The leaders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan gathered in Tehran today to discuss the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This meeting, hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and revolving around a subject central to U.S. foreign policy, ought to deeply concern the Obama administration.

The fact that Iran is hosting this summit gives it automatic significance, wrote Stratfor today (emphasis mine throughout):

Iran is in the process of emerging as a regional player, especially in Afghanistan, where the United States has called on Iran to play a role in the fight against the growing Taliban insurgency. Despite Iran’s participation in the U.S.-sponsored international meeting on Afghanistan held in The Hague on March 31, and despite efforts by the Obama administration to engage the clerical regime, gridlock persists between Washington and Tehran. There is no shortage of issues on which the two sides continue to clash. … In short, Tehran would like to be able to consolidate its position in the region before becoming part of a broader international effort in Afghanistan.

By establishing itself as a key player in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, Tehran is gaining leverage over Washington, showing its potential to succeed where the U.S. has failed. Stratfor continued,

With a growing realization within the region that the United States and its nato allies will not find success in their struggle against the Taliban insurgency, and that they will not have a long-term commitment to the issue, the three capitals are increasingly moving toward seeking a regional solution. This is their neighborhood after all, and they certainly do not want jihadist nonstate actors undermining regional security and stability.

The emergence of an Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iran axis led by Tehran comes with potentially terrifying consequences for America, Israel and the West as a whole. The region is already the primary breeding ground of Islamic terrorism. Individually, each of these states has done little to curb Islamic terrorist activity within its borders. Collectively, and under the leadership of Iran, the world’s number-one state sponsor of terrorism, such an axis would likely facilitate the expansion and success of regional terrorist organizations.

Then there’s Afghanistan. “As Iran moves to consolidate its influence in Baghdad via Tehran’s Iraqi Shiite allies,” Stratfor reported, “it is very much interested in projecting power in Afghanistan, especially given the deep U.S., Pakistani and Saudi involvement there. Iran also knows that it needs all the levers it can amass for use in its wider dealings with the United States and over Iraq, and Afghanistan is a major card in Iran’s hand.”

America needs to be deeply concerned about Iran’s growing relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its mounting preeminence in the region. Tehran is gaining significant leverage over U.S. interests there, which is giving it greater power in the broader Tehran-Washington relationship.

How Long Can Pakistan’s Military Hold Its Ground?

The Pakistan military’s resolve to keep control of the country is being sorely tested in a massive confrontation with the Taliban.

Its offensive in the border regions with Afghanistan has been going on for almost a month now. “The Pakistani Army has retaken control of key parts of the contested Swat Valley in recent days, but the Taliban has kept its grip on some of the area’s largest towns,” reported the Washington Post yesterday. Pakistan’s army commanders said on Friday that

regaining full control of Swat will probably take months and involve intense combat with the well-trained, well-funded Taliban militia. Highlighting the difficulty, some extremists are simply melting back into the civilian population so they can fight another day, as they have during previous clashes over the past 18 months in Swat.”You cannot distinguish between a Talib and a normal citizen,” said Maj. Gen. Sajjad Ali, who commands troops in the northern portion of Swat. “The area is densely populated, and it’s very easy for the terrorists to hide.”

You have to give credit to the military for what they have achieved so far. Just weeks ago, fears were widespread that the Taliban would have almost an unimpeded march to Islamabad.

However, is Pakistan’s military really up for “months” of “intense combat with the well-trained, well-funded Taliban”? As Joel Hilliker wrote in the July Trumpet in his article “Wildly Explosive Real Estate,”

The military and intelligence services—key to the country’s stability—are rife with Islamist sympathizers. The Pakistani military actually formed the Taliban in the 1990s. The alliance between these two forces is simple and strong. Pakistan uses the Taliban as a tool both to keep the West off balance and to ensure that, once the U.S. vacates Afghanistan (which it is sure to do eventually), India won’t move in. Meanwhile, Pakistani support and protection enables the Taliban to control a growing swath of territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As long as the military continues to put up such a fight, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would appear to remain secure. But should its resolve weaken, the Taliban is sure to continue its advance, and the probability of a radical Islamist nuclear bomb would grow. Stay tuned.

British Public Ready to Revolt

The British public is fed up with Europe. According to a recent poll, 7 out of 10 Britons are so fed up that they want the British government to simply start ignoring EU legislation. “Our polling shows that people are more Euroskeptic than ever—they are ready for an EU revolt,” said Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, one of the groups that carried out the survey.

Fifty-seven percent of Britons said that they want Britain to take powers back from Brussels. Seventy-five percent said that any decisions to give more power to Europe—through the Lisbon Treaty, for example—should be put to a referendum.

“Voters are sick of the huge cost of the EU’s wasteful policies and corrupt institutions,” Elliot said, “and want to see the British government stand up to Brussels for once. Our politicians should start fighting the taxpayers’ corner by breaking the EU’s absurd rules and refusing to pay any fines they throw at us. Instead of trying to force through a treaty that no-one wants, the government should be taking back powers and telling the EU to stop its costly meddling.”

The full influence of the disgruntled British public will increasingly be felt by British politicians. Even now, with European parliamentary elections still a month away, Britain’s Euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party (ukip) is predicted to receive 17 percent of the vote—exactly the same as the ruling Labor Party—according to a poll last weekend. The backlash against Britain’s larger political parties, and swing toward smaller parties like ukip, is expected to intensify.

Each of Britain’s mainstream parties has been implicated in a ruinous expenses scandal, where MPs have been caught claiming as parliamentary expenses everything from Kit Kats to moat drenching. Some commentators argue Europe is a central part of this fiasco. In the Times on Friday, columnist Camilla Cavendish wrote,

It is the absence of power, it seems to me, that is an important part of public outrage. Westminster has given up so much power—to Europe, to quangos [quasi autonomous non-government organizations], to judges—that people wonder what they are paying for. Half the time, a big issue comes up and politicians say it’s not their responsibility.

European legislation is wreaking havoc on the British legal system. Just last week, for example, the Court of Appeals in London ruled that the European Convention on Human Rights applied to British soldiers serving abroad. “Judges rejected a government appeal against extending the act to service personnel overseas and declared that ‘right to life’ enshrined in the law meant [Britain’s] Ministry of Defense could be held legally liable if it failed to provide suitable equipment and medical care in combat situations,” the Independent reported. In practice, no one really knows what this means, and many fear it could open the floodgates to all kinds of bizarre lawsuits in which family members of military servicemen sue the government for failing to secure a soldier’s “right to life” on the battlefield.

The British public is not just infuriated at Brussels’ judicial invasion. As Cavendish noted, membership in the EU comes with tremendous monetary cost. A recent study by Open Europe showed that Britain pays £6.5 billion a year to the EU, and spends £106 billion to implement European regulations.

It seems the British public has had enough. How long will it be before this intense anti-Europe sentiment causes Britain to distance itself from Europe? That’s the outcome we have been expecting for years, based on biblical prophecy. For more information, see our article “Britain Was Warned.”

How Long Before Gibraltar Falls to Europe?

Spain is trying to encroach on British territorial waters around Gibraltar, the gate to the Mediterranean Sea. The Daily Mailreported today that Royal Navy warships had to force an armed Spanish ship to retreat from the area. The paper also reported that the European Commission recently approved a Spanish application to mark the waters around Gibraltar as a Spanish site under EU nature legislation.

The British government is “deeply concerned” by these incidents, Europe Minister Caroline Flint told the House of Commons. Britain was forced to send warships to the area after Spain began sending boarding parties to inspect British fishing vessels.

The Spanish government refuses to accept that the waters around Gibraltar were ceded to Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht and continues to attempt to reclaim them. “The latest incident is far more serious than anything that has happened before. It represents a frontal challenge to British sovereignty, jurisdiction and control over Gibraltar’s territorial sea,” said a spokesman for Gibraltar’s opposition gslp/Liberal party. “As such the UK must not only respond to Spain, but must also extract guarantees from Madrid that it will never happen again.”

Spain’s encroachment on the strategically situated rock of Gibraltar is prophetically significant. As Herbert Armstrong explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy, it was prophesied long ago that America and the British Empire would not only gain control over the world’s most vital sea gates, but that they would, in the end time when God was removing His blessings from these nations, also lose these gates. Watch for Britain’s grip on Gibraltar to continue to slip. And for more information, see our article “Britain Dislodged Over the Rock.”

Outrage Over Spiegel Cover Story

Spiegel’s recent cover story about Hitler’s European (non-German) accomplices in World War ii has sparked outrage in Europe, causing some to “believe the article is a part of an attempt by Germans to foist guilt for its own Nazi crimes off on others,” according to Spiegel Online.

The Polish media wrote that the Germans are driven by a need to rid themselves of the heavy burden of their history—or at least to share their guilt with others. Poland’s former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said, “The Germans are attempting to shake off the guilt for a giant crime.” Over the years, the Poles have witnessed a gradual change in Germany’s perception of history—“a transformation, they say, to a victim mentality,” writes Spiegel Online.

According to Spiegel Online,

As evidence, they cite the increasing number of films and books produced in German that address issues like the Allied bombing of German cities and the postwar expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Recently, for example, a film was released about the Wilhelm Gustloff, a passenger ship overflowing with German refugees that left the port of then-Danzig (Gdansk in today’s Poland) and was torpedoed by a Russian submarine. More than 9,000 passengers, mostly women and children, died.

Conservative journalist Piotr Semka wrote that this latest feature article “confirms the worst fears about the transformation taking shape in German thinking about World War ii.” Spiegel Online wrote that over the next few years, “the fear seems to be, the majority of Germans might believe that Jews and Germans were the victims of World War ii.”

Several years ago, the Trumpetobserved the proclivity of the Germans to hide from their past:

[T]he Germans have this history, a history which from ancient times they have tried to hide. “The history of early Germany, suppressed by the Romans, was revived briefly in the German-dominated Middle Ages. But before the close of the 17th century, not even the Germans remembered their past. It had been stamped out in the name of education and religion” (Herman Hoeh, Compendium of World History). As Dr. Hoeh observes, historically the Germans have tried to hide their past even from themselves.

To learn more about the modern manifestation of this historic trend, see “Rewriting Nazi History.”

Netanyahu Insists on United Jerusalem

Just one day after talks with President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke out on a key Israeli-Palestinian issue, insisting that “all of Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty.” According to the Washington Times, “The U.S. has long held that the future of Jerusalem must be decided in negotiations, but Mr. Netanyahu offered no flexibility.”

The Times states: “Mr. Netanyahu has refused to endorse Palestinian statehood, and his uncompromising statement about Jerusalem focused attention on another issue that could cause friction between Israel and the Obama administration.” In his speech at a ceremony marking 42 years since Israel captured East Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu said, “United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital … Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided.”

Ironically, it is that exact sentiment, as the Trumpet has repeatedly forecast and as Bible prophecy shows, that will ultimately precipitate the division of Jerusalem by force: “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city” (Zechariah 14:1-2).

For more information, read Jerusalem in Prophecy.

The Chinese Empire

An article by Bill Emmott in the Times on Friday detailed China’s rise to a near imperialist power. According to Emmott, beginning in the 1990s the Chinese government began embracing a policy proposed by former leader Deng Xiaoping that said China should “keep its head down, build its strength and hide its claws.” Since then it has been doing just that, and has quietly gained tremendous power.

China has bought friends in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by supplying these states with aid and arms. By lending support to India’s enemies, it has kept India, the other South Asian giant and Beijing’s historic foe, in check.

China’s hunger for resources has led Beijing to significantly expand its naval power. New Chinese ports are being constructed in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Chinese surveillance stations in the Burmese Islands are being upgraded.

Chinese workers are flocking into Africa as part of Beijing’s efforts to secure resources, and are being followed, in some of the more unstable African countries, by Chinese soldiers and the military. Earlier this week, British Foreign Minister David Miliband said that China was the 21st century’s “indispensable power.” He said it could become one of the two “powers that count,” putting it on a par with the U.S.

Bible prophecy shows that China’s emergence as an imperialistic power is not insignificant. For more information, see our free booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.

Elsewhere on the Web

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden compared shutting Guantanamo Bay prison to “opening Pandora’s Box” this week, telling reporters during a visit to Kosovo that “we don’t know what’s inside the box.” If previous trends are any indicator, the results of shutting Guantanamo will not be good. Last week, an unreleased Pentagon report, seen by the New York Times, showed that one in seven prisoners transferred out of Guantanamo is now involved with terrorism or militant activity.

Iran test-fired a missile with a range of 1,200 miles or more—far enough to strike Israel—President Ahmadinejad announced last Wednesday. “This is the first time they have successfully launched [a solid-fuel missile] of this range,” said one U.S official. The Obama administration said the test was a “significant step” toward improving Tehran’s capability to deliver weapons. The results also have the potential to alter Europe’s missile balance, according to the Washington Times.

Ahmadinejad’s announcement came “just two days after President Barack Obama declared a readiness to seek deeper international sanctions against Iran if it shunned U.S. attempts to open negotiations on its nuclear program,” according to another article in the Washington Times. “Obama said he expected a positive response to his outreach for opening a dialogue with Iran by the end of the year.” Clearly, Obama’s diplomatic approach toward Iran has proven ineffective, as Tehran continues advancing its militaristic aims.

And Finally …

President Obama is expected to announce his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court this week. This article in the Washington Times today highlights the criteria for Mr. Obama’s selection, which include judicial philosophy, intellectual sway, gender, ethnicity, age and the politics of Senate confirmation. But it appears the most important factor affecting his choice will be the candidate’s capacity for judging with empathy. “You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you,” Obama said this week. “But you have to be able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living.”

Judging with empathy sounds altruistic and fair, but as Joel Hilliker explained recently, it undermines a foundational pillar of national success—the rule of law.