Weekly World Watch 1-7 August: UK and US - Iran, Israel, Elam and Media

 The intention of the WWW is to offer brief Biblical perspectives without going into detail.

The UK and US have blamed Iran for an attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker in which two crew members, including a British national, were killed. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab accused Iran of carrying out a "deliberate, targeted" assault which constituted "a clear violation of international law". US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he was considering "next steps" with the UK and other allies, with "an appropriate response... forthcoming". Meanwhile, the head of the British armed forces, General Sir Nick Carter, held discussions with his Israeli counterpart on Sunday. The government held a Cobra emergency meeting at the level of officials over the weekend in a sign of the serious focus on the tanker attack and how to respond, Sky News understands.
The attack occurred last Thursday when the MV Mercer Street was off Oman's Coast in the Arabian Sea. 

This week both the UK and US have also blamed Iran for the attack and have vowed to take action against Iran because the drone killed a British national. However there is some reticence on escalating the crisis with Iran as both the US and UK want to revive the nuclear deal. Experts believe that the UK might favour a more covert response such as a cyber attack against Iran’s drone capabilities. The Bible says that Elam and Media (areas of modern Iran) will rise up and besiege. We are also told this burden is connected with a desert by the sea. The sea therefore is the Persian Gulf and this is where many of these attacks occur.

Israel will no longer allow Iran to continue its aggression with impunity, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned on a visit to the IDF Northern Command on Tuesday. “Iran already knows the price that we exact when someone threatens our security,” he said. “The Iranians need to understand that it is impossible to sit peacefully in Tehran and from there ignite the entire Middle East. That is over.” The prime minister spoke of Israeli efforts to bring the international community to its side against Iran, including sharing the intelligence information showing Iran was the perpetrator, but said that “we also know how to act alone.” Bennett also criticized the European Union for sending Enrique Mora, the EU coordinator for the Iran nuclear talks and deputy secretary-general of the EU’s foreign ministry, to attend the inauguration this week of Iran’s incoming-President Ebrahim Raisi.

Israel is extremely concerned about what Iran might do next as the new hardline president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, takes control and is sworn in this week. “Raisi is the most extreme Iranian president of them all, and the competition is tough,” Israel’s prime minister Bennett said. “I call on the EU: One cannot talk about human rights and simultaneously honour a murderer, a hangman, who has eliminated hundreds of opponents of the regime.” The new Iranian president has been nicknamed “the Butcher of Tehran” because of the former judge’s role in the execution of thousands of Iranian dissidents. The Bible says that although Israel’s immediate enemies (backed by Iran) will be destroyed in the initial inner ring war – Iran itself survives to join with Russia in the outer ring war that invades Israel. That army is destroyed by God with hail and fire.

Ebrahim Raisi and divine punishment for the revolutionary regime of Iran

At the very young age of only 19 years old and lacking any university education, Ebrahim Raisi was appointed as a prosecutor, rising over the following four decades to fill the positions of attorney general, deputy chief justice and, most recently, chief justice of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship.

He is responsible over thousands of dead and now give as excuse he was still young at the time of the Iran revolution and therefore can not be called responsible for the deaths of the people who were against the theocratic regime. 

Raisi became an Islamist ideologue as a teen studying in the seminary in Qom and he does not have changed ideas or has not come to see how wrong he was and what a horrible thing he realy did.

Raisi was one of four members of a death committee responsible for the 1988 execution of thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience in the space of a few months. The ideologically motivated mass executions constituted both a crime against humanity and genocide — a cleansing of religious infidels— according to international human rights expert Geoffrey Robertson. 

It was a massacre, he says, comparable to those at Srebrenica and the Katyn Forest.

The most ridiculous part of it all, was that mostly leftist revolutionaries who had helped bring the regime to power were envisioned to be tested for their faith. In only a few minutes times with each prisoner — some young children — asking them questions to test their allegiance to radical Islam, Raisi decided about life and death. After prolonged and brutal torture, which in some cases was personally directed and overseen by Raisi, the Muslim clergyman played for God, taking the life of about 100,000 people killed by hanging or firing squad. Even the executioners became traumatised.  Virgins were systematically raped before their execution, to circumvent the Islamic prohibition on killing virgins and to prevent women and girls from reaching heaven. The executed were ordered to write their own names on their hands before they went to their death. The massacre is a trauma etched into the collective consciousness of all of the Iranian people, throughout the country and throughout the diaspora.

Though to this day, Raisi the past was part of that what had to be done to purify the country.  In 2017, he posted to his Telegram channel a video in which he justified the massacre, and in 2018 called it “divine punishment” and a “proud achievement” for the revolutionary regime. During his tenure as attorney general (2014-2016), executions spiked significantly compared to previous years, and during his time as judiciary chief (2019-2021), the regime shot to death at least 1,500 peaceful protestors on the streets in more than 200 cities and imprisoned, tortured, and executed countless more, in the biggest act of state violence since the 1988 prison massacre.

Please read more: Meet ‘The Butcher,’ Iran’s New President Ebrahim Raisi