As the conflict in the Middle East enters its fifth day on Wednesday, American and Israeli officials are pushing rhetoric that suggests the campaign against Iran is a religious war.
On Tuesday, the Muslim civil rights organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the Pentagon’s use of this rhetoric, calling it “dangerous” and “anti-Muslim.”
The United States and Israel began their attack on Iran on Saturday and have continued to carry them out ever since. In retaliation, Iran has responded to targets in Israel and US military assets in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Cyprus.
A US watchdog has reported that US troops have been told the war is aimed at “inducing the biblical end times”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also recently claimed that Iran is ruled by “lunatic religious fanatics.”
What do American and Israeli leaders say?
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a US watchdog, said it received email complaints that US service members had been told that the war with Iran was destined to “cause Armageddon”, or the biblical “end times”.
An anonymous NCO wrote in an email to MRFF that a commander had urged officers “to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and specifically referenced numerous quotes from the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
The MRFF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending the religious freedom of American service members.
The officer claimed that the commander had told the unit that Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to bring about Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
Israeli and American leaders have also resorted to religious rhetoric in public.
Last month, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told US conservative commentator Tucker Carlson during an interview that he would be “fine” if Israel took “essentially the entire Middle East” because it was promised the land in the Bible. However, Huckabee added that Israel was not seeking to do so.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday of this week, Rubio said: “Iran is ruled by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics. They have ambitions to have nuclear weapons.”
And the day before, at a Pentagon press conference, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said: “Crazy regimes like Iran, bent on Islamic prophetic delusions, cannot have nuclear weapons.”
In its statement, CAIR claimed that Hegseth’s words are “an apparent reference to Shia beliefs about religious figures that arose near the end of time.”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referenced the Torah and compared Iran to an ancient biblical enemy, the Amalekites. The “Amaleks” are known in Jewish tradition as representatives of “pure evil.”
“We read in this week’s Torah portion: ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember and we act.”
CAIR said: “We are not surprised to see Benjamin Netanyahu once again use the biblical story of Amalek – which claims that God commanded the Israelites to murder every man, woman, child and animal in a pagan nation that attacked them – to justify Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Iran, just as it did in Gaza.”
The statement added that all Americans should be “deeply disturbed by the ‘holy war’ rhetoric” being spread by the US military, Hegseth and Netanyahu to justify war against Iran.
“Mr. Hegseth’s mocking comment about ‘Islamist prophetic delusions,’ an apparent reference to Shiite beliefs in religious figures that arose near the end of time, was unacceptable. So are U.S. military commanders telling troops that war with Iran is a biblical step toward Armageddon.”
Why are American and Israeli leaders framing the conflict with Iran as a religious war?
By attempting to frame the conflict as a holy war, leaders are using theological beliefs to “justify action, mobilize political opinion and garner support,” Jolyon Mitchell, a professor at Durham University in the United Kingdom, told Al Jazeera.
“Many on both sides of this conflict believe they have God on their side. God is enlisted in this conflict, as in many others, to support acts of violence. The demonization and dehumanization of the enemy, the ‘other,’ will inevitably make post-conflict peacebuilding even more difficult,” Mitchell said.
“There are several reasons that overlap and operate at different levels: internal mobilization, civilizational framework and strategic narrative construction,” Ibrahim Abusharif, an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
Internal mobilization refers to rallying a country’s own people. Leaders can frame the conflict as religious and therefore morally clear and urgent, rallying public support, he said.
In a video circulating on social media this week, Christian Zionist pastor and televangelist John Hagee is seen delivering a sermon promoting the US attack on Iran. Hagee said Russia, Turkiye, “what’s left of Iran” and “groups of Islamists” will march toward Israel. He said that God will “crush” the “adversaries of Israel.”
“Religious language mobilizes national voters,” Abusharif said, explaining that in the United States this connects deeply with many evangelicals and Christian Zionists, because they already see the wars in the Middle East as part of an “end times” religious story.
“References to the ‘end times,’ to the Book of Revelation, or to biblical enemies are not incidental; they activate a cultural script already present in American political theology.”
The civilizational framework refers to the creation of an “us versus them” dichotomy, which presents conflict as a clash between entire ways of life or beliefs, not just a dispute over borders or policies, he added. Therefore, statements such as Hegseth’s reference to “Islamic prophetic delusions” simplify the terms of war in the minds of ordinary people.
“Wars are difficult to justify in strategic technical language,” Abusharif said.
“Presenting the conflict as a struggle between ‘civilization and fanaticism,’ or between biblical ‘good and evil,’ transforms a complicated regional confrontation into a moral drama that ordinary audiences can easily grasp.”
“The Israeli leadership has long used biblical referents as political language. We are all familiar with them. The narratives have become globalized. In Israeli political discourse, this language situates the contemporary conflict within a long historical narrative of Jewish survival, and points out existential risks,” Abusharif said.
Have American or Israeli leaders made religious references before?
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have used the term “Amalek” before in reference to Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Historically, during wars or military engagements, American presidents and senior officials have also invoked the Bible or used Christian language.
President George W. Bush invoked similar language after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
On September 16, 2001, Bush said: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take some time.” The Crusades were a series of religious wars, mainly between the 11th and 13th centuries, in which the papacy fought against Muslim rulers for territory.
The White House later attempted to distance Bush from the word “crusade” to clarify that Bush was not waging a war against Muslims.
Abusharif said the war against Iran is about power and politics, but the use of religious rhetoric energizes his supporters and “moralizes” the conflict.
“War itself is not theological. It is geopolitical. But the language surrounding it is increasingly based on sacred images and civilizational narratives. Such rhetoric can mobilize its supporters and frame the conflict in morally absolute terms,” Abusharif said.
“However, it also carries risks: once a war is expressed in sacred language, political engagement becomes more difficult, expectations rise, and the global perception of the conflict can change in ways that complicate diplomacy.”
