Make no bones about it, what happened in Egypt over the past two weeks is certainly both historic and prophetic. It will have lasting effect on the rise of Islamic influence along the southern rim of the Mediterranean and ripple right on down to the Gulf shores of the Arabian Peninsula. It will supply impetus to radical Islamists in their crusading push northward into Europe. It will bring defense and security chiefs into a huddle to establish strategy to cope with the effects of a possible continuing domino ripple effect of unrest in Islamic countries from Casablanca to Jakarta. It will cause oil prices to escalate. It will especially cause heartburn in Israel.

But what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa must be measured in tandem with events occurring just as dramatically to their north. These events are going to propel another nation increasingly into the spotlight—the economic powerhouse of Germany!

During the ongoing upheavals in Egypt little publicity has been given to German strategic interests in that nation or indeed in the surrounding region of North Africa and the Mediterranean.

As we have pointed out in the past, the Bundeswehr is presently deployed in a perimeter that surrounds the crucial oil states of the Middle East.

The trigger for the spread of German military presence, under the umbrellas of the European Union and nato, was the newly united Germany’s peremptory recognition of Slovenia and Croatia as separate nation-states to greater Yugoslavia in 1991. This provided the catalyst for the Balkan wars of the 1990s leading to the Balkans becoming the virtual first colonies of the imperialist European Union.

As a consequence, the EU’s lead nation, Germany, gained access not only to the warm-water ports of the Adriatic, but also to the Mediterranean. Not long after, the Bundeswehr obtained the mandate to patrol and secure that strategically important southern periphery of Europe which Winston Churchill termed its “soft underbelly.”

True to the prophecy of Daniel 8:9, the northern European power has since moved south and east. The German Navy currently fulfills a mandate to secure the crucial Mediterranean Sea, bordering the presently destabilized northern rim of Africa. It has a strengthened presence off the coast of Lebanon. The German Navy is also deployed off the coast of Somalia, assisting in securing the crucial southern access points to Suez and the Persian Gulf. Germany currently provides the third-largest contingent of troops to the Afghanistan campaign, in addition to having a presence in Uzbekistan.

Behind the scenes, German industry, in consortium with the Bundeswehr and the German security service (bnd), has significant involvement with the crucial Gulf states. These will comprise the bulk of the developing alliance prophesied in Psalm 83. (See our booklet, The King of the South, for more information.)

Thus it is that Germany is well advanced in securing toeholds in this strategic perimeter surrounding the main Middle East oil states, in particular Iran.

In respect of the current upheavals in Egypt, Germany has long been involved with, and developed influence within, the three main parties that could have impact on shaping the post-Mubarak future of that highly strategic nation. These are the military elites through strong connections with the Bundeswehr, the opposition parties through association with Germany’s Federal Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter has strong connections with Germany dating back to 1927. Its links to Nazism are well documented. One has not to look too far for just where the Muslim Brotherhood gained its reputation for being the most highly organized of activist Islamist groups. It tracks back to the training received via the Nazi regime.

Germany has not been the only leading EU nation to recognize the need to gain influence in the Mediterranean, especially in reaction to the increasing aggression of extremist Islam emanating from that region and the prospect of security risks developing south of Europe as a consequence. France reacted to that situation also. But at the same time it had other strategic reasons in mind—countering increasing German involvement in the region.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy recognized that Germany had dominant influence to the east in Europe and possessed the prospect of increasing its penetration south to the Mediterranean. This placed France in a weakened strategic position relative to the Franco-German partnership that has underpinned the EU to date. By establishing the Mediterranean Union (MU) comprising the 27 member countries of the EU and 16 Mediterranean partners, Sarkozy sought to raise French influence in the region. His grand vision was “to build peace in the Mediterranean, just as yesterday we built peace in Europe, putting the quest for Middle East peace at the center of the Club Med” (Economist, July 17, 2008).

Crucially, the Mediterranean Union incorporated the Northern African and Middle Eastern states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel, plus the Palestinian Authority.

The problem for France is that President Sarkozy’s main southern Mediterranean partners in the MU were President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. The deposing of the Tunisian president and the downfall of Mubarak has inevitably led to the demise of the French-inspired MU. Its general secretary, seeing the writing on the wall, recently resigned.

The collapse of Sarkozy’s Mediterranean strategy, especially in terms of it contributing to any effort to “build peace in the Mediterranean,” is a significant geopolitical defeat for France. The removal of the two key North African agents supporting the MU—Ben Ali and Mubarak—plus the resignation of its general secretary resulting in the virtual collapse of the MU, will lead to a significant loss of French clout in the Mediterranean. This leaves the door wide open for Germany to move in and become the main agent of influence in this crucially strategic region.

Watch Northern Africa closely now. Watch for the competition to influence the shaky thrones in the southern rim of the Mediterranean to increasingly emanate from two rising powers with diametrically opposing geopolitical goals—Iran and Europe’s richest economy, the EU’s most powerful political force, Germany!

Iran, the most potent Islamist force in this region, will activate its agents to take fullest advantage of the rim of disruption cascading across the southern Mediterranean from Morocco to Syria. But they will meet stiff competition from Europe’s leading power.

Germany will be seeking to secure its hold over the Mediterranean Sea and the crucial gateways at its western and eastern extremities—Gibraltar and Suez—by offers of aid and cultural exchanges, plus the provision of weaponry to the regimes of its choice, as it now moves in to capitalize on its existing presence as the main force securing the Mediterranean under nato’s umbrella. This will also result in a strengthened presence of German commercial, defense and security interests in southern Sudan, Somalia and the southern Gulf states in addition to Berlin increasing the German naval force in the Gulf.

This competition for power and influence in the southern Mediterranean will create great tension between Iran and German-led Europe. This tension will propel the coming Psalm 83 alliance toward fruition resulting in a complete re-balancing of power in that region. This will all lead very directly right on into the surrounding of Jerusalem by armies as prophesied in Luke 21:20. And that is a keynote prophecy directly associated with the return of Jesus Christ to take over the government of this war-weary globe!

As the chief Prophet of all declared of these events now building in the Middle East: “So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.”