The Bear, the Lion and the Eagle

“And Behold, Another Beast, Resembling A Bear” (Daniel 7:5)

Avner Boskey

March 9, 2026

Over 2,500 years ago Daniel received a stunning prophetic vision (Daniel 7:5) spotlighting four empires in his time, which God symbolized by four beasts. The second beast in this prophetic vision was a raging and carnivorous bear, which symbolized the Persian Empire. That region is today called ‘Iran’).

War has broken out in the Middle East, and the limelight is shining again on the Persian Bear. Two of the main protagonists are modern Iran (on the one hand) and the regathered state of Israel (on the other).

Let’s leave the specific context of Daniel 7, and look for an animal which could symbolize the Jewish people. Since the King of Israel is Messiah Yeshua, and since He is described in Revelation 5:5 as the overcoming Lion of the tribe of Judah, one could perhaps poetically say that the battle now occurring in the Arabian Gulf has the Persian Bear facing off against the the Jewish people –the Israeli Lion. And this time, the world’s premier super-power – the United States of America – has joined the fight against the Iranian Bear. Since America is often symbolized by a bald-headed Eagle, could it be said that the Persian Bear is on one side of the battlefield, while the Hebrew Lion and the American Eagle are hunkering down on the other side.

Counting the cost

Messiah Yeshua spoke a parable many years ago, one which applies both to true discipleship and to kings setting out to battle:

“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who are watching it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This person began to build, and was not able to finish!’ Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to face the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Otherwise, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and requests terms of peace. So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions” (Luke 14:27-33)

A house divided

Classical jihadi Islam has a Last Days vision. It can be summed up by the Arabic battle-cry: “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud!” (Arabic: خيبر خيبر يا يهود جيش محمد سوف يعود, lit. ’Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!’). This chant refers to the Battle of Khaybar of 628 CE, when Muhammad marched with a large Muslim army to besiege and slaughter the Jewish community of Khaybar, an oasis in present-day Saudi Arabia.

This murderous battle-cry is chanted at anti-Israel demonstrations and during Islamist terrorist attacks as well. Muhammad in his lifetime led 27 jihadi campaigns, and deputized 59 other jihadi battles. The original Islam was a religion of jihadi conquest, and today those who follow Muhmmad’s pattern are described by the non-Muslim world as terrorists.

A foundational sectarian division broke the Islamic Ummah (Arabic for ‘community’) into two adversarial camps at the very beginning, in 632 AD. The clash between these two main wings of Islam – the Shia and the Sunni – revolves around who was to succeed Muhammad as the leader of Islam’s burgeoning world-wide dictatorship or caliphate.

The Shia (or Shi’at Ali – ‘the Party of Ali’) believed that Muhammad had named his cousin/son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib, to be his successor and Islam’s leader. Shi’ites believe that Ali’s right of succession was usurped by a power-group of Muhammad’s followers, who instead chose Muhammad’s closest companion Abu Bakr (632–634) to succeed him as the caliph of Islam.

The Sunni camp is called ‘ahl as-sunna’ in Arabic – meaning ‘the people of the habit’ or ‘the people of the [correct Islamic Muhammaden] usage which is sanctioned by tradition.’ Sunni Islam is approximately 80-85% of Islam’s adherents, while Shi’ite Islam is followed by between 10-15% of the Muslim world. The divide between the two streams of Shia and Sunna has led to over 1,400 years of battle, and is the religious clash lying behind much of Islam’s sectarian violence. Political ambitions and regional rivalries have added to the explosive mix.

Today Iran heads up the Shi’ite minority, while Saudi Arabia champions the Sunni majority, As Ira Stoll comments in March 4, 2026’s The Washington Free Beacon, “The Sunni-Shiite split is frequently a stronger explanatory dynamic in the Middle East than settler-colonialism or U.S. imperialism or oil or whatever other favored explanation the press or academia are pushing.” Former Pentagon specialist on the Middle East Harold Rhode comments: “Shiites call the Sunnis ‘Sunni dogs’ – ‘Sag-e Sunni.’ They don’t see them as real Muslims, they see them as heretics.”

Armageddon Shi’ite style

Iran’s strikingly warlike aggression is connected to three root issues:

Classical Islam’s hatred of the Jewish people (‘the lesser Satan’, or Shaytân-e Kuchakin Persian) and its Last Days vision of destroying the sons and daughters of Jacob

Sunni Muslim Brotherhood-influenced hatred of the West, and particularly of America (‘the greater Satan’ or Shaytan-e Bozorg in Persian) – borrowed by Iran’s Shi’ite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khoumeini and passed on to this generation

Shi’ite eschatology which believes in the necessity of pushing the world into a Last Days conflagration which will trigger the final battle between the forces of the Islamist pseudo-anti-Messiah (al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl)) and the Mahdi (al-Mahdī; 'the guided one’) who will lead the armies of Muhammad to ultimate victory (‘Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud’).

The jihadi leaders and generals of the Islamic Republic of Iran are going for broke on this one. They are prepared to pull the world into a Shi’ite Armageddon in pursuit of their Last Days dysphoric vision – think ‘Iranian kamikaze pilots with nuclear backpacks.’

When Shi’ite Iran attacks the Sunnis Arab world

Over the past week, Shi’ite Iran has attacked twelve Sunni Islamic countries, as well as two countries whose populations are basically either Christian or Jewish. Iran has also attacked a UK NATO-related base and an American NATO-connected base in Turkey (an Islamic country). Here is the current list of these fourteen countries, along with links specifying the locations and nature of attacks:

Cyprus – Larnaca, Limassol
Cyprus – UK/EU/NATO Akrotiri and Dhelkelia Air Force Bases
Turkey – (Incirlik AFB US/ NATO/ nuclear bombs are stored here by the USAF)
Israel – over 500 missiles and 2,000 drones
Jordan
Syria
Iraq – here and here
Kuwait – here, here and here
UAE – here, here, here and here

According to data from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, by Thursday March 5, Iran had launched 941 drones, 189 ballistic missiles and eight cruise missiles toward the UAE. 57 drones struck UAE territory. 755 drones and 172 missiles intercepted

Qatar – here, here, here, here, here, here and here
Bahrain – here and here
Saudi Arabia – here, here, here, here and here
Oman – here
Azerbaijan – here

These unprecedented Iranian Shi’ite attacks on Sunni neighbors over the past ten days (and not only on the Jewish state of Israel) are staggering. This new and dangerous pattern in the Middle East has the potential to spread like a wildfire into a Muslim-versus-Muslim religious war, echoing the earliest decades of Muhammad’s jihadi endeavors.

‘Collateral damage’

For the past ten days Iranian missiles and drones have intensively targeted civilians in Israel. They have also targeted oil refineries, oil rigs and oil tankers in the Gulf States and in the Arabian Gulf. Iranian missiles and drones have destroyed water desalinization plants in various Gulf countries. Iran has hit shopping malls, hotels and airports; CIA bases, US Embassies and US air force bases. Iran has struck Oman, the country which until just recently labored as a mediator between Iran and the USA.

Iran’s current military behavior is reminiscent of how the Scriptures describe those who breath out arrogant threats and blasphemies:

“A mouth uttering great boasts . . . the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking”(Daniel 7:8, 11, 20)
“A mouth was given to him speaking arrogant words and blasphemies” (Revelation 13:5)
“Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder” (Acts 9:1)

A senior Gulf official recently described Iran’s strikes on its neighbors — particularly on its arch-rival Saudi Arabia — as a “miscalculation” and stated that Tehran had “lost all goodwill from Islamic and Arab states.”

Who makes a man unable to see? (Exodus 4:11)

The combined airforces of Israel (the IAF) and America (the USAF) have achieved amazing results in a very short time. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Khamenei, has been removed from the living, along with more than 40 of his top brass. Nuclear weapons laboratories and drone warehouse have been annihilated. The Iranian Navy has been obliterated, as well as the top GHQ of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij terror-police. At this rate, within 2-4 weeks it will be highly unlikely for this jihad juggernaut to ever recover and threaten Israel, America, Europe or the Middle East.

At the same time, OSINT (open-source intelligence sources) reveal that Iran has managed to strike some significant blows against America’s radar assets, causing billions of dollars in damage:

The largest American radar in the Gulf is the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar, valued at $1.1 billion. It is a fixed radar system designed to detect drones, jet fighters and missiles. Located at al Udeid Air Base, Umm Dahal in Qatar, it was hit with a Iranian missile on Saturday, February 28, 2026 and was irretrievably damaged.

Raytheon’s AN/TPY-2 transportable x-band radar is the radar component of America’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. On Sunday March 1 or Monday March 2, Iran hit this x-band radar which was deployed at al-Ruwais Industrial City in the United Arab Emirates. The destroyed radar component is estimated to be worth $500 million. N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a munitions specialist and director of the research company Armament Research Services (ARES), told CNN the radar cannot be easily replaced and called it a significant loss. “The AN-TPY/2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defense picture. It also happens to be an incredibly expensive piece of kit. The loss of even a single radar of this type would be an operationally significant event. ”

Two other THAAD AN/TPY-2 x-band radar systems were also hit by Iran – one at Prince Sultan AFB al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia, and one in Jordan and the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.

These losses are grievous, but they are also a regular part of war. The loss of these ‘eyes’ shortens the warning time for Israelis and Gulf nations – time to send up interceptor anti-missiles, and time to allow civilians to make it to the safety of their own personal shelters. But these losses also reveal a more sinister development lurking beneath the geopolitical surface: Russia has been supplying intelligence information to Iran, detailing locations of US fighter jets, warships and radar installations.

The Cold War is once again raging in the shadows.

On target

Israeli and American forces have been targeting and eliminating the highest of high-value targets. The IDF’s SIGINT 8200 and VISINT 9900 obtained practicable intelligence which was then used by 50 IAF planes to drop 100 bombs on Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, removing both his presence and 48 of his High Command from the battlefield.

The combined forces of the USAF and the US Navy have so far destroyed over 42 Iranian Navy battleships, corvettes, frigates, cutters and drone-carriers, as well as the lion’s share of Iran’s ageing air force – (which have been comprised of 250 to 350 aging combat-capable aircraft – older F-4, F-5, F-14, MiG-29, and Su-24 jets).

Other significant targets hit and greatly degraded include Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the Min Zadai nuclear bomb development labs, the underground complex of factories and storehouses for missiles and nuclear weapons at Parchin.

How shall we then pray?

Pray that the God of the armies of Israel will guide the warriors who are defending America & Israel, granting them decisive success, accuracy and safety on the battlefield

Pray for the sparing of Iranian civilian lives

Pray for the entire people of Israel to be protected and preserved from their enemies (see Luke 1:68-75), and that they would seek and find salvation in Messiah Yeshua