New York is a Sitting Duck for an Earthquake (Revelation 6:12)

These Major American Cities Are Sitting Ducks for Giant Earthquakes

Sam Becker

Natural disasters seem to be increasingly common these days. Whether it’s the rapid, machine gun-like frequency that hurricanes hit our coast or the earthquakes and tsunamis killing hundreds of thousands, it can feel like Mother Earth has a vendetta against humanity. Even if you live in an area you thought was relatively safe from natural disasters, you might be surprised at how much risk there actually is. And for millions of Americans, the biggest threat isn’t from hurricanes or floods — it’s from earthquakes.

Using data from the United States Geological Survey, we’ve compiled a list of 15 American cities that are in real danger of experiencing a devastating earthquake. Although some of these cities might not be much of a surprise, there are plenty that are — and might have you checking your homeowners insurance policy to make sure you’re in the clear. The USGS data say earthquake risk in these areas is both natural and man made (as a result of hydraulic fracturing, among other things), meaning parts of the country that were once relatively risk free now have increased odds of a serious seismic event.

We don’t mean to shake you up, but here are the 15 cities that could see potentially devastating earthquakes in the very near future.

New York City

•The amount of damage that an earthquake could do to New York City is unimaginable, but the city is due for one.

New York sits on shaky ground — literally. Though the risk of a huge quake isn’t anywhere close to cities, such as Los Angeles or San Francisco, New York is located on an area fraught with fault lines. Moderate quakes have hit the region for centuries, average about 5.0 on the Richter scale. The last quake of that magnitude to hit New York occurred in 1884, and that means New York is about due to see another sometime soon.

Iran Expanding Its Nuclear Arsenal (Daniel 8:4)

Satellite image shows a nuclear facility in Iran. (photo credit:” REUTERS)

GERMAN INTEL: IRAN WANTS TO EXPAND WEAPONS INTO NUCLEAR ARSENAL

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

“Iran, North Korea, Syria and Pakistan are making efforts to expand their conventional weapons arsenal through the production of weapons of mass destruction,” the Bavarian intelligence agency said.

A newly released German intelligence report from the state of Bavaria concluded that the Islamic Republic of Iran is working to turn its conventional military weapons into a system for weapons of mass destruction.

“Iran, North Korea, Syria and Pakistan are making efforts to expand their conventional weapons arsenal through the production of weapons of mass destruction,” wrote the Bavarian intelligence agency in April 2018. The Jerusalem Post examined the 312-page intelligence report written by the Munich-based intelligence agency, the rough equivalent to Israel’s Shin Bet security agency.

The Bavarian report defined proliferation and weapons of mass destruction activities “as the illegal propagation of atomic, biological and chemical weapons and the production of their applicable products.”

The new evidence from Bavarian intelligence will provide new ammunition for critics of the Iran nuclear deal’s failure to curb Tehran’s desire to build a nuclear weapons program.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains a strong proponent of the Iran nuclear deal and believes the accord will stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear-weapon device. She has not commented on the findings of her intelligence agencies that appear to contradict her views of the effectiveness of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal.

The Post reported in early June that the intelligence agency of the German state of Baden-Württemberg wrote in a report: “Iran continued to undertake, as did Pakistan and Syria, efforts to obtain goods and know-how to be used for the development of weapons of mass destruction and to optimize corresponding missile-delivery systems.”

The Bavarian intelligence agency said Iran seeks construction parts and the necessary know-how in Germany and other highly developed technological countries to develop its illicit program for weapons of mass destruction. German intelligence agencies documented Iranian regime efforts in 2017 to purchase illegal material and technology from German companies.

The Iran nuclear deal was reached between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the world powers in 2015.

The Antichrist: An outlaw turned kingmaker

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman meets Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia July 30, 2017.REUTERS

Moqtada Al Sadr: An outlaw turned kingmaker

Iran is unhappy about Al Sadr’s recent political popularity given his outreach to Gulf states and Iraqi Sunnis

Sami Moubayed, Correspondent

12:02 June 9, 2018

Damascus: Once described by TIME magazine as the “most dangerous man in Iraq,” maverick Iraqi politician Moqtada Al Sadr is being showered with praise today, peddled as a “Iran critic” and hailed as “kingmaker” after his list won 54 out of 328 seats in parliament last May.

His Sairoun list campaigned on anti-Americanism, for which Al Sadr is well-known, anti-corruption, anti-sectarianism, and clipping the wings of Iran in Iraqi domestics.

He is still short of a majority, however, which would require 165 seats in the Iraqi Assembly, but given the mediocre-to-poor performance of all his main rivals, Al Sadr is likely to be highly influential in choosing who the next prime minister will be. As the cabinet formation unfolds, Iraq is dealing with the usual list of grievances.

Security issues are still a top concern, even though the terrorist group Daesh which swept over a third of the country in 2014 has been largely eradicated.

On Wednesday, twin bomb blasts targeted a mosque in Sadr city, killing 18 and wounding 100.

Many have accused the Interior Ministry, stacked with staunch Iranian allies, for orchestrating the attack.

Over the years Iran’s influence has also evolved. Now, Iran is less able to cobble together grand electoral coalitions compared to 10 years ago. This is not because Iran has been left out of the political loop or is unable to pursue its interests in Iraq, but because the internal and external players are more dynamic than before.”

 – Fanar Haddad | Iraqi specialist at the National University of Singapore   

Observers believed the attack intended to send a message to Al Sadr for his newfound relationship with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main regional ally.

Al Sadr was quick to call for calm among his supporters during this politically crucial time.

Al Sadr’s political journey

Al Sadr has come a long way since described as an “outlaw” by Paul Bremer back in 2003, when he led an armed insurgency against the Americans in southern Iraq and the Shiite slums of Baghdad.

Ten years ago, he disbanded his loathed Mehdi Army, and last week, his top aide Diaa Al Assadi said that there was no coming back to militia-rule.

Al Sadr now carefully chooses his words, trying to come across as a populist and well-crafted Iraqi statesman, rather than a thuggish warlord.

He still banks heavily on his Shiite credentials, however, never missing the chance to remind people that he is the son of revered Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Al Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999.

Last summer, Al Sadr visited Jeddah, meeting with Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and in Abu Dhabi, he went on to meet His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, in an attempt to shed his image as a sectarian Shiite warlord.

Hearts and minds

He hoped by reaching out to powerful Sunni states, Al Sadr would be able to win back the hearts and minds of disenfranchised Iraqi Sunni voters.

Observers explain that Al Sadr’s shift towards the Gulf could be a direct result of a cutback in Iranian funds to Shiite politicians in Iraq, having shifted the bulk of its resources in recent years to more pressing issues like sustaining its war efforts in Syria, where it is bolstering the regime of Bashar Al Assad.

For Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the reconciliation with Al Sadr also came with opportunities.

Observers believed it was a strategic choice on their part in order to confront Iranian meddling in its own backyard given Tehran’s long-held grip on Iraqi politics since 2003, when Saddam Hussain was toppled.

However, the Gulf was not planning to put all its eggs into one basket.

It also reached out to Iraqi Foreign Minister Ebrahim Al Ja’afari and Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi — both members of the ruling Iran-backed Da’awa party — as well as Ammar Al Hakim, another Shiite cleric, who for years had been on Iran’s payroll under his party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Non-sectarianism

In fact, last year Al Hakim broke ranks with his party, forming another party which campaigned on non-sectarianism.

The Iraqi political scene has evolved and become more complex over the years, explains Fanar Haddad, an Iraqi specialist at the National University of Singapore.

In 2003, after Saddam’s fall, the issues were more straightforward and one-dimensional — mainly the de-Baathification of Iraq and restoring Shiites as a majority power.

“Over the years Iran’s influence has also evolved,” Haddad tells Gulf News.

“Now, Iran is less able to cobble together grand electoral coalitions compared to 10 years ago. This is not because Iran has been left out of the political loop or is unable to pursue its interests in Iraq, but because the internal and external players are more dynamic than before,” he says.

Opponents of Al Sadr claim that gross fraud took place during last May’s elections, and 173 parliamentarians have voted for a manual recount, blaming the error on electronic counting machines, which were used for the first time.

Approximately 11 million votes will be recounted, but on Thursday, Iraq’s election commission said it would appeal parliament’s order.

Trump is Ignorant of Iraq and the Antichrist

Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

HAIDAR HAMDANI/AFP/Getty Images

An Election in Baghdad

THE EDITORS

June 27, 2018 9:16 AM

Is anyone paying attention to Iraq?

The Trump administration has its attention fixed on Iran, and there is much to worry over coming out of Tehran. The theocratic regime is funding terrorist organizations across the Middle East, abetting rogue states from Syria to North Korea, abusing its citizens, and almost certainly constructing a deliverable nuclear weapon. But the threats from Iran are no good reason for the Trump administration’s neglect of neighboring Iraq. The administration’s unconcern comes straight from the top: The president came into office proclaiming the Iraq war to have been a mistake and an unqualified disaster, even pretending to have opposed it. His recent triumphalist claim that the United States has rid the region of ISIS gave the strong impression that, with the mission completed, he will have nothing more to do with Iraq.

But Iraq will have plenty more to do with us, whether we like it or not. ISIS has lost territory but remains capable of mounting guerrilla attacks across Iraq, and al-Qaeda is a resurgent presence in both Iraq and war-torn Syria. If the government in Baghdad falls into chaos or collapses altogether—or if Iran’s proxies succeed in turning Iraq into a client state—it’s difficult to see any outcome that doesn’t involve the hegemonic mullahs waging even more aggressive wars against its enemies, who are America’s friends.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government teeters. On May 19, Moqtada al-Sadr’s Sairoon alliance won 54 of the Iraqi parliament’s 329 seats—the most of any single political faction. Sadr, as readers will remember from the long years of the Iraq war, led a militia called the Mahdi Army that carried out suicide bombings and other attacks against coalition forces. As recently as January 2016, his soldiers kidnapped three American contractors and held them for more tahn a month. He is now one of Iraq’s most popular politician-clerics.

Sadr is being joined by the staunchly pro-Iran Fatah party, led by Hadi al Amiri, which won 47 seats. Western diplomats are sometimes prone to saying they can work with anybody who fought ISIS, as Amiri and his confederates did, but this is not so. The members of Iraq’s Fatah are anti-American fanatics. The faction of Haider al Abadi, whose Victory party controls another 42 seats, has also joined Sadr and Amiri. If Nouri al Maliki follows, as is predicted, Sadr’s coalition will have a parliamentary majority—168 seats—and a devoted enemy of the United States will take control of Iraq’s government.

Turnout was poor in the May election. The results are contested, and a partial recount is underway. On June 10, further reducing confidence in the election results, a ballot-box storage facility housing some half of Baghdad’s ballots caught fire. Abadi claimed foul play. Others, such as Maan alHetawi, the chairman of Iraq’s board of election commissioners, disagreed and argued that “the fire [did] not affect the election results.”

No matter the outcome of that fight, the alliance between Sadr and Amiri confirms the extent of Iran’s influence on Iraqi politics. Amiri once led a fanatically pro-Iranian militant group called the Badr Brigade, and he fought on Iran’s side in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. As recently as 2013 he was openly expressing loyalty to Qassem Soleimani, now the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Whereas Amiri is vociferously pro-Iran in public, Sadr has been much less so. He purports to criticize Iran, and his followers in Najaf and elsewhere are keen on demanding that Iran stay out of Iraqi affairs. Yet, in the late 2000s, he was summoned to Iran—to the holy city of Qom, to “study”—and he remains under the spell of Tehran.

Iraq’s future appears bleak. A sometime terrorist is likely to take the premiership, his coalition partners are sympathetic to Iran’s expansionism, and the country is again a breeding ground for both an allegedly vanquished ISIS and a thriving al Qaeda. We hope the State Department is doing what it can to prevent Baghdad’s rapprochement with Tehran—furthering the cause of Kurdish independence comes to mind. If Iraq fails, America’s enemies in the Middle East will have doubled or tripled their strength.

Donald Trump may wish to ignore Iraq. But if the president believes his own rhetoric about the threats from Iran, and if he’s serious about defeating jihadists in the region, he’d be wise to resist that temptation.

How Obama Helped the Iranian Nuclear Horn

Obama administration granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians during nuclear deal: Iran official | Fox News

July 02, 2018

The Obama administration granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians, including family members of government officials, while negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, a senior cleric and member of parliament has claimed.

Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zolnour, who is chairman of Iran’s parliamentary nuclear committee and a member of its national security and foreign affairs committee, made the allegations during an interview with the country’s Etemad newspaper, cited by the country’s Fars News agency.

He claimed it was done as a favor to senior Iranian officials linked to President Hassan Rouhani, and he alleged the move sparked a competition among Iranian officials over whose children would benefit from the scheme.

Several children of current and former Iranian officials live in the United States, including Ali Fereydoun, whose father Hossein Fereydoun (left) is the brother of and special aide to President Rouhani (right)  (Getty)

He claimed that the deal was made during negotiations for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was reached in July 2015. President Trump announced in May that the U.S. would withdraw from the agreement.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ALLEGEDLY GAVE IRAN ACCESS TO US FINANCIAL SYSTEM

“When Obama, during the negotiations about the JCPOA, decided to do a favor to these men, he granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians and some officials started a competition over whose children could be part of these 2,500 Iranians,” he claimed.

“If today these Iranians get deported from America, it will become clear who is complicit and sells the national interest like he is selling candies to America.”

The conservative Zolnour, who is in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s inner circle, added: “It should be stated exactly which children of which authorities live in the United States and have received citizenship or residency.”

He estimated that between 30 and 60 were studying in the U.S. while the rest of them were working in the country “against our national interests.”

Though Zolnour did not mention anyone by name during the interview, several children of current and former Iranian officials live in the United States, including Ali Fereydoun, whose father Hossein Fereydoun is the brother of and special aide to Rouhani; and Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, whose father Ali Larijani is speaker of parliament.

There is no suggestion either of these people received citizenship in the wake of the Iranian nuclear deal. It’s also unclear if Zolnour meant citizenship or a green card.

In 2015, 13,114 people born in Iran were issued green cards, while 13,298 were issued one in 2016, according to figures from the Department for Homeland Security. In 2015, 10,344 Iranians became naturalized, with a further 9,507 in 2016.

Asked about the cleric’s claim, a State Department spokesperson said: “We’re not going to comment on every statement by an Iranian official.”

Fox News analyst and former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was dubious of the Iranian official’s allegation. “This sounds like totally made up BS,” she said.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment. A representative for Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson also could not be reached for comment.

The cleric’s claim could, in the U.S., fuel Republican complaints about the concessions made by the Obama administration during that period — including not just sanctions relief, but the $1.7 billion payment supposedly tied to a legal settlement that coincided with the 2016 release of American prisoners.

Iran has been beset by economic protests in recent days; a group of protesters chant slogans at the old grand bazaar in Tehran on Monday  (AP)

And in Iran, they could fuel resentment toward Tehran’s elite.

“Many ordinary Iranians are surprised and feel betrayed that children of the regime officials live and work in the U.S.,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research institute, told Fox News. “The regime officials chant death to America but send their children to the U.S., away from the hell they have created in Iran over the past four decades.”

Ghasseminejad said some Iranians have called for their deportation from America: “Iranians don’t understand why the U.S. government allows the offspring of the regime officials to live in the U.S., while the U.S. has introduced a travel ban for ordinary Iranian citizens and many Americans are imprisoned in Iran. That is why many Iranians on social media have been urging the U.S. government to deport the children of the regime officials.”

Iran is one of seven countries included in Trump’s travel ban, upheld last week by the Supreme Court.

The country has been beset by a series of economic protests in recent days as the country’s currency, the rial, crashes.

Since the U.S. withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal on May 8, the value of the rial has plunged to 90,000 against the dollar – double the government rate of 42,000 rials to the dollar.

The protests have hit Iranian commercial areas, including the historic Grand Bazaar in Tehran, the home of conservative merchants who backed the 1979 Islamic Revolution and overthrow of the Shah.

Rouhani has warned the country that it faces an “economic war” with the U.S., but analysts have warned that hard-liners are likely behind the protests seeking to challenge the more moderate president.

Rouhani is under pressure since the nuclear deal agreed with the Obama administration was torn up by Trump. As a result, international firms and oil companies have backed away from billion-dollar deals with the Islamic republic.