(AI-generated)
Israel365 News recently posted the following ──
The King of Persia Provokes the King of Arabia: A 1,500-Year-Old Text Reads Like Today’s HeadlinesAugust 2, 2026Since February 2026, the Middle East has been living through a war that began with a joint American and Israeli strike that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, spread into missile and drone attacks across nearly every Gulf Arab state, closed the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping, and pulled Pakistan in as a mediator between Washington and Tehran. A memorandum of understanding was read to reporters in June, and the guns have gone largely quiet since. But a teaching in the Midrash, written well over a thousand years before any of these nations existed in their current form, describes a nearly identical sequence of events as the marker of the final redemption.The King of Persia Provokes the King of ArabiaRabbi Yitzchak Goldstein explained this teaching in the Hebrew-language Kikar last week. The teaching comes from Pesikta Rabbati, chapter 36, in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak. In the year the Messiah is revealed, he taught, all the kings of the nations will provoke one another. The king of Persia will provoke the king of Arabia.The identification of Persia with Iran is the simplest piece of this teaching. The nation known today as Iran is the historical core of the land that carried the name Persia for the better part of two thousand years, making “the king of Persia” a natural and direct reference in a modern context. And the confrontation the Midrash describes has a living counterpart this year. After the American and Israeli strikes on February 28, Iran retaliated far beyond Israel and American bases, firing missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia intercepted cruise missiles aimed at its own air bases and oil infrastructure, and by late summer, its foreign ministry was still fielding Iranian accusations that Gulf states had taken part in strikes against it. This was not a symbolic reading of “the king of Persia provokes the king of Arabia.” It was the headline of the war.The King of Arabia Goes to Edom for CounselThe Midrash continues: the king of Arabia will go to Edom to take counsel from them. … Edom is the term the tradition consistently identifies with Rome …The King of Persia Returns and the Nations Are ShakenThe king of Persia will then return, the Midrash teaches, and lay waste to the entire world. All the nations will be terrified and fall on their faces, gripped by pains like a woman in labor.That line reads very differently today than it would have in the ancient world. …In Tractate Yoma 10a, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, citing his teacher, taught that Rome is destined to fall into the hands of Persia, reasoning by a kal vachomer: the First Temple, built by the descendants of Shem, was destroyed by the Chaldeans, and the Chaldeans in turn fell to the Persians. The Second Temple was built by the Persians and destroyed by the Romans. By that same logic, Rome should fall to Persia as well.This would imply that the Midrash predicts that the US and the West will fall to Iran.
This Pesikta Rabbati is a collection of aggadic midrash (non-legalistic exegesis which appears in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, particularly the Talmud) on the Pentateuchal and prophetic readings. 1
Basically, this Pesikta Rabbati is but a collection of opinions of Jewish scholars from the Middle Ages related to their interpretations of God’s living word ── here speaking of the Torah ── along with other Jewish traditions.
Now, this Rabbi Yitzchak Goldstein, along with this Israel365 News, is biblically wrong in several ways. This vile and evil Islamic Regime of Iran is not about to conquer the world, or the greatest and most militarily powerful nation today, the United States of America! It can, of course, cause great damage, and will do so to JERUSALEM as the LORD God’s living word does show us per Isaiah 22:6-9.
I personally believe ── though we in the US have not been told ── that China flew into Iran before the war, and at least 16 cargo planes removed Iran’s enriched uranium as well as their centrifuges (The aircraft allegedly turned off their transponders before entering Iranian airspace). No different than Saddam Hussein in the days before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of his country, the Iraqis transferred their WMDs to Syria! 2 So, even though Iran has been technically neutralized ── they are far from being dead. The LORD God has postponed the inevitable.
Now, there is a point that the Jewish Pesikta Rabbati may have some slight validity relating to the now neutered Islamic Regime of Iran. Notice the 11th chapter of the Book of Daniel; he uses the term, the ‘king of the South’ ──
“He [a final Catholic-led European civic & military leader] shall stir up his power and his courage against THE KING OF THE SOUTH … 27) Both these kings’ hearts shall be bent on evil, and they shall speak lies AT THE SAME TABLE; but it shall not prosper, for the end will still be AT THE APPOINTED TIME [which is the LORD God’s ‘appointed time’].” – Daniel 11:25, 27.
“’AT THE TIME OF THE END the king of the South shall attack him; and the king of the North [a final United States of Europe] shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through. 41) He shall also enter the Glorious Land [Palestine], and many countries shall be overthrown; but these [initially] shall escape from his hand: Edom [which is Turkey], Moab [which is Iraq], and the prominent people of Ammon [or Jordan]. 42) He shall stretch out his hand [the ‘king of the North’] against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape’” – Daniel 11:40-42.
The above ‘AT THE TIME OF THE END’ (the very same end time that our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of in Matthew 24:14) tells us that there will be a final leader of the lands of the Middle East and North Africa ── called the ‘king of the South.’ Now, most of the lands mentioned in the above end-time prophecy are made up of ethnic Arabs. So, technically it could be considered the ‘king of the Arabs.’ PERSIA IS NOT MENTIONED IN DANIEL 11 and is not the prophesied end-time ‘king of the South’!
Now, regarding “Edom,” EDOM IS NOT ROME! Edom, prophetically, points to modern Turkey!
So, as our mortal and spiritual enemy, Satan the Devil, is standing upon his armada of ships in low earth orbit, looking at the tiny nation of Israel through his spiritual binoculars ── he sees IRAN neutered and a regime change in Syria!
Keeping this current geopolitical situation with Iran and Syria in mind ── it is of interest to note: Various Arab leaders have reached out to Turkey.
Could this neutralization of the Islamic Regime of Iran help lead to the formation of an end-time Islamic Confederation of Nations and the rise of an end-time ‘king of the South’? “Experiences across the region show that ousting regimes without a clear vision for the post-transition phase does not necessarily produce stability. In many cases, it has instead created political and security vacuums, opening the door to further disorder and complicating both domestic and regional dynamics” 3. In that report, be sure to read the section entitled “Second: The Rise of Non-Persian Peoples”; it’s listed as “the most consequential.”
We are surely seeing and are witnesses the continuing development of end-time prophecies being fulfilled and the development and the rise of a final ‘king of the South’!
Likely, this final Islamic confederacy will not fully form for some time, and certainly an end-time final ‘king of the South’ leader will have to rise first. Yet, discussions for something like this are occurring.
Now, while there has been a League of Arab states, Turkey, as well as others, are more seriously taking steps to work towards the development of an Islamic military force.
Our beloved President of the United States of America, Donald Trump ── who, in my personal humble opinion, is one of the greatest U.S. presidents in my lifetime ── is doing something that no other president since Jimmy Carter has even thought about doing, and that is the destruction of the government of the evil Islamic Republic in Iran. But, in doing so, could indeed be causing unintended consequences to the Middle East and to the world at large. □
1 Wikipedia contributors. "Pesikta Rabbati." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 Jun. 2026. Web. 3 Aug. 2026.
2 Morris, H., The Unresolved Mystery of Syria’s ‘Iraqi’ Chemical Weapons, The New York Times, 24 July 2012.
3 Obeidi, J., The Future of Iran: Three Scenarios for Life After the Islamic Republic, Dialogue Institute for Research & Studies, 11 May 2026.
