Avoiding War at All Costs
United States President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week to negotiate a deal to end the Israel-Hamas War. On Monday, the two men had a private dinner together with their wives at the White House. Unlike Netanyahu’s previous visits this year, there was no press conference. So the world doesn’t yet know much about what the two men talked about, except that Prime Minister Netanyahu unexpectedly announced that he had nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I want to present to you the letter I sent to the Nobel prize,” Netanyahu told Trump during a meeting before dinner. “It’s nominating you for the peace prize, which is well deserved and you should get it.”
Reaching over the table for the letter, Trump responded: “Wow. Thank you very much. This I didn’t know. Wow. Thank you very much. Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful, Bibi.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s letter primarily mentioned President Trump’s pivotal “role in facilitating the Abraham Accords”—a ground-breaking 2020 agreement establishing formal diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations. It did not mention President Trump’s efforts to get a ceasefire in Gaza, conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, or his surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities last month.
This nomination was a savvy diplomatic move for Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose nation would be wiped out by Islamic jihadists if it were not protected by the U.S. Yet despite the photo-ops, Netanyahu and Trump are deeply divided.
In a prerecorded video in April, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel had “no choice” but to keep fighting Hamas “for our very own existence until victory.” Yet President Trump has repeatedly insisted that Hamas can be negotiated with. This is surely the main reason why there was no press conference during Netanyahu’s visit. Despite the Nobel Peace Prize nomination for an agreement signed in 2020, Netanyahu and Trump fundamentally disagree about how to deal with the Gaza Strip in 2025.
Netanyahu and Trump also disagree over how to deal with Hamas’s main sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. After comparing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler, Netanyahu said, “Cyrus freed the Jews, and today the Jewish state might free the Persians.” This means Netanyahu sees regime change as the solution to the Israel-Iran conflict. Yet even though President Trump sent the U.S. Air Force to strike Iran’s nuclear program, he has been eager to keep the conflict to a “12-day war,” leaving Iran’s radical regime firmly in place and inviting them to negotiations.
In the same meeting where Netanyahu announced his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump announced that Iran’s leaders are “very different now than they were two weeks ago.” The Trump State Department has scheduled negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program to begin in a week. Trump appears to have no aspirations to “free the Persians” like “Cyrus freed the Jews.” Rather, he wants to leave the Persians under the Islamist radicals and get those radicals to promise they won’t build a nuclear weapon.
What evidence does President Trump have that Iran’s mullahs are “very different now than they were two weeks ago”? Have they changed their foreign policy? Have they changed their religion? Khamenei, who appeared to be on the verge of losing his regime a few weeks ago and has now declared “victory,” is a follower of Twelver Shiism. This religion teaches that the violent Islamists will conquer Jerusalem and that this in fact is only the first conquest as radical Islam takes over all nations. Destroying Israel and killing Jews is a matter of religious duty for Iran’s regime. Iran’s literal foreign policy two weeks ago was “Death to Israel.” In that core respect, they are not “very different now than they were two weeks ago.”
Iran’s mullahs are lying to Trump to preserve their regime and even their nuclear program. Their tyranny over the Iranian (Persian) people is the same as it was two weeks ago. Their goal to burn Israeli cities with nuclear weapons is the same as it was two weeks ago. Their goal to burn American cities with nuclear weapons is the same as it was two weeks ago. President Trump’s State Department is gearing up to negotiate the very best provisions for facility inspection schedules, enrichment percentages and whatnot so Trump can announce that he and the mullahs have agreed to a big, beautiful deal. But no matter what the stipulations of the deal are, he will be leaving Khamenei’s radical, terrorist, would-be nuclear regime in power!
Isaiah 33:7 says, “Behold, their valiant ones shall cry without: the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly.” Why are these ambassadors weeping? Because their peace negotiations, clever maneuverings and bilateral deals came to nothing and erupted instead into violence!
Hosea provides further details about the ambassadors of peace in end-time Israel. (The modern descendants of the ancient Israelites are mainly the U.S., Britain and the State of Israel.) Hosea 7:11 says Israel’s leaders are “like a silly dove without heart.” The Hebrew word for “silly” here implies gullibility or naivety more than stupidity. Neither Trump nor his primary peace ambassador Steve Witkoff are stupid men, but they incorrectly calculate that men like Khamenei will compromise their ideologies if a few bombs are dropped and enough safety and financial incentives are provided.
Winston Churchill famously likened an appeaser to “one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” President Donald Trump is preparing to sit down with the crocodile to find out what it wants to eat. He hopes to satiate it with some uranium, but it will not be full until it has conquered the world—ironically, by exploding that same uranium over cities.
In other words, President Trump has “peace derangement syndrome,” or you could certainly call it “silly dove syndrome.” Netanyahu is more like Winston Churchill. Even when so many smart men saw differently, Churchill perceived the truth. He was, effectively, the only one! But as Ezekiel prophesied, this man that “the people of the land [took] of their coasts, and set him for their watchman” has come and gone (Ezekiel 33:2). Through this same chapter of Ezekiel, God shows us that now the only watchman warning us is an actual prophet: “So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me” (verse 7).
This time, the people must listen not just to an elected leader who will tell them hard truths about national survival, but one who will also tell them to repent of their sins! Our national, nuclear endangerment is caused not by insufficient negotiations or even insufficient military strikes but rather by our sins. As Ezekiel prophesied, God commands His end-time watchman to warn America’s leaders of the truth, no matter how unpopular, alerting them to the dangers that surround them and pointing them to God. Dialogue will not bring peace. Concessions will not bring peace. The fact that America, of all nations, and President Trump, of all presidents, are engaging in both with the world’s greatest terrorists is proof that this fatal weakness runs deep and only God can cure us of it!
Listening to Churchill helped save Britain and America. Today, listening to God’s watchman and genuinely repenting toward God is the only way to save nations—or individuals.
Request your free copy of Winston S. Churchill—the Watchman by Gerald Flurry.