The author contends that the Iran war is really primarily over religion. Specifically; whether the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, or the return of Islam’s 12th Imam, or the return of Christian Jesus will prevail. Note: winner takes all, losing parties go straight to hell. That’s a strong incentive for each party to do whatever it takes to win … or, at least survive. Excellent article.
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Messianism, the Third Temple, the Mahdi and the Crusades: the theological dimension of the Iran-US-Israel conflict that the West pretends not to see
On 12th March 2026, at a press conference — the first since the war began on 28th February [2026] — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uttered a sentence that deserves to open every news program in the world. He said: “We will reach the kingdom. We will reach the return of the Messiah, but it will not happen next Thursday”. He then added that achieving this goal would require the rebuilding of the Temple – which implies, for anyone familiar with the sacred topography of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. No Western news program opened with this statement. No mainstream columnist analyzed it. Yet, in those words lies the key to understanding the entire conflict: a war that is presented as a security operation is, in the very words of its protagonists, a messianic war.
This article aims to do what mainstream journalism systematically refuses to do: analyze the theological, eschatological and ritual dimensions of the ongoing conflict, documenting with data, statements and primary sources the fact that the three main actors – Israel, evangelical America and Shi’ite Iran – are each, in their own way, waging a holy war.
Netanyahu and Messianic Zionism: from the Philadelphia Corridor to the Third Temple
Netanyahu’s messianic statements are not a rhetorical eccentricity. They are a documented pattern dating back to years before the current conflict and which has intensified with the war in Gaza.
On 2nd September 2024, Netanyahu publicly declared that “the era of the Messiah will come”, linking the continuation of the war in Gaza to the fulfilment of an eschatological promise. On that occasion, he described the Philadelphia Corridor – the strip of land on the border between Gaza and Egypt – as the “divine path” that would save Israel from an “existential threat”. Not a metaphor: a theological framing of a military objective.
In an August 2025 interview on Israeli television, Netanyahu stated that he felt “very” attached to the vision of “Greater Israel” – a biblical concept extending the state’s borders from Mesopotamia to Egypt. This is not a fringe position: in October 2023, he had shown the UN General Assembly a map of the “New Middle East” with expanded Israeli borders. In February 2026, even the leader of the centrist opposition, Yair Lapid, declared that “Israel’s biblical borders are very clear”. But the key point is another.
Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked the Amalek verse – 1 Samuel 15:3, which commands the total destruction of the enemy, including men, women and children – to justify military operations. In October 2023, he said: “You must remember what Amalek did to you, says our Holy Bible”. In March 2026, he used the same reference in the context of the war against Iran. Raz Segal, an Israeli-American historian of the Holocaust and genocide, has described these statements as evidence of genocidal intent.
The statement of 12th March 2026 on the Messiah and the Temple brings this rhetoric to its climax. What Netanyahu is threatening may not be the use of nuclear weapons, but something potentially more destabilizing: the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to make way for the Third Temple.
The Third Temple: concrete preparations, not fantasies
To the secular Western reader, talk of the Third Temple may seem like folklore. It is not. The preparations are concrete, funded, supported by the Israeli government and documented by independent organizations.
The Temple Institute, founded in 1987 in Jerusalem, is openly working on the reconstruction of the Third Temple on the site where the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque stand – Islam’s third holiest site [after Masjid al-Haram (including the Kaaba) in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, both in Saudi Arabia]. The Institute has already prepared the Temple’s sacred furnishings, the priestly vestments and the liturgical implements. Over 500 young men from the tribe of Levi have been trained as Temple priests (Kohanim), ready to officiate at the sacrificial rites.
In September 2022, the Temple Institute and the evangelical organization Boneh Israel imported five red heifers from Texas, purchased for $500,000. The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture circumvented standard protocols to authorize the import – the United States was not, in fact, an authorized country for the import of live animals. The Director-General of the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, Netanel Isaac, revealed in a speech at the ceremony to welcome the heifers that the government is funding the development of the area on the Mount of Olives where Temple Mount activists intend to perform the ritual.
The red heifer (parah adumah) is at the heart of the ritual. According to the Book of Numbers (19:2), a completely red heifer, without blemish and which has never borne a yoke, must be sacrificed and burnt; its ashes, mixed with spring water, are required to purify the Temple site and allow Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. Without this purification, halakhah (Jewish religious law) prohibits access to the sacred site.
The five original heifers were subsequently declared unsuitable by the Temple Institute – one had a damaged tail, another had color defects.
But in 2025, the Temple Institute clarified that the breeding program continues, with at least a dozen candidates on the waiting list. It also conducted a simulation of the cremation ritual in the mountains of Samaria, to “improve preparations for the production of the ashes”.
The Israeli NGO Ir Amim has documented that a plot of land on the Mount of Olives – originally Palestinian-owned – has been purchased by an unknown company to carry out the sacrifice of the red heifer with a direct view of the Temple Mount, as required by tradition. The Jerusalem Development Authority is building a walkway leading directly to that spot.
Haaretz, in an August 2024 investigation, ran the headline: “Now in power, Israel’s messianic far right is deadly serious about rebuilding the Temple.” The article documented a three-stage plan: first, securing the right to Jewish prayer on the Esplanade; second, establishing a synagogue on the site; third, demolish Al-Aqsa and build the Third Temple.
Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security, has led repeated provocative incursions onto the Temple Mount. In the summer of 2024, he ascended the Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av, dancing, singing and praying – an unprecedented act that marked an acceleration in the violation of the status quo. Ben Gvir declared: “I am not asking for equality on the Temple Mount. It is ours and ours alone”. Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister, uses the same biblical rhetoric to advocate for the expansion of Israel’s borders.
Christian Zionism: the theology that arms the bombers
If Jewish Messianic Zionism provides the destination, Evangelical Christian Zionism provides the fuel – political, financial and military. And it is within the Pentagon. Since 28th February 2026 – the day Operation Epic Fury began – the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a military rights watchdog, has received over 200 complaints from American soldiers. The reports, coming from over 40 military units across at least 30 bases, state that commanders told troops that the war with Iran is part of God’s plan and the biblical prophecy of the “end times”. One unit commander reportedly told his soldiers: “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to set Iran ablaze, bring about Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”.
The founder of the MRFF, Mikey Weinstein, an Air Force veteran, told The Guardian that Hegseth’s rhetoric gives the Muslim world the impression that the United States is launching its own crusade.
The choice of words is no accident. Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defence – the man who oversees the world’s most powerful military machine – has a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his chest, a symbol of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem founded in 1099.
On his arm is the inscription “Deus Vult” – “God wills it” – the battle cry of the First Crusade of 1096. On his forearm, the Arabic word “Kafir” (infidel). His 2020 book is titled “American Crusade” and reads: “Our present moment is very similar to the 11th century. We do not want to fight, but… we must.”
In 2018, during a speech in Jerusalem organized by the Israeli right (Arutz Sheva/Israel National News), Hegseth declared that the reconstruction of the biblical Temple is a “miracle” that could happen in our lifetime. He said that “a step in that process” is the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. He declared himself opposed to the two-state solution and in favor of exclusive Israeli sovereignty over the Holy Land.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Tom Cotton asked him if he considered himself a Christian Zionist. Hegseth replied: “I am a Christian and I vigorously support the State of Israel and its existential defense”.
In an interview with CBS broadcast on 9th March 2026, Hegseth framed the war in explicitly theological terms: “Our capabilities are better. Our will is better. Our troops are better. The providence of our almighty God is there to protect those troops, and we are committed to this mission”.
But Hegseth is merely the tip of the iceberg. The theological framework underpinning the conflict is dispensationalism – a Protestant doctrine according to which human history is divided into “dispensations” that unfold according to God’s plan for the world. Churches that embrace this theology, predominantly evangelical, believe that the current dispensation is about to end. But this end can only be ushered in by great suffering – a period known as “the tribulations of Jacob”. Israel is the place where these tribulations will begin and culminate in the Second Coming of Jesus.
After the 1967 war, this theology focused on a specific scenario: the government of the Jewish state rebuilds the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, laying the foundations for the end times. With the return of Jesus, the historical mission of the Jewish people is fulfilled. Many Jews would perish; the survivors would become the vanguard of believers in Jesus. This scenario, once promoted by small groups within certain Protestant denominations, was by the 1990s already widely disseminated in American popular culture, particularly through the “Left Behind” series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.
John Hagee, a televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) – an organization claiming over 10 million members – is the principal architect of the political translation of this theology. In a sermon on 1st March 2026 – three days after the start of the war – Hagee declared: “Prophetically, we are right on schedule.” He then prayed that “Almighty God would descend upon the battlefield and the enemies of Zion and the United States would be destroyed before our very eyes.”
The sermon, entitled “End of Days: Operation Epic Fury”, was delivered in San Antonio in the presence of Senator John Cornyn, introduced as “one of Israel’s greatest friends”. In his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee had envisaged a scenario in which an American or Israeli attack on Iran would unleash “a firestorm that would erupt across the Middle East, dragging the world towards Armageddon.”
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee – a Baptist pastor and long-standing Christian Zionist – has for years led “Holy Land tours” in Israel. He does not recognize the existence of the West Bank as an entity separate from Israel.
Shi’ite eschatology: the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam and the army-in-waiting
Whilst the American-Israeli side fights to hasten the return of the Messiah/Christ through the rebuilding of the Temple and the destruction of Zion’s enemies, Iran fights within a symmetrical and mirror-image eschatological framework: that of the return of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi.
Twelver Shiism – the official religion of the Islamic Republic – believes that the legitimate leadership of the Muslim world belongs exclusively to the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through Ali and a line of 12 infallible imams. The Twelfth, Muhammad ibn Hasan – known as Muhammad al-Mahdi – is believed to have entered into “occultation” (ghayba) in 874 AD. He is not dead: he is alive, hidden by divine will, and will return at the end of time to establish universal justice, defeat tyranny and rule the world under Islamic law.
For centuries, this belief was quietist: the Mahdi would return at the time appointed by God, and human beings could only wait. The transformation took place in 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini designated Iran as the “Vanguard of the Mahdi” and declared that the nation had a special mission to prepare the way for his return. Khomeini formulated the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih – the guardianship of the jurist – according to which a qualified jurist must rule as the vicar of the Hidden Imam until his return. Eschatology ceased to be theological and became political.
No institution embodies this fusion of theology and statecraft more than the Pasdaran (IRGC – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). Unlike a conventional national army, the IRGC is constitutionally defined as an ‘ideological army’, tasked not only with defending the borders but with safeguarding and exporting the revolution. According to Hojatoleslam Ali Saeedi, the Supreme Leader’s representative to the IRGC (2012): “The IRGC is one of the instruments for paving the way for the appearance of the Imam of the Age in the context of regional and international awakening”.
A 2022 report by the Middle East Institute, entitled “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Rising Cult of Mahdism”, documented how the destruction of Israel is framed within the Guard not merely as a geopolitical objective, but as a religious obligation linked to eschatological expectations.
The report warned that devout Mahdists could rise to positions of command within the IRGC – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – bringing under their control the three pillars of Iran’s power projection: regional militias, ballistic missile forces and the nuclear program.
The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei – son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the bombings of 28th February [2026] – as the new Supreme Leader represents, according to a MEMRI [Middle East Media and Research Institute] report dated 14th March 2026, the triumph of the messianic-apocalyptic faction within the Iranian establishment. Mojtaba, who has been closely affiliated with the IRGC for years, is supported by figures such as Ayatollah Mahdi Mirbagheri – who teaches that fighting and defeating the infidels is a prerequisite for the return of the Hidden Imam – and by politicians from the Islamic Revolution Stability Front (Jebhe-ye Paydari).
A key element: Mojtaba’s supporters bestow upon him the title of “Al-Khorasani” – a mythical figure in Shia tradition who will emerge from the Khorasan region (in eastern Iran – the birthplace of both Mojtaba and his father) bearing black banners, defeat the enemies of Islam and pass the banner of government to the Mahdi. If Mojtaba is Al-Khorasani, every directive he issues becomes part of a divine plan that cannot be questioned – even if it leads to all-out conflict with Israel and the United States.
In Shia hadith literature, the period preceding the Mahdi’s return is described as marked by grave injustice, violent upheavals and large-scale bloodshed. Many narratives speak of a conflict in the Middle East and a dramatic confrontation prior to the establishment of global justice. Among the prophesied signs: the rise of a tyrannical and brutal leader in Damascus (the Sufyani), the invasion of Iraq, and a righteous leader (the Yamani) emerging in Yemen in support of the Mahdi.
Over the years, the IRGC has intensified its internal training programs centered on Mahdist themes. Instability is framed as a prelude. Conflict as purification. Resistance under pressure as participation in sacred history.
Eschatological symmetry: three messianisms at war
What conventional analysis fails to grasp is the mirror-image structure of the conflict. This is not a war between geopolitical rationality and religious fanaticism. It is a contest between three competing eschatologies, each with its own messiah, its own temple, its own Armageddon.
Jewish messianic Zionism awaits the Mashiach – the final king from the line of David – who will rebuild the Temple, establish the Kingdom of God and rule from Jerusalem. The redemptive movements (the Temple Institute, the followers of Ben Gvir, the Smotrich faction) believe that the world must reach the brink of a great war so that “the Messiah may descend and save it” . For this reason, they encourage the continuation and expansion of the conflict.
Christian dispensationalism awaits the return of Christ, which will be preceded by the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and a period of “great tribulation”. In this scheme, the Jews play an instrumental role: they must return to Israel, rebuild the Temple and then, upon Christ’s return, convert to Christianity or perish.
Christian Zionists are not friends of the Jews in the true sense: they treat the Jewish people as pawns in a cosmic drama culminating in their own redemption.
Twelver Shi’ism awaits the return of the Twelfth Imam/Mahdi, who will emerge from occultation when the world is rife with injustice and oppression, to establish universal justice. The destruction of Israel and the defeat of Western powers are theological prerequisites for his return. In the Shia tradition, Jesus (Isa) will return and pray behind the Mahdi – submitting to his leadership – and together they will defeat the Dajjal (the Antichrist). For many Muslims, the figure awaited as the Jewish Messiah – who brings worldly power – is in fact the Dajjal himself.
The three eschatologies converge on a single geographical point: Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, the Esplanade of the Mosques. All three require an apocalyptic conflict as a precondition for the fulfilment of the divine promise. All three view the present as the time of fulfilment.
The ongoing war is no coincidence of timing. Operation Epic Fury was launched on 28th February 2026 – just days before Purim (14 Adar, falling on 5–6 March 2026), the Jewish festival celebrating the salvation of the Jewish people from planned destruction in ancient Persia. Ancient Persia is modern-day Iran. The parallels have not escaped anyone’s notice.
Deus Vult: when the Pentagon becomes a church
The most disturbing fact is the infiltration of theological language into American military institutions. Pete Hegseth is no suburban preacher. He is the US Secretary of Defence, the operational head of the largest armed force on the planet. A man with crusader tattoos on his body leading a war in the Middle East. A man who wrote “our present moment is very similar to the 11th century” and who concludes his book with “Deus Vult” – the very phrase with which the crusaders of 1096 marched on Jerusalem, massacring Muslims and Jews.
In a 2018 speech in Jerusalem, Hegseth spoke of “miracles” – 1917 (the Balfour Declaration), 1948 (the founding of Israel), 1967 (the conquest of East Jerusalem) – and suggested that the next miracle might be the rebuilding of the Third Temple. A Secretary of Defence who believes in biblical miracles and projects them onto foreign policy is not a biographical curiosity. It is a structural fact.
The more than 200 complaints received by the MRFF in less than three weeks of war do not come from pacifist activists: they come from active-duty American soldiers reporting that their commanders are presenting the war as the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Complaints from over 40 units across more than 30 installations.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a non-partisan organisation founded by a former Air Force prosecutor, has described the situation as unprecedented. Democratic MPs have called for a formal inquiry. But such an inquiry would require admitting what the establishment prefers to deny: that the world’s most powerful democracy is waging a war that its own military commanders describe as an eschatological event.
Europe’s absence: a spectator to a holy war over which it has no say
Europe – the only player that could frame the issue in secular and rational terms – is completely absent from the debate. Not because it is not involved: it is concerned about energy costs (diesel over €2 a liter, natural gas prices doubling in a week), the economic consequences (a stagflationary recession on the horizon), and above all the American military bases on its territory.
Italy hosts Aviano, Sigonella, Camp Darby, Vicenza and the naval base in Naples. Operations in the Middle East are launched from these bases. If the conflict escalates – and all the signs point in that direction – Italy is not a bystander. It is a logistical infrastructure for the war. A war which, in the words of its own protagonists, is a holy war.
But Europe is not asking the fundamental question: is it legitimate to participate – even indirectly – in a conflict whose stated motivation, in the words of the Israeli Prime Minister, is the return of the Messiah? Is it acceptable for the Defence Secretary of the allied superpower to describe the war as supported by the “providence of our almighty God”? Is it tolerable for American military commanders to tell their soldiers that their president has been “anointed by Jesus to bring about Armageddon”?
If Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, can describe Iranian leaders as “radical Shiite clerics” who make geopolitical decisions based on “pure theology”, someone should have the intellectual courage to apply the same standard to American and Israeli leaders.
EPILOGUE: THE WAR OF THE GODS
We are facing something that conventional geopolitical vocabulary fails to capture. It is not a war for oil – even if oil is its economic fuel. It is not a war for non-proliferation – even if nuclear power is its pretext. It is a war in which a Prime Minister speaks of the Messiah and the Temple, a Defence Secretary wears the cross of the Crusaders on his chest, and Iran’s new Supreme Leader is regarded by his supporters as the prophetic forerunner of the Mahdi.
Three Abrahamic traditions. Three armed messianisms. A single point of convergence: Jerusalem. The tragedy is that none of the peoples involved – Israelis, Americans, Iranians – chose this war. The civilian populations of Tehran, Tel Aviv and the Gulf cities are not fighting for Armageddon. They are trying to survive leaders who believe – or pretend to believe – they have a divine mandate.
Journalism has a duty to name what it sees. And what it sees, documented by primary sources and public statements, is a holy war fought with modern weapons, presented as a security operation and funded by taxpayers who never voted for the Apocalypse. And that makes it more dangerous than any other war.
SOURCE: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/the-holy-war-that-nobody-dares-to?r=25fc37
THE END
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