The Religious Extremists Waging War on Iran

When the US and Israel jointly launched their illegal war of aggression, “the supreme international crime”, against Iran, the timing had symbolic meaning in Judaism. The Saturday of February 28 marked Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of Remembrance, which is observed with a reading of the Torah.

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.” — Deuteronomy 25: 17-19

“And Samuel said to Saul, ‘The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”‘” — 1 Samuel 15: 1-3

It’s the same Biblical episode that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited to justify the genocide in Gaza by referring to Palestinians as the tribe of Amalek.

That Gaza genocide has received the full bipartisan support of the US government across both Biden and Trump regimes,

The Sabbath of Remembrance links the Biblical genocide to the holiday of Purim, which commemorates the story told in the Book of Esther. After the Babylonian exile of 586 BC, the Jews were dispersed, but Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, and Cyrus the Great—called a “messiah”, or “annointed one”, in the Bible—allowed the Jews to return and rebuild their Temple.

Many Jews, however, remained dispersed throughout the Persian Empire. The fictional story of Esther takes place in the royal capital of Shushan, in what is today southwestern Iran. The Persian king, Ahasuerus, loosely based on Xerxes, deposes his queen, Vashti, for embarrasing him by not showing up at a banquet, and he selects a young woman named Esther to be his new queen. Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, who raised her like a father, instructs her not to reveal that she is Jewish.

Mordecai uncovers a conspiracy against the king and reveals it, and the plotters are caught and executed. Mordecai’s role in this is not yet known to the king, but it is recorded in the royal chronicle.

When Mordecai refuses to bow to a royal official named Haman, the official’s anger is so roused that he seeks revenge on all Jews throughout the kingdom. He persuades the king that there are “a certain people” who do not keep the king’s laws and that they should be destroyed. Letters are sent throughout the kingdom with orders to kill these people on a certain day.

Mordecai somehow learns of the plot and informs Esther, who sets out to gain the ear of the king by holding a banquet attended by Haman. Prior to the banquet, the king learns by reading the royal records how Mordecai had revealed the plot against him, and he decides to publicly honor Mordecai, which humiliates Haman.

At the banquet, Esther pleads with the king to spare her life and her people’s from the plot to destroy them, and the king asks who would dare to do such a thing. She identifies Haman as the culprit, and the king realizes how he was deceived into issuing orders that would result in his own queen being killed. Haman is hanged, his estate is given to Esther, and Mordecai is elevated to Haman’s former role as viceroy.

Under the laws of the kingdom, a royal decree sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked, but he issues a new decree authorizing Jews to defend themselves against those who would kill them, and the Jews end up destroying their enemies. The holiday of Purim is formalized the commemorate the Jews’ deliverance from annihilation.

The connection between the Sabbath of Remembrance and Purim is that Haman is considered to be a descendant of Amalek.

This perception of Palestinians as Amalek and Persians as Haman must also be understood in the context of Jewish extremists in Israel aiming to acquire and sacrifice an unblemished red heifer for a purification ritual that will enable a return to the Temple Mount, where the goal is to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock and build a Third Temple.

It’s not only Netanyahu and Jewish extremists in Israel who view the war on Iran as a religious conflict, a battle of good versus evil. During the first several days of the US-Israeli war on Iran, US military commanders perversely identifying as “Christian” invoked rhetoric about the “end times”, characterizing the international aggression as “part of God’s divine plan” to usher in Armageddon and the return of Jesus the Christ (Yeshua HaMashiach).

Hundreds of complaints about this were received about this by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). One noncommissioned officer, according to one complaint, had told troops, “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

Hence, Trump was literally characterized by this officer as a messiah. (Mashiach, or messiah, again meaning “anointed one” in Hebrew.)

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the US military, airing monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon”, noted Jonathan Larsen in an article about the religious extremism in the military command.

Hegseth also attends a weekly Bible study at the White House led by a preacher who says that God commands the US to support Israel.

MRFF President and Founder Mikey Weinstein told Larsen,

These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times” as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.

Also attending the White House Bible study is Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, who says “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” despite Palestinians being indigenous to Palestine, descended from Canaanite tribes living in the area since before there ever was a kingdom of Israel.

Huckabee rejects the two-state solution and advocates Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem.

In May 2018, during his first term, Trump violated numerous UN Security Council Resolutions by moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem. At a rally in 2020, he said of the move, “That’s for the evangelicals.”

In keeping with Jews seeking to build the Third Temple, Huckabee refers to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”.

Shortly before Trump launched his war on Iran, Huckabee was on the Tucker Carlson Show and expressed his view that Israel has a biblical right to take over most of the Middle East. “It would be fine if they took it all,” he said, later clarifying that the extent of Eretz Yisrael, or the Land of Israel, that he envisioned might not extend to the whole of the region, “but it would be a big piece of land.”

Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan issued a joint statement calling Huckabee’s comments “dangerous and inflammatory”, and “a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and the Charter of the United Nations”.

On Carlson’s show, Huckabee opined, “Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose.”

Huckabee clearly needs to reread the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible that Christians refer to as the Old Testament, because it’s really hard to miss the central story of how the Israelites incessantly violated the Covenant with Yahweh, who warned them that if they did not change their sinful ways, He would cast them out of the land, which was done first with the Assyrian exile, when the kingdom of Israel was conquered, and then the Babylonian exile, when the kingdom of Judah—named for the tribe from which Jews are descended—met the same fate.

“You shall therefore keep all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them, that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out.” — Leviticus 20:22

“But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments … but break My covenant … I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you; your land shall be desolate and your cities waste … You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.” — Leviticus 26: 14, 15, 32-33, 28

“Therefore Yahweh was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone…. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as it is to this day.” — 2 Kings 17:18, 23

“And I said, after [Israel] had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also.” — Jeremiah 3: 7-8

On March 25, during a monthly so-called “Christian” service at the Pentagon, clearly referencing the ongoing illegal war against Iran, Pete Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”.

It was a prayer he attributed to “the chaplain who oversaw the Maduro raid”, referring to the illegal attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3.

Here’s a transcript of that portion of Hegseth’s address to the Pentagon assembly:

Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.

Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly.

By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish.

Let their bulls go down to slaughter, for their day has come, the time of their punishment.

Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things, and blow them away like chaff before the wind.

Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.

Surround them as a shield.

Protect the innocent and blameless in their midst.

Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed.

Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.

Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back, and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.

For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings, and amen.

Amen.

Hegseth thus characterized the US government’s illegal war of aggression against Iran as being sanctioned by God—like the Israelite’s destruction of the tribe of Amalek.

Hegseth’s words, if his prayer is answered, will haunt him. If the spirit of Babylon exists today, its seat of power is Washington, DC., and Yahweh is undoubtedly displeased by the hypocrisy of self-described “Christians” who violate His commandments, including thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, though shalt not bear false witness against thy neightbor, and thou shalt not covet that which is thy neighbor’s.

Trump by his own words has an eye to “take” and “keep” the region’s oil, brazenly lied about Iran being imminently acquiring nuclear weapons as a false pretext for war, and murdered Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with other leaders in the opening salvos of his crime of aggression.

War is, of course, murder on a mass scale.

A member of my supporting reader community and a true Christian, George, pointed out to me the relevance to this situation of Mark Twain’s parody “The War Prayer”, a scathing critique of American imperialism with a particular view toward the US war against the Philippines from 1899 to 1902.

George also brought to my attention this short film of “The War Prayer”, which I encourage you to watch before reading further:

When Trump launched his war on Iran, he claimed to care about the Iranian people, saying he wanted to “free” them. That was an obvious lie at the time since he’d also implemented crippling sanctions on Iran designed to collectively punish the civilian population.

His total lack of concern for Iranian civilians has since become more explicit.

On March 30, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to threaten obliteration of essential civilian infrastructure in Iran. If Iran does not allow shipping through the Hormuz Strait, Trump said, he would “conclude” his war “by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!)….”

In other words, he openly threatened to commit brazen war crimes that, given the consequences for the civilian population, would also amount to crimes against humanity.

On April 1, Trump gave an address promising to send Iranians “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

So much for caring about Iranian civilians.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, by contrast, responded with an open letter to Americans reminding that “Iran has never initiated a war” while facing “repeated foreign interventions” throughout its history, including the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the US support for Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s.

He also reminded how Iran had been complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which it had agreed to strict limits on levels of uranium enrichment and stockpile amounts, yet how Trump violated that agreement during his first term to reimpose crippling sanctions targeting Iran’s civilian population.

As Pezeshkian appropriately observed,

Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure—including energy and industrial facilities—directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders. They enerate instability, increase human and economic costs, and perpetuate cycles of tension, planting seeds of resentment that will endure for years.

On April 2, Trump claimed responsibility for the destruction of a newly built suspension bridge in Tehran, the largest bridge in the country, killing at least 13 civilians and injuring 95.

On Good Friday, April 3, Trump claimed US forces could “easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.” Later that day, he posed the question, “KEEP THE OIL, ANYONE?”

On April 4, he reminded of an earlier ultimatum given to Iran to open the Hormuz Strait or face hell, invoking God while again threatening to rain hell down on Iran:

Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!

On Easter Sunday, he posted an even more unhinged and demonic message:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.

If Trump does that, Iran will likely retaliate against oil and gas facilities in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) states hosting US military bases, possibly also against the desalination plants the people there depend on for water, and there will be a global energy crisis lasting not mere weeks or months but years.

The economic disaster and severe toll on human health and lives could be accompanied with a Gulf-wide environmental catastrophe.

Pray that forces of good stop the evil religious extremists in the US government who want to usher in Armageddon and are threatening war crimes and crimes against humanity before they cause devastating harm to all citizens of this planet.

Constrasting with Hegseth’s war prayer, Pope Leo XIV during his Easter address reminded of the true meaning of the Gospels:

Yes, Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of a new humanity; it is the entrance into the true promised land, where justice, freedom, and peace reign, where all recognize one another as brothers and sisters, children of the same Father who is Love, Life, and Light.

… In the light of Easter, let us allow ourselves to be amazed by Christ! Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by his immense love for us! Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!

We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people. Indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow. Indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce, which we all feel….

The cross of Christ always reminds us of the suffering and pain that surround death and the agony it entails. We are all afraid of death, and out of fear we turn away, preferring not to look. We cannot continue to be indifferent! And we cannot resign ourselves to evil!

… He passed through death to give us life and peace: “I leave you peace; I give you my peace. Not as the world gives it, I give it to you” (Jn 14:27). The peace that Jesus gives us is not merely the silence of weapons, but the peace that touches and transforms the heart of each one of us! Let us allow ourselves to be transformed by the peace of Christ! Let us make heard the cry for peace that springs from our hearts!

… On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil.

Amen.