In Other News
The first batch of 354 Croatian conscripts reported for duty for two months of military training on Monday. In the future, up to 4,000 Croatian men deemed fit for service between the ages of 19 and 29 may be conscripted annually. Rising nationalism in Croatia, including the resumption of conscription after its abolition in 2008, highlights that Europe is preparing for war.
Turkish opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu appeared in court for his first hearing yesterday. He faces more than 140 charges ranging from academic fraud to corruption to organized crime to treason and terrorism, carrying a maximum sentence of 2,430 years. İmamoğlu denies any wrongdoing and says President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is using the accusations to disqualify him so he can remain in power. It does fit a pattern of authoritarianism from Turkey’s leader, yet Turkey remains a member of nato. Surprisingly, an increasing number of people around the world find dictatorial leadership appealing, which the Bible warns is an ominous trend.
Iraqi militias backed by Iran have launched dozens of small-scale drone and rocket attacks against American positions since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. U.S. officials have said the Iran war is spilling across the border and drawing forces back into the country even as the U.S. tries to vacate Iraq. Bible prophecy indicates that Iran will dominate Iraq as end-time events unfold, as Gerald Flurry has warned for decades. Renewed attacks in Iraq show this prophecy has already been fulfilled.
Two young men who threw two makeshift explosive devices into a crowd in New York City on March 7 have been charged with terrorism. Ibrahim Kayumi and Emir Balat, ages 19 and 18, of Turkish and of Afghan descent, grew up in upper-middle-class homes. They assembled and ignited devices containing high explosives and bolts meant to rip through people’s bodies. The bombs failed to explode as intended among people at a protest outside the mayor’s residence. The men praised Allah and said they were inspired by the Islamic State and wanted to kill more people than in the Boston Marathon bombing. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement began by focusing on the “white supremacist” protest organizer, conspicuously omitting the names of the would-be murderers and avoiding the word terrorism. Mainstream news headlines intentionally avoided the words “Islamic,” “terror” and “bomb.” The Islamist terrorist threat continues to exist within American society, yet politicians and news executives continue to obscure the truth. For more on how Islamic terror connects to the Bible, see “False Alarms, True Terror.”
The price of Brent crude climbed to over $100 a barrel over the weekend, in its biggest one-day jump since 2020, and up roughly 40 percent from before the war. Prices stabilized a little this morning after reports that the G-7 and the International Energy Agency would discuss the joint release of emergency reserves. Even if the Strait of Hormuz opened tomorrow, which is unlikely, it would take weeks for markets to return to normal. “10 days of Strait of Hormuz disruption = at least 60 days of pain to the energy flow in Asia,” wrote June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities. “And I am being optimistic here.” Increasing the cost of energy production and transport affects the cost of producing many other things, which can quickly increase general inflation. The price of oil rising faster than expected will add powerful pressure to wind down the war without truly removing Iran’s radical Islamist regime.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published today, European countries more than tripled their arms imports from 2021 to 2025 compared to 2016 to 2020. Europe now accounts for 33 percent of global arms imports. “The sharp increase in arms flows to European states pushed global arms transfers up almost 10 percent,” said Mathew George, director of the sipri Arms Transfers Program. While European countries are investing heavily in their own arms industries, the data shows that they remain dependent on purchasing U.S. weapons platforms, such as combat aircraft and long-range air defense systems. Germany is leading Europe’s arming spree, which, as prophecy reveals, is a precursor to war.
The Greens came from behind to narrowly win the Baden-Württemberg election on Sunday, catapulting Cem Özdemir to the premiership and sending shock waves through German politics. It was supposed to be an easy win for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats, but their 29.7 percent of the vote was eclipsed by the Greens’ 30.2 percent. The Alternative für Deutschland won 18.8 percent, and the Social Democrats won 5.5 percent. Özdemir will become Germany’s first state premier with a migrant background: His parents migrated to Germany from Turkey as guest workers in the 1960s. As mainstream parties lose ground in Germany, the political landscape becomes increasingly fragmented. Watch for Germans to react by supporting a strong, centralized leader.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Cyprus today, as a growing armada of EU ships arrives to protect the islands from Hezbollah’s missiles. “This trip is intended to demonstrate France’s solidarity with Cyprus, a member state of the European Union, with which we have a strategic partnership,” the president’s office said ahead of the trip. The EU is using the Iran war to take greater control over this strategic island.
Amid Israel and America’s bombardment of Iran, several major Western cities have seen anti-Semitic attacks. Four men were arrested in Britain on Friday over suspicion of spying for Iran on Jewish targets in the London area. That night, unidentified gunmen targeted two synagogues in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On Monday, an explosion occurred at a synagogue in Liège, Belgium. No injuries have been reported, but the spike in Jew hatred, including in countries not directly involved in the war, is part of a worrying global trend.
Donald Trump is the first recent president to wage war without first obtaining public support, the New York Times said on Friday, citing polls in which 27 to 41 percent of Americans supported aggressive strikes against Iran. Approval numbers historically tend to decrease as wars continue. President Trump has stated he will not be dissuaded due to poll numbers, an indication that he is wielding kingly powers.
On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the heads of a dozen Latin American states to his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida for the inaugural summit of “Shield of the Americas,” announcing a new Americas Counter Cartel Coalition for combating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere. This comes after the State Department began designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations a year ago, and with U.S. Southern Command announcing recently that it will train and mobilize the militaries of partner nations to help dismantle them.
On Friday the European Commission condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for calling on Hungarian President Viktor Orbán to talk with him in “their own language,” which Orbán viewed as threatening. Olaf Gill, a European Commission spokesman, said the remark was unacceptable, saying “there must not be threats against EU member states.”
Italy, Spain and the Netherlands announced yesterday that they would send naval assets to Cyprus to protect against Iranian strikes. Greece and France have already sent ships, including France’s aircraft carrier, to the area. These deployments signal that EU nations will reinforce each other, potentially with deadly force, without the need for nato and the U.S.
The Egyptian government’s rhetoric about Iran during the current war has been noticeably understated. Its first official statement condemned Iran’s efforts against peace in the region, but when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi discussed Iran’s retaliatory attacks, in which it sent hundreds of drones and missiles into sovereign neighboring nations, he conspicuously declined to even mention Iran by name. Mustafa Bakry, a prominent Egyptian figure, called on the Arab world to put aside its differences and unite—not against Iran but against Israel and the United States. The Bible prophesies that Egypt will soon ally with Iran, a dramatic shift in Middle Eastern power and a precursor to a conflict far greater than any other in human history.
German media giant Axel Springer announced today its $766 million acquisition of RedBird imi, the owner of Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. Axel Springer owns German newspapers Bild and Welt, and it acquired U.S. political news firm Politico in 2021. Axel Springer founded his firm in 1946 after starting a successful career in Nazi Germany and divorcing his half-Jewish wife “for career reasons,” according to his biographer. Deutschland Kultur said in 2012: “During the Nazi era, Springer had been jointly responsible for anti-Semitic propaganda.” After the war, he employed several people who had been staunch Nazis. One of Springer’s current editorial guidelines is to support the formation of a united Europe. The Bible warns that this unified empire will suddenly turn against America, Britain and the Jewish nation in the Middle East. Germany has acquired numerous tools to help it shape the narrative.
The U.S. government accused artificial intelligence firm Anthropic of endangering members of the armed forces by adding its own restrictions to the lawful use of its Claude AI software. Consequently, the government labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk yesterday, a designation normally reserved for businesses from foreign adversaries. The label prohibits the military and its many contractors from doing business with the company. This follows reports that the U.S. military used Claude AI to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and is using it for intelligence analysis and target evaluation in Iran. The military has been ordered to phase out Claude AI and to replace it with one or more of its AI competitors. The dispute highlights the importance of and reliance on artificial intelligence, despite the unknowns and the risks, as highlighted in “Why We Must Develop AI (Even If It Kills Us).”
Donald Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem yesterday. According to Axios, “Trump’s firing of Noem was the biggest personnel shake-up of his second term. It showed the backlash against her was so great that Trump was willing to dismiss the nation’s domestic security chief as he’s launching a war abroad.” Noem will be succeeded at the end of the month by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin.
Yesterday, President Trump reacted to commentator Tucker Carlson calling his Iran strikes “disgusting and evil” by saying that “Tucker has lost his way.” He told abc News, “I knew that a long time ago, and he’s not maga. maga is saving our country. maga is making our country great again. maga is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.” In two recent broadcasts, Carlson asserted the exact claims the Iranian regime makes: that the war serves Israel and not the U.S., that the Gulf states are the real victims, that the ayatollahs will unleash chaos, and that the Jews secretly want to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem on the ruins of Islam’s third-holiest site. Middle East Forum’s Gregg Roman said, “Tucker Carlson has become Tehran’s most effective propagandist.”
Over 70 European companies are building European cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure independent from the United States through project euro-3C, which was announced on March 2 by Spanish Telecom giant Telefónica, along with the European Commission. The project is designed to bypass American services like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Europe is working rapidly to catch up with American and Chinese networking capacity, and Bible prophecy indicates it will more than succeed. For more information, read “The Unknown Future of Artificial Intelligence.”
Yesterday, an Athens criminal appeals court upheld the ruling that far-right Golden Dawn is a criminal organization. The ruling also upheld the conviction of seven former legislators for running a criminal organization and of 11 current legislators for membership in a criminal enterprise. This neo-Nazi party used to have significant support in Greece, with every 10th voter supporting it. While the party has been banned, these sentiments continue to exist.
Shots were fired at a Toronto synagogue on Monday night, just before the Jewish festival of Purim, according to local police who are investigating the incident as a hate crime. No injuries resulted, but the attack, coinciding with a celebration of the Jewish people being saved from genocide 2,500 years ago, highlights the trend of increasingly violent anti-Semitism throughout the world.
More members of Generation Z (ages 14 to 29) believe that wives should obey their husbands than previous generations, a new global Ipsos poll states, including 31 percent of Gen Z men surveyed and 18 percent of Gen Z women. Only 13 percent of men and 6 percent of women in the baby boomer generation (ages 62 to 80) surveyed agreed. Feminists are aghast. “Not only are many Gen Z men putting limiting expectations on women, they are also trapping themselves within restrictive gender norms,” complained Julia Gillard, founder and chair of the Global Institute of Women’s Leadership. This and other trends reflect a growing realization that feminist experiments with new “gender norms” have produced millions of failed families. Many are recognizing reality, prescribed in the Bible in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3 and elsewhere. However, they have yet to realize “The Transcendent Meaning in Marriage.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Tuesday said any European support for the United States and Israel’s strikes on Iran would be an act of war, stating that European nations want to “deprive Iran of its capability and capacity to fight back.” Although any conflict between Iran and Europe could seem to be a mere sideshow, the Bible prophesies that these two powers are heading for a war far greater than any now happening in the Middle East.
Responding to an attack on a British base in Cyprus, apparently by the Iran-aligned Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, Greece has dispatched two warships to the island nation. France has announced the deployment of a warship to Cyprus and an aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean. Britain is sending a Royal Navy destroyer, due to arrive next week. Europe’s eagerness to defend Cyprus points to Bible prophecies that the Europeans will soon use the island to go to war in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide stated his country was willing to engage in talks with France over a European nuclear arsenal and defense agreement. Such talks are designed to end dependence on U.S. nuclear and conventional forces. This follows France’s announcement on Monday that it could deploy nuclear-capable warplanes to Germany and other European nations.
The United States sanctioned the Rwandan military and four of its top commanders on Monday for continuing the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In December, President Trump proclaimed peace when he mediated a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Dem. Congo after two years of fighting. However, the fighting never really stopped, a fact that these sanctions acknowledge. The Bible prophesied not only the conflicts of our time but also the many failed attempts to make peace.
