breakout” nuclear test detonation is imminent.

‘Treading on treason’

Vallely told WND that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows that Israel has little option but to launch a pre-emptive military strike on Iran, and I suspect Saudi Arabia will assist Israel militarily when the attack occurs.”

“Signing a nuclear agreement legitimizes Iran’s nuclear weapons future, while removing sanctions that gives Iran access to billions of dollars that can be diverted to advancing Iran’s terrorist goals against the United States and Israel,” Vallely said.

Haney agreed.

“President Obama has given the green light to the potential destruction of Israel by signing this agreement while Iran swears ‘death to Israel,’” Haney told WND.

“President Obama knows Iran has the bomb, and he knows Iran plans a nuclear attack on Israel. Obama has never liked Israel; he does not see Israel in the future of the Middle East that he sees dominated by radical Islam.”

Haney said Obama “is simply covering his tracks with this nuclear agreement with Iran.”

“The point is that Obama already knows Iran has the bomb and the entire negotiation has been nothing more than a charade, a smoke screen to cover up that Iran already has the bomb,” he said.
“The White House and Secretary of State Kerry know that Iran already has nuclear weapons capability and, to protect Obama’s legacy, the White House does not want it known Iran was allowed to develop nuclear weapons on Obama’s watch,” he explained.

“This way, a pathway for Iran to get the bomb has been created and put in place, so when Iran finally announces it has a nuclear weapon, Obama can argue that Iran simply got the bomb quicker than anybody anticipated, but not in violation of the agreement.”

He declared: “Iran is a nuclear weapons power now!”

In a joint statement, Vallely and Haney say an accumulation of available evidence shows a coalition of Russia, China and North Korea have assisted Iran since 1979 in achieving a nuclear weapon, despite sanctions, under the guise of a domestic nuclear energy program.

Vallely explained to WND that he and Haney have taken a systematic approach to evaluating each component needed to deliver a nuclear weapon, from the development and testing of a ballistic missile system, to the design of a nuclear weapons warhead, to the development of the weapons-grade uranium needed to produce a bomb.

“To come to our conclusion that Iran is a nuclear weapons power right now, we supplemented publicly available research, plus information from intelligence sources, including Iranian resistance groups such as the National Council of Resistance of IRAN, NCRI,” Vallely explained. “With the assistance of Russia, China and North Korea, Iran has developed and tested every component needed to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon against Israel.”

WND reported in February that the NCRI, in a Washington, D.C., press conference, added to a series of disclosures it made regarding Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program more than a decade ago. NCRI has claimed Tehran is operating a secret uranium-enrichment site northeast of the capital city that was not disclosed during the recent negotiations to the United States or to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.

Vallely and Haney made clear in their statement their conclusion that Iran will soon detonate its first nuclear device.

“Iranian government observers, research scientists and senior military officials have been on-site in North Korea for all their tests of nuclear component systems,” they said. “In essence, Iran has had the benefit of North Korea doing their development and testing for them.”

They said Russia, China and North Korea “always had the latitude and time to develop and test warhead design, fissionable material and detonation testing.”

“Iran participated in most all of the scheduled testing onsite.”

Vallely and Haney said the “release of up to $150 billion in Iranian assets, as a part of the sanctions against Iran, guarantees Iran further funding their nuclear weapons program and their terorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas and others to include Assad of Syria.”

‘Ties to Iran’

Vallely and Haney combine their analysis of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities with an argument that Obama, Kerry and Jarrett have close ties to Iran that influence their political judgment.

All three allowed the United States to sign a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran knowing Tehran could develop a nuclear weapon today and realizing that an atomic Iran would be an existential threat to Israel, the retired officers said.

“Barack Hussein Obama, raised and schooled in Islam, mentored by American Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, with his primary adviser being Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, has crafted a plan that guarantees Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” they said.

“The copy of the agreement handed out in English for the American delegation did not replicate the copy handed out in Farsi for the Iranians. The American delegation did not bring this up,” Vallely and Haney said.

“The Iranian delegation read both the English and Farsi-worded agreements, and declared that while they agreed with the one in Farsi, the one in English was not the same and was in no way acceptable to them.

“Prime negotiator John Forbes Kerry, himself a communist sympathizer during the Vietnam War, came out this past May with the admission that he has a daughter who married an Iranian-American who has extensive family ties to Iran,” they noted.

In 2009, Kerry’s daughter, Vanessa Bradford Kerry, married a Los Angeles-based Iranian-American physician, Dr. Brian (Behrooz) ValaNahad, who was born in New York, educated at UCLA, attended medical school at Yale and completed his internship and neurosurgery residence at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

The Nemazee connection

WND has reported the ties between American–Iranian Hassan Nemazee and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

Nemazee, prominent in Democratic Party fundraising since Bill Clinton’s second term in the White House, is an American-Iranian now serving time in federal prison for criminal bank fraud. Nemazee’s family fortune in Iran traces back to the Iranian opium shipping trade with China that began in the mid-1800s.

Nemazee’s credentials in raising money for Democratic Party presidential hopefuls is impressive. In 2004, he served as Kerry’s presidential campaign fundraising chairman in New York, and in 2008, he served prominently as one of Hillary Clinton’s most successful national presidential campaign fundraising chairmen.

Coincidentally, Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Fars Province, Iran, in Nemazee Hospital, named after Hassan Nemazee’s father, who had the distinction of transitioning the Nemazee family opium trade with the Far East into the 20th century.

‘Let’s provide Iran nuclear fuel’

WND reported that during his first presidential debate with President George W. Bush in 2004, Kerry, then the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, argued that the U.S. should provide nuclear fuel to Iran. Kerry said the U.S. should trust Tehran, as had President Clinton with North Korea, that the Iranians would not use the fuel to make a bomb.

In the early 1970s, Pyongyang had begun to acquire nuclear fuel and plutonium processing technology from the Soviet Union to expand North Korea’s IRT-2000 research reactor that was gradually diverted to nuclear weapons development.

Then, in October 1994, former President Jimmy Carter announced from Pyongyang that Kim Il-sung had accepted the broad deal later formalized as the “Agreed Framework.” Within less than a decade, North Korea withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty and prohibited IAEA inspectors to actively monitor Pyongyang for nuclear weapons activities.

Vallely and Haney, both members of the independent Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, made clear they are speaking for themselves regarding Iran and not on behalf of the commission.