On Monday morning, it was reported that two earthquakes hit Iran. A strong 4.3-magnitude earthquake was recorded in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, near the border with Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a magnitude 2.5 earthquake struck 18 miles away from Qom, Qom Province, on Sunday at 11:35 p.m. local time. Explosions followed the relatively light quake.
The quake and explosions followed an Israeli Air Force strike in the area.
The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant houses advanced centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium to high-grade purity. It presents a challenging target for Israel. The plant is located deep in the mountains of northern Iran, and it is believed that an effective attack would require bunker buster bombs. Israel does not have such ordinance nor the heavy bombers to deliver such a payload.
Israel targeted the site during its Friday attacks, but the IAEA said it was not impacted, and the IDF has not claimed any significant damage there. Iranian air defenses shot down an Israeli drone in the vicinity of the plant.
“If Fordow remains operational, Israel’s attacks may barely slow Iran’s path to the bomb,” James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on Friday. Acton said Israel might be able to collapse the entrance to the facility, but noted that destroying much more of the Fordow site would be a difficult task for Israel.
Pakistani ARY News reported the incident, claiming the ”Israeli strike on Fordow nuclear site triggers earthquake in Iran,” as did The Free Press Journal, Tempo News, and Money Control.
While it is unlikely that relatively small IAF bombs would trigger a geological event, there might be a more likely explanation. The prophets explicitly mention earthquakes and volcanoes as playing a role in the end of days, preparing the world by burning away impurities, as a crucible is used in metallurgy to purify metal.
“And I will bring the third part through the fire and will refine them as silver is refined and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on My name and I will answer them; I will say: ‘It is My people’ and they shall say: ‘Hashem is my God.’” Zechariah 13:9
The Prophet Ezekiel specifically described earthquakes as preceding the War of Gog and Magog:
Mountains shall be overthrown, cliffs shall topple, and every wall shall crumble to the ground. Ezekiel 38:20
Some rabbis have attributed this pre-Magog shake-up to God intervening in the fray and using the forces of nature as His weapons of choice.
Rabbi Shalom Berger, the revered spiritual leader of thousands of Hassidic Jews belonging to the Mishkoltz sect of Judaism, taught that the War of Gog and Magog will include the forces of nature as well as soldiers of flesh and blood.
“Ezekiel describes a simple war of man-versus-man,” Rabbi Berger explained. “But it would be incorrect to envision Gog and Magog as a war. Zechariah describes a conflict in which nature plays an active role. Earthquakes wrack the land, the sun and the moon change, water flows in different manners, and disease will play a major role. God will take an active role in the war, and thunder and lightning will announce His presence.”
Rabbi Berger also noted, “The War of Gog and Magog begins outside of Israel, but its focus is on Jerusalem.”
“My heart tells me,” concluded the rabbi, “that God has mercy on the nation of Israel and, despite what the prophets have prophesied – that the Gog Umagog War needs to be within Jerusalem. Nevertheless, God sweetened this and is currently making it in Syria. And the proof is that it is brought down in Sifri (Devarim 1) that the gates of Jerusalem are destined to reach until Damascus.”
