A few months ago, I took a trip to the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. The heat, the palm trees and the one-story bungalows made me feel I was in Florida instead of the Middle East. The beach was packed with people enjoying the sea together. This is what many Israeli towns aspire to have: freedom and prosperity, places where families can live in peace, where the usual sounds don’t include air raid sirens and gunshots.

Today, that image of a seaside paradise is distant history. This is what Ashkelon looks like now:

Hamas’s invasion of Israel has shattered the hope that the time of enemies invading Israel is over. Israel is once again ground zero for the Middle East’s most important conflict.

Many are comparing this to the infamous terrorist attack in New York City in 2001:

• “Israel Faces Its 9/11” (Wall Street Journal)
• “Israeli Ambassador Calls Hamas Attack on Israel ‘Truly Unprecedented’: ‘This Is Our 9/11’” (Fox News)
• “Israel and Hamas at War: A ‘Pearl Harbor or 9/11 Moment’” (New York Times)

This war is a far more massive ordeal than the usual “lone wolf” stabbings on the streets of Tel Aviv or a mad gunman spraying bullets at a West Bank settlement. Like 9/11, this surprise attack required extensive planning and a mastermind to organize it.

Who, then, is the Gaza invasion’s Osama bin Laden? Who is the architect of this war?

The easiest person to point the finger at would be Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Bent on Israel’s destruction, he would have formulated the attack plans.

But Gaza is isolated from the rest of the world, thanks to a strict blockade Israel and Egypt have imposed. Hamas cannot acquire weapons through legitimate means. It relies on under-the-table foreign sponsorship.

Another likely culprit is Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose government has given Hamas tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sponsorship. It’s unlikely Hamas would have started the invasion without consulting Iran.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps met with Hamas and Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah in Beirut on October 2. “Senior members” of both groups told the Wall Street Journal this meeting was to refine the attack’s details. Apparently, Iran has planned this war since August; the Beirut meeting was Iran giving the final green light. Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told bbc that Hamas “had direct backing for the attack from Iran.”

But even Khamenei is not the real culprit.

On September 11 this year, the United States government announced the transfer of $6 billion-worth of assets to Iran as part of a prison-swap agreement. Many people were outraged by this disrespectful act. The Biden administration could have picked any day to do this, but they went out of their way to give billions of dollars to the number one sponsor of Islamic terrorism on the anniversary of the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history.

The State Department reassured a skeptical public that the $6 billion would be used only for humanitarian purposes. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken told cbs on September 20 that Iran could use the money for military purposes. “[T]he Iranians have always found ways to use money, whether there are sanctions or not for military purposes,” he said.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said:

[T]his money belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and naturally, we will decide … to spend it wherever we need it. … “Humanitarian” means whatever the Iranian people need, so this money will be budgeted for those needs. And the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government.

After Hamas’s invasion, Blinken offered verbal support to Israel but downplayed Iran’s involvement. “In this specific instance,” Blinken said on Sunday, “we have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there’s certainly a long relationship.”

The Wall Street Journal got confirmation from both Hamas and Hezbollah that this attack was planned by Iran back in August. A Hamas spokesman blabbed to bbc that the attack had Iranian backing. El País wrote, “[T]he Hamas attack—a blow to [Israel-Saudi normalization]—is not a response to [that]. Its complexity points to long prior planning. And the support of its main ally, Iran, which has not even bothered to hide its sympathies on the matter.” Yet the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense and every other branch of the U.S. government, with their expertise and resources in intelligence gathering, with their heavy presences all over the Middle East, were supposedly blindsided. And Blinken still denies Iran’s involvement.

It’s almost as if the U.S. government is covering for Iran and Iran knows Uncle Sam has its back.

The actions on September 11 sent a message to Iran: You can keep sponsoring terrorism; we won’t stop you. What we’re seeing in Israel shows Iran got the message.

Analyst Victor Davis Hansen blamed the U.S. first and foremost for what happened on Saturday. He tweeted in response to the Gaza attack:

[T]he Biden administration has contributed both to the notion that Hamas was a legitimate Middle East player, and to the perception that the U.S. was backing away from its traditional support for Israel …. In short, there was a general Hamas and Iranian perception that the Biden administration had resumed the discredited Obama madness of empowering Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Without this help from America, Iran probably wouldn’t have attempted any kind of large-scale war.

America’s government has done as much as possible to fundamentally transform the country, including stealing the 2020 election, persecuting political opponents, gutting the economy, and erasing the southern border.

None of this is incompetence. There is an agenda at play. The figure orchestrating America’s destruction is attacking Israel for similar reasons. This man is not Joe Biden. There is somebody else behind the scenes.

A prophecy in 2 Kings 14:26-27 illuminates what is going on: “For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.”

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in The King of the South:

A man tried to blot out the name of Israel—a very satanic goal. Satan hates everything God is about and wants to destroy it every way he can. But this passage shows that anciently, God stopped this from happening—and He did so through King Jeroboam ii.

It is important to understand the prophetic principle of duality. History is repeating itself today. Just what is the prophetic name of Israel? In our day, the emphasis is on three physical nations of Israel: America, Britain and the Jewish nation in the Middle East.

Iran’s mullahs publicly say they want to “wipe Israel off the map.” That is another way of saying they want to “blot out the name of Israel from under heaven”!

Why in the world would an American president align with these murderers? And why implement a deal that virtually guarantees Iran becomes a nuclear power?

This prophetic passage in 2 Kings 14 explains. President Obama shares the goal to “blot out the name of Israel”!

The chaos and carnage in southern Israel give us a good look at what it means to “blot out the name of Israel from under heaven.”

As the crisis unfolds in Israel, you must have this spiritual perspective. Request your free copy of The King of the South.