Larijani Assassinated
Larijani Assassinated
Good morning!
Yesterday a precision Israeli air strike near Tehran killed Iran’s de facto wartime leader, Ali Larijani, alongside his son, Morteza, and top aides. A man who authored much of the Iranian regime’s brutal repression of its own people is no more.
Within hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched barrages of ballistic missiles at Israeli and U.S. assets as “revenge for the blood of martyr” Larijani.
The 67-year-old secretary of the Supreme National Security Council was thought to be running the government and coordinating its retaliation machine since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death last month. Israeli officials called him their top target after Khamenei and hailed the hit as a blow to the regime’s central nervous system. Some say it also deliberately denied President Trump a strong candidate for negotiating a ceasefire and follow-up talks with Iran, a process the Israelis understandably mistrust.
In the same wave of strikes, Israel also killed Iran’s minister of intelligence, Esmaeil Khatib, and Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij militia, which is largely responsible for Iran’s crackdown against protests.
Larijani wasn’t just another hard-liner; he was the ultimate insider from an elite clerical dynasty. He was a former parliamentary speaker, nuclear negotiator and the late supreme leader’s most trusted confidant. For decades he shaped Iran’s security doctrine. He was the central link between Ali Khamenei’s circle and the irgc-Basij killing machine, and he quietly steered Iran’s proxy wars from Lebanon to Yemen.
As secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Larijani directly coordinated the regime’s shockingly lethal response to the latest waves of protests by the Iranian people. In earlier crackdowns, back to the 2009 Green Movement, he helped institutionalize the machinery of control: televising coerced confessions, blacklisting dissidents, and deploying paramilitary gunmen against civilians. He green-lighted the calculated murder of Iranian civilians in the name of regime survival.
For Iranians seeking justice against the regime’s tyrannical thugs, these assassinations are welcome news. But Israel’s decapitation strategy has its limits. The regime has accumulated formidable architecture to survive such shocks.
Prophecy suggests Larijani’s death will harden Iran’s resolve rather than break it.
Europe, Asia Say U.S. Must Secure Hormuz Alone
The Iran war is exposing and widening the rift between the United States and its European allies. President Donald Trump ended his social media post on the subject yesterday with all capitals, saying, “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
“I always considered nato, where we spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year protecting these same countries, to be a one-way street—we will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need.”
—Donald Trump (Truth Social, March 17)
The president also included a list of grievances against the alliance from previous years.
His post came after he had requested help in stopping Iran from attacking civilian ships in the Strait of Hormuz, including from nato nations such as France, Germany and Spain, plus nations that rely more heavily on oil shipments through the strait, including China, Japan and South Korea. His request was largely rejected.
- On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron stated: “France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context.”
At the White House yesterday, Trump had more to say, calling these nations’ refusal a “very foolish mistake.” “We don’t need them, but they should have been there.”
- He said he isn’t planning to withdraw the U.S. from nato yet, but that it should be considered.
The president’s statements highlight several earthshaking facts about the most powerful military alliance in world history. The U.S. has spent much of its strength and treasure protecting Europe in vain, Europeans consider the U.S. under President Trump to be a dangerous and unreliable ally, and both blocs are considering arming and using their militaries independently of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty.
“This growing enmity between the U.S. and the EU is important to watch,” the March issue of the Philadelphia Trumpet states (“The End of NATO”). “The Bible contains dozens of prophecies warning about the destruction of the U.S. and Britain by a German-led superstate. Mr. Armstrong used these prophecies to forecast Britain’s exit from the EU, and we can use them to forecast America’s exit from nato.”
Learn the prophetic significance in the “Atlantic Rift” chapter of our booklet He Was Right.
Counterterror Head Resigns Over Iran War
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his immediate resignation yesterday. He is the first senior Trump administration official to step down in opposition to the Iran war.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. … I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”
—Joe Kent (X.com, March 17)
Kent, a devout Roman Catholic, is expected to sit for an interview with popular podcaster Tucker Carlson, who has been outspoken against the Iran war and heavily critical of Israel. Carlson claims, “The United States didn’t make the decision here. Benjamin Netanyahu did.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Kent’s resignation with a lengthy statement on X, rejecting Kent’s key assertion that Iran posed no imminent threat and emphasizing that it remains the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism. She described the suggestion that Israel had goaded President Trump into the war as “insulting and laughable.”
- Nevertheless, recent opinion polls indicate that while roughly 70 to 80 percent of Republicans support the U.S. attack on Iran, most Americans overall oppose it, and a significant minority believe that America gives too much support to Israel.
This indicates a notable shift in public sentiment.
A stunning prophecy fulfilled: The modern State of Israel came into being largely because Christians in the U.S. and Great Britain once felt a solemn biblical duty to help the Jewish people return to the Promised Land.
The late Herbert W. Armstrong explained this powerfully in his booklet The Proof of the Bible. He showed that God delivered Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks on Dec. 9, 1917—exactly 2,520 years after Nebuchadnezzar formally accepted the surrender of the Jews in 604 b.c. This 2,520-year period (seven prophetic “times” of 360 days each, applied via the biblical day-for-a-year principle—Ezekiel 4:6) is a measure of divine punishment and restoration. (See Leviticus 26, Daniel 4, and Ezekiel 4:6.)
- Among the British soldiers who entered Jerusalem that historic day under Gen. Edmund Allenby was Lt. Col. William Gordon Mackendrick. He and others understood the profound truth that the peoples of America and Britain are, in large measure, the descendants of the “lost” Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim.
- God had promised that, after 2,520 years of national punishment, these birthright tribes would once again receive their inheritance and play a key role in world affairs. You can study these remarkable claims and the relevant sections of Scripture and historical events in Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.
Tragically, the American and British peoples have largely forgotten these vital biblical truths. A 2024 survey of self-identified American Christians found that only about 40 percent still actively support the State of Israel. The remaining 60 percent increasingly resemble Joe Kent more than the Americans and British of the past. They hear the Iranian chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” yet they no longer feel any covenant responsibility to defend the Promised Land or stand with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, forgetting not only who the Jewish people are but who they are themselves.
IN OTHER NEWS
Germany to double computing capacity by 2030: Germany’s new Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization announced plans yesterday to double data center capacity and quadruple artificial intelligence capacity by 2030. The plan includes expedited regulatory reviews, land allocation for new data centers, tax reductions and incentives for investment from foreign countries. It is intended to make Germany the AI leader in Europe and a stronger competitor in AI against the U.S. and China. But Germany’s tech ambitions also have a dark side.
Surprise! Kim Jong-un wins election in a landslide: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s Workers’ Party of Korea won 99.93 percent of the vote in his nation’s latest elections, the Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The vote for North Korea’s 15th Supreme People’s Assembly saw a turnout of 99.99 percent, according to the report, with a minute fraction unable to cast a ballot due to being abroad. The political theater of the so-called election underscores the fact that the ruthless Kim regime remains firmly in control of an erratic nuclear-armed state.
Report: Gulf Arabs want Trump to finish off Iran: “Three Gulf sources” told Reuters that the Gulf Arab states, which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, want the United States to “not stop short by leaving the Islamic Republic still able to threaten the Gulf’s oil lifeline and the economies that depend on it.” If confirmed, this would be a massive policy change for countries that, until recently, wanted the U.S. to preserve the status quo in the Persian Gulf. The question is, will the Arabs unite against Iran?
Another Nigerian massacre: Explosions at a hospital, post office and market areas in Maiduguri, Nigeria, killed 23 and injured over 100 civilians on Monday. No group has yet claimed responsibility, but a Nigerian military spokesman alleged that the detonations were caused by suicide bombers from the terrorist group Boko Haram. Why do such massacres occur if a loving God really exists? To learn the Bible-based answer, read “Mystery of Civilization” in Mystery of the Ages, by Herbert W. Armstrong.
Trump administration demands Cuban dictator’s resignation: Yesterday, President Donald Trump commented on Cuba’s dire economic situation amid widespread blackouts and crises. “Cuba right now is in very bad shape,” he said. “And we’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon.” According to four people familiar with ongoing negotiations, the U.S. has signaled that Cuban dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel must resign to enable meaningful discussions, particularly on economic reforms. This would remove a key figurehead of the long-ruling Communist government while leaving the broader one-party system—and the influential Castro family members who remain the country’s top power brokers—largely intact.
NYT: Mexico’s civil war supplied by American weapons: A New York Times investigation published yesterday reveals a massive flow of American firearms into Mexico, with authorities estimating that up to 500,000 guns are smuggled in annually that originated from U.S. gun shops, shows and online businesses. These weapons arm the Sinaloa Cartel and other powerful organized crime groups, intensifying violence in Mexico and further fueling the drug crisis affecting the U.S. Mexican officials trace roughly 80 percent of the firearms they seize from criminals back to the U.S. This sobering exposé reminds the world that the only way to fully defeat the cartels is for Americans to stop demanding the illicit drugs they supply.
