Three women in a vision

The following is a transcribed testimony from a female Iranian Christian named Nastaran Farahani. It's taken from a TGC panel discussion on the persecuted church titled "On the Persecuted Church: Panel with Nancy Guthrie, Mindy Belz, Don Carson, K. A. Ellis, Nastaran Farahani". Her testimony starts at about the 7 min 20 sec mark.

One day, while I was taking a shower, I heard someone was talking to me, telling me "repent!"

The voice told me "I'm going to wash you of your sin".

At that time I didn't know what that voice was, and what was the meaning of those words.

But after a while, my sister, she came to Iran from Holland, for visiting. I realized that she has a Bible for me.

One lady she came to her [Nastaran's sister] and she told her that God gave her a vision that she saw three women sitting on a bed and all trust in Christ. So she told her, "you have to go to Iran and visit them".

Another woman came to her and gave her a ticket.

So she came to Iran for a visit. And when she got home to our family, she opened her bag and brought out a Bible, and said "I believe in Jesus".

And all my family started to cry.

And I told her "I believe in Jesus! I know Jesus! I do not know how, but I know him. I do not have any question".

[Nancy Guthrie:] "...How did they [the rest of Nastaran's family] respond to this word of Jesus?"

They just cried.

Within one month, my mom converted.

And within two months, my father had a dream or vision, and he converted to Christ.

We started to go to the church. At that time the building church was open in Iran. But after persecution coming to the church, we decided to gather at home and start the house churches.

There's more to her testimony. Indeed, the entire panel discussion is worth listening to.

Early returns from Iran’s presidential election

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22916174

One commentator said: “If [Rouhani] becomes Iran's new president, the country could witness an age of moderation in the next four years.”

Early results from Iran's presidential election put the reformist-backed candidate, Hassan Rouhani, in the lead.

Official figures give him just over half the 16 million votes counted so far - well ahead of second-placed Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

Mr Rouhani could win in the first round if he finishes with more than 50%.

Electoral officials said turnout was high among the 50 million Iranians eligible to vote on Friday for a successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

His eight years in power have been characterised by economic turmoil and Western sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.

Surge of support
Final results are expected later in the day.

Preliminary figures began to emerge early on Saturday after a delay of several hours.

Officials at the election headquarters said that with more than 16,716,937 votes counted so far - 16,166,392 of them valid:

Hassan Rouhani has 8,439,530 (50.5%)
Mr Qalibaf is in second place with 2,560,383
Mohsen Rezai lies third with 2,101,330, followed by Saeed Jalili on 1,890,462.

State TV channels said the winning candidate needed more than 50% of all ballots cast, including invalid ones, Reuters news agency reported.

Voting was extended by five hours on Friday evening to allow more people to cast their ballots. Iranian Press TV said turnout was 80%.

Although all six candidates are seen as conservatives, analysts say Mr Rouhani - a 64-year-old cleric often described as "moderate" who has held several parliamentary posts and served as chief nuclear negotiator - has been reaching out to reformists in recent days.

Iran, Hamas, and Israel

If you’ve been following the news in the past several days, you know that Hamas has been launching missiles into Israel, that Israel has assassinated Hamas’s military commander Ahmad Jabari, has deployed its anti-missile shield (“Iron Dome”), and is preparing a military incursion into Gaza in order to disable the Hamas missile launch sites.

Here is the latest news, plus an analysis from Stratfor on what’s occurring on the ground:

The Middle East's emerging political forces mobilized in Cairo and in Gaza on Saturday to press for an end to the escalating conflict between Hamas and Israel.

In Gaza, hostilities continued, with Israeli airstrikes pounding the coastal strip for a fourth straight day and Palestinian militants firing dozens of rockets at Israel, including another two aimed at Tel Aviv. The toll reached 40 Palestinians dead and 345 wounded, and three Israelis dead.

There were hints that the pace of combat operations could be slowing, perhaps as a result of the Cairo-led efforts to mediate a cease-fire. In Gaza, the ferocity and number of airstrikes seemed to dip. Hamas said government institutions in Gaza would resume regular work hours on Sunday, a surprising decision given that Israel has targeted some government offices in the past 24 hours.

It was unclear whether the lull was a sign that hostilities could be winding down, or merely a periodic operational pause. Israeli ground forces, including 16,000 reservists called up in the past 48 hours, remained massed on Gaza's borders awaiting orders from Israel's political leadership.

Stratfor: “intensifying psychological pressure on Iran more likely than war”

Analysis from a few days ago:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/war-and-bluff-iran-israel-and-united-states:

For the past several months, the Israelis have been threatening to attack Iranian nuclear sites as the United States has pursued a complex policy of avoiding complete opposition to such strikes while making clear it doesn't feel such strikes are necessary. At the same time, the United States has carried out maneuvers meant to demonstrate its ability to prevent the Iranian counter to an attack -- namely blocking the Strait of Hormuz. While these maneuvers were under way, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said no "redline" exists that once crossed by Iran would compel an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Israeli government has long contended that Tehran eventually will reach the point where it will be too costly for outsiders to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

The Israeli and American positions are intimately connected, but the precise nature of the connection is less clear. Israel publicly casts itself as eager to strike Iran but restrained by the United States, though unable to guarantee it will respect American wishes if Israel sees an existential threat emanating from Iran. The United States publicly decries Iran as a threat to Israel and to other countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, but expresses reservations about military action out of fears that Iran would respond to a strike by destabilizing the region and because it does not believe the Iranian nuclear program is as advanced as the Israelis say it is….

Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors. Developing weapons without ever producing them gives Iran international political significance, albeit at the cost of sanctions of debatable impact. At the same time, it does not force anyone to act against them, thereby permitting outsiders to avoid incurring the uncertainties and risks of such action.

Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon. For all their activity, either their technical limitations or a political decision has kept them from actually crossing the obvious redlines and left Israel trying to define some developmental redline.

Iran's approach has created a slowly unfolding crisis, reinforced by Israel's slowly rolling response. For its part, all of Israel's rhetoric -- and periodic threats of imminent attack -- has been going on for several years, but the Israelis have done little beyond some covert and cyberattacks to block the Iranian nuclear program. Just as the gap between Iranian rhetoric and action has been telling, so, too, has the gap between Israeli rhetoric and reality. Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.

The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program. The United States, for its part, has been content playing the role of holding Israel back from an attack that Israel doesn't seem to want to launch. The United States sees the crumbling of Iran's position in Syria as a major Iranian reversal and is content to see this play out alongside sanctions….

When we step back and view the picture as a whole, we see Iran using its nuclear program for political reasons but being meticulous not to make itself appear unambiguously close to success. We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat. And we see the Americans acting as if they are restraining Israel, paradoxically appearing to be Iran's protector even though they are using the Israeli threat to increase Iranian insecurity. For their part, the Russians initially supported Iran in a bid to bog down the United States in another Middle East crisis. But given Iran's reversal in Syria, the Russians are clearly reconsidering their Middle East strategy and even whether they actually have a strategy in the first place. Meanwhile, the Chinese want to continue buying Iranian oil unnoticed.

It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious. Speeches by politicians do not constitute clear guidelines. If the Israelis want to get the United States to participate in the attack, rhetoric won't work. Washington wants to proceed by increasing pressure to isolate Iran. Simply getting rid of a nuclear program not clearly intended to produce a device is not U.S. policy. Containing Iran without being drawn into a war is. To this end, Israeli rhetoric is useful.

Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.

Now, from today’s news:

Israel Blasts U.S. Over Iran (subscription required):

Netanyahu Says Obama Administration Has No 'Moral Right' to Restrain Jewish State
TEL AVIV—The rift between top U.S. and Israeli leaders appeared to deepen Tuesday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leveled the sharpest attacks in years by an Israeli leader against Washington, over differences on how to address Iran's nuclear program.

Tensions had so escalated that President Barack Obama spent an hour on the phone with the Israeli leader in a hastily arranged call hours after both governments said the White House wouldn't agree to an Israeli request for a meeting between the two leaders …

The rupture was the result of months of growing Israeli frustration with Mr. Obama's approach to Iran, in which he has stressed diplomacy and punitive sanctions. Mr. Netanyahu has exhorted the Obama administration in vain to set "red lines" that, if crossed, would trigger a U.S. military response.

The falling-out comes at a fragile moment for Mr. Obama, both in his re-election bid and in the international furor over Iran's nuclear program….

Mr. Netanyahu's comments came in the third straight day of unusual and harsh public exchanges between the two governments. At a news conference in Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu said Tuesday the Obama administration and other Western allies, by failing to set strict limits on Tehran, lack the moral authority to press Israel not to attack Iran.

"If Iran knows that there's no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing: It's continuing without any interference toward obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there nuclear bombs,'' he said.

"The world tells Israel: Wait. There's still time. And I say: Wait for what? Wait until when? Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel."…