August 22 the End of it all?

[Gavin Allan]

Iran to Nuke Israel on August 22?



by Robert Spencer

Posted Jul 26, 2006

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frustrated Western officials by refusing to reply to their offer of various incentives in exchange for Iran’s discarding its nuclear program until August 22 <http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/June/middleeast_June498.xml&section=middleeast&col=>. The Western governments had asked Ahmadinejad to reply by June 29; why would Tehran need two extra months?



Farid Ghadry, the president of the Reform Party of Syria, has offered <http://themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=14490> a provocative explanation for this delay. He asserts that the Supreme National Security Council of Iran chose the August 22 date “for a very precise reason. August 21, 2006 (Rajab 27, 1427) is known in the Islamic calendar as the Night of the Sira’a and Miira’aj, the night Prophet Mohammed (saas) ascended to heaven from the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on a Bourak (Half animal, half man), while a great light lit-up the night sky, and visited Heaven and Hell also Beit al-Saada and Beit al-Shaqaa (House of Happiness and House of Misery) and then descended back to Mecca.…”



The Night Journey, or Miraj, is central to Islam’s claim to Jerusalem as an Islamic holy city. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was carried on a Buraq, a miraculous horse with a human head, from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he ascended into heaven and met the other prophets. The only thing the Qur’an has to say about it is this: “Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things)” (17:1). There is no identification of the “farthest Mosque” with any mosque in Jerusalem in this, but the Hadith is very clear on the identification of its location with Jerusalem.



The traditions say that Muhammad and the Buraq, along with the angel Gabriel, went to the Temple Mount, and from there to heaven itself, where Muhammad encountered various prophets. In the sixth heaven was Moses, occasioning a dig at the Jews. “When I left him,” Muhammad says, “he wept. Someone asked him, ‘What makes you weep?’ Moses said, ‘I weep because after me there has been sent (Muhammad as a Prophet) a young man, whose followers will enter Paradise in greater numbers than my followers.’”



Evidently, however, Muhammad’s stories of his journey were not altogether convincing: some Muslims even abandoned Islam. Did he really go anywhere? According to his favorite wife, Aisha, he didn’t: “The apostle’s body remained where it was but God removed his spirit by night.” Nevertheless, the Night Journey has become firmly embedded in the Islamic consciousness, such that Muslims today celebrate it as one of the central events of Muhammad’s life. And now, according to Ghadry, Ahmadinejad is planning an illumination of the night sky over Jerusalem to rival the one that greeted the Prophet of Islam on his journey. What the Iranian President, he says, is “promising the world by August 22 is the light in the sky over the Aqsa Mosque that took place the night before. That is his answer to the package of incentives the international community offered Iran on June 6.”



Certainly a nuclear attack on Jerusalem or even an all-out conventional assault against Israel by Iran would be consistent with Ahmadinejad’s oft-repeated denials of Israel’s right to exist and recent predictions that its demise was at hand. He hinted at the use of nuclear weapons in his phrasing when he said <http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291976348&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull> that Israel “pushed the button of its own destruction” by finally retaliating against Hizballah’s relentless rocket barrage from south Lebanon.



“Arrogant powers,” Ah

 

[Casey B]

I hope everyone is aware that we are living in end times. Prophecies are coming to pass. I'm prepared

 

[Brian Curry]

am. or pm.?:unsure:

 

[Travis Munday]

...and how are these "end times" any different then the numerous others we've been warned about? The war for the holy city between the Jews and Muslims is nothing new. About the only thing that has changed are the weapons, mainly nuclear. Weapons, mind you, that have been used somewhere above 100 times already. I can't seem to find the source now, but the number of times a nuclear device has been detonated on Earth is quite high.



**edit, just found the numbers...between the US and Russia alone, there have been over 2000 nuclear detonations. France has an additional 210 detonations, plus various other countries (UK, China, India, etc) with detonations of thier own.

 

[Kerry Matthews]

They've been fighting over that friggin' strip o' sand for a couple thousand years now... Why? Religious beliefs. What a waste.

 

[Nelson Atwell]

That area of the World is about 7 - 8 hours ahead of the US, so for us it could happen in the a.m. A nuclear attack would only cause a regional concern with fallout, but because of the oil in the region it would cause a Worldwide impact.



Iran would be a good guess for a country which would try something like this. Their leadership has fanatical religious views. Even the secular view causes concern. Iran's people refer to themselves as Persian, because they aspire to one-day regain the prominence they had during the Persian Empire. If they believed a leader could bring them back to a World power, they would likely support that leader to death.



I really see this as a bunch of saber-rattling though. Folks like Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jung Il like to do this every now and then so we won't forget they still exist. Their countries are not global powers and are really pretty insignificant. If it weren't for their radical leaders, they'd they'd be pushed to the back pages of the newspapers with countries like Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso.

 

[EddieS'04]

Tiger..to my recolection only 2 nukes have been used in war..that was on Japan WW2...

All others were tests.



The road signs are there that we are at the end times..there has never been as much power as per military might throughout the world as there is now..Factions in the east middle east and Europe crazy enough to use it, offensively. Dont depend on the corrupt UN to save the day.



As C, said biblical prophecies are being understood more in this last decade, more than ever before..Communication is the key now. Factions of evil that would choose to destroy are able to bind together world wide now...

 

[A K]

What if you're an athiest? I mean, to them, the Bible is a fun work of fiction. It carries as much prophetic weight as, perhaps, the National Enquirer.

 

[Travis Munday]

Eddie-

I didn't say "in war", I said "detonations". What is the difference between a nuclear "test" and "weapon"? The number of people dead. That's it. The impact on the Earth is the same. That's my point; the detonation of a nuclear device isn't the end of the world. The treat of a nuclear detonation isn't the end of the world.



Adam-

August 22 will end just like any other day. I don't quite like it when religious zealots use Armageddon to try to scare people into beliefing what they want you to. After a while, it gets old.

 

[EddieS'04]

Adam, there are no true athiest. All men find something greater than themselves to put their hopes dreams or faith into. They may not realize it or see it but in turn it becomes God to them. Though they may not call it that. I would rather realize that I canot be a perfect man and place my faith that Jesus took my imperfection for me. All other religions in the world are based upon works to be good enough for an after life with God. No matter how good Iam today, tommorrow I will screwup.

 

[EddieS'04]

Tiger, the threat of enough nukes will be the end. There are enough out there now for defensive reasons, to make the planet uninhabitable..

 

[Tom Schindler]

Mankind will not be given the opportunity to destroy the earth.The owner of the earth is the one that will have the final say-so. He put us here and he can take us away.





Tom

 

[Travis Munday]

Do the reasearch, Eddie. Do you know how much nuclear weapons would have to be detonated in order to make Earth unfit for humanity? A lot. A whole lot. Think about it, there have been around 2500 detonations already; rouge countries neither have that many weapons, nor are capable of producing that many weapons. In addition, they aren't able to produce a single weapon with a single blast big enough to cause the globe to be inhabitible.



Did you know that it is illegal, in all countries, to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons? use of such weapons, or credible threats, would cause severe international backlash.



Humans are more likely to end this Earth by Global Warming or the mass release of pathogens then a single, glorious explosion.

 

[Jared Strube]

Oooh political and religious discussions are the worst; they usually turn into heated arguments.



I don't want to start one of those, but I do think some of you may not know some of this nuclear weapon info, and it seems many of you might be downplaying their terrifying power.



Nuclear bomb explosions are measured by the equivalent weight in tons that would be required of TNT to cause the same release of energy (explosion). The bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons (equivalent to the explosion caused by 15,000 tons of TNT) and Nagasaki was 20 kilotons. Those two bombs were, as we all are aware, quite devistating.



Now, to put this in perspective: in 1954, the US tested a bomb that was 15 megatons (15 million tons), 1000 times the energy release of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Then in 1961, the Soviet Union tested a bomb that was 58 megatons, or about 4,000 times more powerful than that dropped on Hiroshima.



Anyway, that was 1961. Obviously, nuclear testing has been outlawed for quite some time, but that does not mean the further development of them has ceased. One could theorize that a conventionally launched nuclear missle (as opposed to a suitcase bomb or the like) of today could have an explosive power on the order of gigatons, or billions of tons. Basically, the only way to conceptualize this, once again, is to consider this to be about (at the very least of 1 gigaton) 65,000 times worse than Hiroshima... Basically, after cratering an unimaginable chunk of the world, think deadly radioactive fallout across the entire globe, plus some nasty tidal waves and earthquakes from the shockwave created by the explosion...



If one of these were dropped anywhere in the world, I think if the global warming theory is in fact true, it would be the least of our problems.



There is, of course, the valid argument that Iran would not drop a bomb this size on nearby Israel because they may be destroyed themselves, but I would say nuclear attack is much less predictable since testing isn't possible, so who knows. Chances are they won't do anything at all...





Just my two cents.



strube

 

[Jeff C]

I really don't think Iran will use nukes. They have to know if they use them that their country would become a giant green parking lot thanks to the US. MAD. It's what kept the Cold War from becoming anything more, and I doubt any country would use a nuke, knowing the consequences from the US and the rest of the world.



On the nuke testing, I believe the largest ever tested was 250 megatons by the Soviets, and that gave them a pretty good scare, so I don't think anything larger than that would have been created, at least by the Soviets, and I don't think Iran has the ability to make one that big.



The only thing that really scares me is the thought that I may one day soon be walking to class because gas is at $10 a gallon.

 

[Jared Strube]

I must disagree (I was a bit off myself, by about 8 megatons): The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the "Tsar Bomba" of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya, with an estimated yield of around 50 megatons. (Source: the all knowing Wikipedia)

 

[A K]

The only thing that really scares me is the thought that I may one day soon be walking to class because gas is at $10 a gallon.

You'd have to drive that Beetle, then. :blink:

 

[Jeff C]

Well I'll have to go back and tell my "Technology and Civilization" professor he was wrong by 200 megatons (I actually found it in my notes where he had it on his slideshow)

 

[Travis Munday]

strube-

Lets not forget that we are no longer in the Cold War. The amount of nuclear devices has not only decreased dramatically in number, but in size. Like I said already, <i>rouge</i> countries simply do not have the ability to create a device large enough to cause a supposed "end of the world" scenario. A nuclear device of 50,000 kilotons has already been detonated, did the world end then? Certainly not, as we are all still here. That's my point....the treat of a nuclear attack by a rouge country is really, really played up. Even if they did use a nuclear device, it'd more then likely be a "dirty bomb" with very little impact (in comparison to other nuclear devices), not a massive warhead like what we are lead to belive. There will still be a large loss of life, both immediate and long-term; but not an Earth-shaking, Tusnami inducing megaweapon. In this day and age, the econmical fall out would be more dramatic then nuclear fall out.

 

[MJ L]

HEY!!!



That's my birthday!!!