Earlier this year, the United States implemented its nuclear deal with Iran. “Implementation Day” fell on January 16, an interesting date on which several major world events have occurred.

On January 17, a day later, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the deal a “golden page” and “turning point” for his nation. How true that is! Iran was hemorrhaging financially because of Western sanctions. But the nuclear agreement gave Iran access to $150 billion as the U.S. released its frozen assets.

The same day, President Barack Obama said, “This is a good day, because once again, we’re seeing what’s possible with strong American diplomacy.” He said, “[F]rom Presidents Franklin Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, the United States has never been afraid to pursue diplomacy with our adversaries. And as president, I decided that a strong, confident America could advance our national security by engaging directly with the Iranian government.”

This nuclear deal did the opposite of advancing America’s national security! It didn’t make the world more secure, but far more dangerous!

“The real story of Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016—‘Implementation Day’ of the Iran deal—was that it marked a historic inflection point in the geopolitics in the Middle East,” wrote Charles Krauthammer. “In a stroke, Iran shed almost four decades of rogue state status, and was declared a citizen of good standing of the international community, open to trade, investment and diplomacy. This, without giving up or even promising to change its policy of subversion and aggression. This, without having fortified its status as the world’s greatest purveyor of terrorism” (Washington Post, January 21).

And who was it that made it possible, most of all? The United States of America.

For some reason, even though Iran is a sworn terrorist-sponsoring enemy, the Obama administration aggressively wanted this deal. To ensure nobody interfered with it, Mr. Obama and his administration used the National Security Agency to find out what members of Congress were thinking and saying and trying to do. They also spied on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They wanted to make certain nobody stopped them from removing the crippling sanctions that were causing Iran such trouble and slowing down its nuclear activities.

Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s speech writers, bragged about how he had deceived journalists and policy wonks, whom he called “the Blob” in an interview with the New York Times. The White House was determined to ram the nuclear deal through without Senate approval or even public support, and it devised and executed an elaborate propaganda campaign to do so. This all came to light months later, but people don’t seem to care just how deceitful and lawless this administration is!

President Obama also said in that January 17 speech, “Whereas Iran was steadily expanding its nuclear program, we have now cut off every single path that Iran could have used to build a bomb.” That is absolutely false. Since “Implementation Day,” Iran has accelerated its nuclear activities. The deal allows Iran to build a bomb openly within 15 years, and a secret provision actually opens the door even earlier than that.

But that’s not all this administration did around January 16. On August 3, the Wall Street Journal reported more shocking news about what the Obama administration did the very next day after implementing this disastrous deal.

Hostages

On January 17, the Obama administration airlifted $400 million in cash to pay Iran for the release of four innocent American hostages. On top of paying Iran cash, the U.S. returned to Iran seven criminals who were imprisoned or facing charges, and also stopped seeking 14 Iranians who are on Interpol’s watch list. The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. officials saying that “most of these cases were tied to violations of U.S. export laws and the sales of dual-use equipment that could be used in Iran’s military or nuclear program …. ‘This is a one-time arrangement,’ said a second U.S. official, describing the prisoner swap. ‘It’s not a precedent for the future’” (January 16).

January 17 marks yet another scandal to add to the administration’s growing list of scandals!

According to the Wall Street Journal, the cash payment was the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement that the Obama administration had agreed to pay Iran. The settlement was designed to resolve a dispute in the United Nations International Court of Justice over a failed arms deal that took place before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when Iran’s current Islamic radical regime overthrew the regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Iran had paid $400 million for those arms, but the U.S. did not supply them because of the revolution. It also did not return the $400 million. The Obama administration says the $1.7 billion includes this $400 million and $1.3 billion in interest. It claims Iran initially demanded $7 to $8 billion in interest, but eventually settled for $1.3 billion, thus making it a good deal for taxpayers. The Obama administration denied that the cash was a payment for the release of the four prisoners.

This was hard to believe—but in August the truth came out. First, an interview with one of the hostages, Pastor Saeed Abedini, revealed that the plane carrying the Americans was not permitted to leave until another plane arrived. “We slept at the airport,” he said. “And when I asked them why [they] don’t let us go because the plane was there, [the] pilot was there, everyone was ready [to] leave the country, they said, ‘We are waiting for another plane, and [if that] plane doesn’t come, we [will] never let you go.’”

The plane they were waiting for was the one full of cash—the pallets loaded with Swiss francs, euros and a few other foreign currencies. U.S. law forbids any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars. So the Obama administration used a mix of international currencies. If a corporation were to launder money this way, the ceo of that company would be put behind bars. And yet the U.S. government routinely commits these offenses and gets away with it.

Now, the Iranians are boasting about how the airlifted $400 million was the ransom money for four Americans. “U.S. officials … acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible,” the Wall Street Journal reported (op cit).

The U.S. government has had a no-ransom policy in the past. The Obama administration insisted this was not a ransom payment. But then a couple weeks later, it admitted that it delivered the cash only if and when Iran released the prisoners. It claims that this was not a ransom, but it is almost the dictionary definition of a ransom.

How can we consider ourselves a superpower when we make such a ridiculous deal? How can you explain America now being the number one state sponsor of the number one state sponsor of terrorism?

America continues to fund Iran’s nuclear aspirations—this time by secretly airlifting a cash payment in the middle of the night. One commentator said you could take that $400 million ransom money and buy four atomic bombs!

A Troubling Precedent

In 1994, President Bill Clinton dealt with North Korea under very similar circumstances to how President Obama is dealing with Iran today. At that time, North Korea and America had come to an agreement that was to establish, according to Mr. Clinton, “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.” However, North Korea got the bomb 12 years later! It has tested four bombs in the past decade and is an unstable and dangerous regime that openly threatens the U.S. and its allies in the region with hydrogen bombs. We face the same situation today with Iran.

In 2007, a North Korean cargo ship traveled to Syria. The vessel’s cargo was successfully transported to a covert site in the Syrian desert. Three days later, the Israelis sent in F-15 jets and bombed the site. Why? What was the objective of this shipment? To deliver a cargo of nuclear material! Iran was setting up a nuclear development program inside Syria. Syria is a surrogate of Iran, and North Korea is one of Iran’s partners in nuclear development.

Since then, Iranian leaders have attended meetings in North Korea regarding nuclear bomb development. In the January 21 Jerusalem Post, Melanie Phillips wrote that some people believe Iran already has a nuclear bomb, “or at least already has access to nuclear weapons having outsourced the testing of the bomb to North Korea. Iran is now pondering how to use the weapon to maximum destructive effect and without leaving its fingerprints on it.”

Iran has terrorists all over the world. It wants to find a way to explode a bomb but leave people wondering who did it! This nation that America is funding is aiming to cause nuclear terror and ultimately take over the world. It is run by madmen who think they know how to run the world!

Eighty-five percent of the 78 million Shiites in Iran believe in Twelver Shiism, an idea that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution, espoused. This is an ideology that embraces death. These people are dedicated to a cause. What motivates these terrorists to create chaos and violence?

Former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dore Gold said that a nuclear Iran can’t be deterred like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. The Iranians have a much more radical belief system. They think their savior—the 12th imam, or Mahdi—will return sooner if they cause more apocalyptic chaos and violence.

As Dore Gold pointed out in a 2008 Frontpage symposium, “[A]nyone who says with confidence that the West can get used to a nuclear Iran and rely on classic deterrence models has absolutely no idea of what he is up against.”

Referring to the January 16 deal, Melanie Phillips wrote, “Iran has now announced that it will build advanced nuclear centrifuges capable of enriching uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, faster than its previous models” (op cit). The U.S. government claims that it has slowed Iran’s nuclear development, but in truth, Iran is working faster.

Iran has already tested illegal missiles. According to the nuclear deal, it was to wait eight years before it could have anything to do with ballistic missiles. But it is test-firing ballistic missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

As the Iranians violate even the few restrictions the deal does impose, America just watches, doing nothing.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted July 4, “There are no more red lines left for terrorists to cross. Sunnis, Shiites will both remain victims unless we stand united as one.” Iran has great ambitions. It controls radical Islam, it has received billions from the Obama administration. It is improving its nuclear enrichment process. It is testing nuclear-capable missiles that could wipe out Israel in an instant and could strike even Europe. It is showing that America has no power left in the Middle East. It is terrifying America’s allies in the region and its other neighbors into either allying with it or into building up alliances, weapons and nuclear bombs of their own.

Iran has received $400 million from America for four hostages who weren’t even guilty. Would a real superpower let another nation treat it like that? Would a real superpower prop up a terrorist-sponsoring regime and help it obtain nuclear weapons?

Since that deal, Iran has taken more hostages. America’s weakness is exposed, and Iran will continue to capitalize on that. Where is the pride in our power? There is no fighting spirit in the American people. America has proved itself willing to be pushed around. It is faint of heart.

Our Fearful Future

The fact that the nuclear deal was implemented on January 16 is a great warning to America. For decades, the Trumpet has been warning about a coming nuclear holocaust. With the recent deal, we are now closer than ever to this reality.

On January 16, we experienced the greatest physical disaster ever on this Earth: The United States of America accelerated nuclear tribulation.

The Trumpet has watched January 16 as a significant date for 30 years. It was on this date that the U.S. launched Operation Desert Storm (1991); the German parliament repealed the constitutional right to privacy, and U.S. law enforcement questioned White House intern Monica Lewinsky about her affair with President Bill Clinton (1998); the prosecution for the impeachment of President Clinton ended (1999); Space Shuttle Columbia was fatally damaged upon launch, 16 days before disintegrating upon reentry and killing the crew of six Americans and one Israeli (2003); Germany announced the deployment of 250 combat troops to Afghanistan and Israel’s strategic affairs minister resigned over Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s appeasement policies (2008); Israel agreed to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Germany’s Angela Merkel met to discuss Ukraine and gas supplies (2009); President Obama announced one of America’s largest-ever rebuilding projects in Haiti, one year into the Great Recession (2010); Europe’s bailout fund was stripped of its aaa credit rating (2012); President Obama issued a series of executive orders on gun control after the Sandy Hook massacre, and Germany began withdrawing its gold holdings from Paris and New York (2013); and the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on same-sex “marriage” (2015).

But January 16 is a crucial date for another reason—because of another event that is actually connected to the Iran nuclear deal and to the chaos that these developments are plunging toward.

He Was Right

Iran is pushing and pushing its foreign policy. It is about to push so hard and so aggressively that it will launch a massive war! But it won’t be with the United States, which is now too weak to even fight such a war. Instead, it will be against a new superpower with a fierce leader who will strike Iran and its radical Islamic allies like an overwhelming tornado.

These nations’ fearsome ballistic missiles and their horrifying payloads are finally going to be used. Huge explosions will scorch entire cities, right down to the blades of grass in the parks. The ground will be trembling beneath, and the sky will be dark above. You see America’s pitiful weakness; you see it aiding and abetting an ideological terrorist empire; you see Iran pushing aggressively at America and also very forcefully against Europe; you see Europe suffering economic danger, mass immigration, terrorism; you see Europeans crying out for unity and a strong leader; you see the very real threat of war; you see the very imminent threat of nuclear bombs eliminating millions of people. You can see these things on your nightly news!

And what is truly astounding is, you can see these same events in your Bible! The Bible specifically prophesied Iran’s aggressive, terrorism-empowered foreign policy. It prophesied Europe’s need for a strong leader. It prophesied Islam’s clash with Catholic Europe. It prophesied America’s shameful weakness. It prophesied that our people’s sins are leading directly to weapons of mass destruction striking our populations, and survivors being deported as slaves (e.g. Daniel 8:23; 11:40; Leviticus 26:19; Joel 2:3).

Through the pages of the Bible, God revealed these prophecies to a man who died on Jan. 16, 1986. You need to prove for yourself whether or not this man was a prophet. You can compare what this man wrote to historical facts that have occurred since he died, and to events you are seeing on the news every day. Our free booklet He Was Right will help you see what this man wrote about the prophecies of the Bible, and you can then prove the truth for yourself.