A few days before Hamas’s attack on Israel, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a speech asserting that Israel’s “usurper regime is coming to an end.” He claimed the Palestinian terror movement “is more energetic, more alive and more prepared than ever, and you can see this.” Subsequent reports have shown that Iran had advance knowledge of the “energetic” October 7 massacre.

Also in that speech, Khamenei said: “The firm view of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that are gambling on normalizing relations with the Zionist regime will suffer losses. Defeat awaits them.”

Since earlier this year, Israel and Saudi Arabia have been “gambling on normalizing relations” with the help of the United States. Saudi Arabia offered to open diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel offered concessions regarding the Palestinians. The U.S. offered major security guarantees.

Then Khamenei gave his speech. Then Hamas massacred Israelis.

Saudi Arabia has refused to condemn Hamas, Israel has retaliated against targets in Gaza, and the resulting conflict has stopped progress on Israel-Saudi negotiations. Surely that is exactly what Khamenei and the Iranians wanted.

In 2020, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries recognized Israel under what President Donald Trump called the Abraham Accords. Iran never retaliated significantly, even after Trump left the White House. Neither did it retaliate against previous Israel-Saudi deals including air travel, trade and even joint military exercises.

But the normalization negotiations shook Iran. Why? Because the negotiators were also closing in on the possibility of the U.S. helping the Saudis establish a nuclear program. Iran’s two greatest regional adversaries are the Israelis, who already possess nuclear firepower (unofficially), and the Saudis, who are now openly pushing to get it.

Iran has been striving for years to build its nuclear program. It is an isolated pariah state that sponsors Islamic terror globally. But Barack Obama and Joe Biden have repeatedly sustained the current regime and therefore the Iranian nuclear program. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knows the Iranians might soon be able to hold his kingdom at nuclear gunpoint.

Mohammed summed up his nuclear policy in a September Fox News interview this way: “If they get one, we have to get one.”

Iran, also a major oil exporter, claims its nuclear program is for civilian purposes. If that were true, or even if Iran was years away from finishing its first nuclear warheads, the situation would be much different. But Iran is extremely close to nuclear breakout. The Saudis know this and are racing to catch up. We have a Middle East nuclear weapons arms race in progress.

A nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia—allied with a nuclear-armed Israel—would change the balance of power in the Middle East drastically against Iran, even after it fields its first nuclear weapons. Khamenei, therefore, was deeply interested not only in killing Jews in their homes but also—as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has admitted—in using the massacres to disrupt Israel-Saudi negotiations.

In other words, the Gaza terror could suggest that Iran is closer than ever to acquiring nuclear weapons. Unlike every other nuclear power, this regime is a radical jihadist theocracy. If it gets such weapons, sooner or later it will use them. A nuclear Iran will bring the world much closer to nuclear annihilation.

Matthew 24:21-22 speak of warfare that nearly annihilates mankind. This could only refer to a nuclear conflict. Gerald Flurry writes in Nuclear Armageddon Is ‘At the Door’ (theTrumpet.com/go/door) that Iran’s nuclear program has already “changed the nuclear equation in the world. … It is childish folly to think anybody but Christ could stop this nuclear madness.”

Thankfully, Matthew 24 promises that “those days shall be shortened” and this coming global genocide will be interrupted by the return of Jesus Christ! Through overwhelming force and a literal world government, He will end murder, terrorism, conventional war and nuclear war.