US and Israeli Officials Use Religious Language on Iran Conflict, Draw CAIR Criticism

As the conflict in the Middle East entered its fifth day on Wednesday, American and Israeli officials were using rhetoric that casts the campaign against Iran as a religious war. The United States and Israel began their attack on Iran on Saturday and have continued strikes since then. In retaliation, Iran has hit targets in Israel and US military assets in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.

On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organisation, condemned the Pentagon’s use of this rhetoric, calling it “dangerous” and “anti-Muslim.” The US watchdog Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a nonprofit that works to uphold religious freedom for US service members, said it had received emailed complaints that troops were told the war with Iran was meant to “cause Armageddon,” or bring about the biblical “end times.” One unnamed noncommissioned officer wrote to the MRFF that a commander had urged officers to tell their troops that the war was “all part of God’s divine plan,” citing passages from the Book of Revelation. The officer claimed the commander had said Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These are the officer’s claims as reported by the MRFF, and the source does not independently confirm them.

The source also points to public statements by officials. Last month, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in an interview that it would be “fine” if Israel took “essentially the entire Middle East” because it was promised the land in the Bible, though he added that Israel was not seeking to do so. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that “Iran is run by lunatics – religious fanatic lunatics,” adding that Tehran had “an ambition to have nuclear weapons.” The previous day, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a Pentagon news briefing that “Crazy regimes like Iran, hell-bent on prophetic Islamic delusions, cannot have nuclear weapons.” CAIR said Hegseth’s words were “an apparent reference to Shia beliefs about religious figures arising near the end times.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also drawn on religious texts. On Sunday, he referred to the Torah and compared Iran with the Amalekites, an ancient biblical enemy that Jewish tradition regards as representing “pure evil.” He said: “We read in this week’s Torah portion, ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember – and we act.” CAIR responded that it was “not surprised” to see Netanyahu use the story of Amalek, which it said describes God commanding the Israelites to destroy a pagan nation, and claimed that Netanyahu was using it to justify Israel’s “mass murder of civilians in Iran, just as it did in Gaza.” CAIR’s statement said that every American should be “deeply disturbed by the ‘holy war’ rhetoric” from the US military, Hegseth and Netanyahu. It described Hegseth’s comment as unacceptable, as it did the account of commanders telling troops the war was a biblical step toward Armageddon.

Jolyon Mitchell, a professor at Durham University in the UK, said that by framing the conflict as a holy war, leaders are using theological beliefs to “justify action, mobilise political opinion, and leverage support.”

Source: Read the original report